Feast or Famine

In 2024, I made, what was for PFS, a crucial decision. Something Solid to me seemed incomplete without at least a few pieces dedicated squarely to Abby Heller-Burnham. What was built into the manuscript, on that front, as of the beginning of the year, was weak and inadequate. So, in the spring of '24 I buckled down and produced two pieces, the double-sonnet Feast or Famine and the sonnet Portal-ways, which focused as intensely and intently on Ms. Heller-Burnham as they possibly could. As spring turned into summer, Feast or Famine appeared in The Seattle Star and on PennSound. Now, it could begin to be discussed that Abby, who is a reduced presence in Equations next to Mary Evelyn Harju, had begun to blossom in the world the same way Mary had. Even as the dynamic tension she creates, about Philadelphia, New York, and the East Coast in general, must remain controversial. The most controversial lines in Feast or Famine, which suggest that Abby, upon leaving Manhattan for Philadelphia, "was ready" for Philly, inverts a well-worn cultural cliche, and turns the cultural relief map of the East Coast on it head. This, I am proud to have done, as a long-overdue addition to the East Coast cultural economy. The sense is, I mean, that for anyone who wants to write or paint seriously, you may, indeed, find Philadelphia more germane than Manhattan, which is a cultural mecca, it might be argued, mostly for kids and dilettantes. Abby Heller-Burnham is a genius-level painter who deserved better than that; Philadelphia was happy to give it to her.