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Esopus 6: Process Now On Newsstands

May 1, 2006

Esopus devotes the entirety of its new issue—the first with a specific theme in the magazine’s three year history—to the creative process. For it, contributors from a wide range of disciplines were invited to offer up the evidence of their working methods. Contents include writer Frank Rich’s legal-pad notes for a recent New York Times op-ed column, 22 drafts of a poem by Walt Whitman Award–winner Suji Kwock Kim, and production designer Thérèse Deprez’s scrapbook from the making of Spike Lee’s 1999 film Summer of Sam. Artist Sylvia Plimack Mangold provides a glimpse of the painstaking process required to produce an etching and aquatint, and underground comedian Demetri Martin surrenders pages from one of his joke journals. Also included: late author Christopher Isherwood’s never published work journals for his celebrated 1964 novel A Single Man, and a portfolio of riveting drawings by Samuel Varkovitzky (1898–1987), a Jewish banker who survived the Nazi occupation of Ukraine by posing as a traveling artist.

Two contributors have allowed readers the opportunity to not only observe, but actually participate in, their modus operandi. Artist Colter Jacobsen chose eight photographs from nearly 80 submitted by Esopus subscribers, and then used them as inspiration for a series of exquisite “memory drawings” (one copied directly from its source, the others drawn from memory afterward) featured in the issue. Esteemed mathematician John Conway supplies readers with his unique template and materials for assembling a 3-D model of one of his favorite polyhedra.

For the #6 CD, “Help Wanted,” Esopus asked 10 musicians to scour job listings and write a song inspired by one of them. Contributors include Devendra Banhart, Grizzly Bear, Magnetophone & John Darnielle, Amy Rigby and the Strugglers.

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