Join me! 48 hours from now we’ll have some good poetic fun and celebration! My little book turns one! Grab some snacks, stream YouTube to the TV and let’s have some fun! I’ll read ALL my poems, answer questions, sign books, tell jokes and introduce you to my dog ! see you live on the @buttonpoetry YouTube channel on Thursday!
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#poetry #buttonpoetry #writing #literature #quotes #art #grief #recovery #addiction #spokenword #spokenwordpoetry #poems #poet #spokenwordartist #poetryslam #poetsofinstagram #poetrycommunity #poetryofinstagram #slampoetry #michaellee #sober #sobriety #alcoholism #alcohol #literature #literaryquotes #literaturequotes #writersofinstagram #writer #writerslife
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Hey y’all! Two more days until I’ll be celebrating my book’s first birthday! I’ll be reading my book from front to back, cover to cover, on @buttonpoetry YouTube channel live. 7pm CST/8pm EDT. This line is from one of my favorite poems to read “Leaving”. I can’t wait to read it for y’all on Thursday! Check out my book “The Only Worlds We Know”, link in bio! Also…there just might be a big sale this week and some signed and personalized copies, stay tuned ☺️
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#poetry #buttonpoetry #writing #literature #quotes #art #grief #recovery #addiction #spokenword #spokenwordpoetry #poems #poet #spokenwordartist #poetryslam #poetsofinstagram #poetrycommunity #poetryofinstagram #slampoetry #michaellee #sober #sobriety #alcoholism #alcohol #literature #literaryquotes #literaturequotes #writersofinstagram #writer #writerslife
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In just three more days my little books has its first birthday! I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since my first book came out. Last year feels like an entirely different life, in many ways it was, an entirely different world entirely. Join me Thursday and let’s celebrate my books first birthday! I’ll be reading the whole damn thing! Grab some snacks, stream YouTube to the TV and let’s have some fun! I’ll answer questions, sign books, and introduce you to my dog !Mark your calendars and see you live on the @buttonpoetry YouTube channel!!
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#poetry #buttonpoetry #writing #literature #quotes #art #grief #recovery #addiction #spokenword #spokenwordpoetry #poems #poet #spokenwordartist #poetryslam #poetsofinstagram #poetrycommunity #poetryofinstagram #slampoetry #michaellee #sober #sobriety #alcoholism #alcohol #literature #literaryquotes #literaturequotes #writersofinstagram #writer #writerslife
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Hey y’all! This Thursday 8/13 I’ll be celebrating my books first birthday! I’ll be reading my book from front to back, cover to cover, on @buttonpoetry YouTube channel live. 7pm CST/8pm EDT. If you like my work, or my voice, or maybe even both, tune in! This line is from my poem “Out There” which I can’t wait to read for y’all this Thursday! Check out my book “The Only Worlds We Know”, link in bio! Also…there just might be a big sale this week and some signed and personalized copies, stay tuned ☺️
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#poetry #buttonpoetry #writing #literature #quotes #art #grief #recovery #addiction #spokenword #spokenwordpoetry #poems #poet #spokenwordartist #poetryslam #poetsofinstagram #poetrycommunity #poetryofinstagram #slampoetry #michaellee #sober #sobriety #alcoholism #alcohol #literature #literaryquotes #literaturequotes #writersofinstagram #writer #writerslife
https://www.instagram.com/p/CDtnmHLled7/?igshid=19xttlrrg3nxz

Hey y’all! Thursday 8/13 I’ll be celebrating my books first birthday! I’ll be reading my book from front to back, cover to cover, on @buttonpoetry YouTube channel live. 7pm CST/8pm EST. If you like my work, or my voice, or maybe even both, tune in! This line is from my poem “Leaving” which I’ll definitely be reading (maybe twice if I fuck it up real bad the first time). Check out my book “The Only Worlds We Know”, link in bio! Also…there just be a big sale next week and some signed copies, stay tuned ☺️
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#poetry #buttonpoetry #writing #literature #quotes #art #grief #recovery #addiction #spokenword #spokenwordpoetry #poems #poet #spokenwordartist #poetryslam #poetsofinstagram #poetrycommunity #poetryofinstagram #slampoetry #michaellee #sober #sobriety #alcoholism #alcohol #literature #literaryquotes #literaturequotes #writersofinstagram #writer #writerslife
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Hey y’all! Next Thursday! 7pm CST I’ll be reading my book from front to back, cover to cover, on @buttonpoetry YouTube channel live. If you like my work, or my voice, or maybe even both, tune in! This line is from my poem “Law of Halves as Applied to the Blade” in my book “The Only Worlds We Know”, celebrating its first birthday this Thursday! link in bio!
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#poetry #buttonpoetry #writing #literature #quotes #art #grief #recovery #addiction #spokenword #spokenwordpoetry #poems #poet #spokenwordartist #poetryslam #poetsofinstagram #poetrycommunity #poetryofinstagram #slampoetry #michaellee #sober #sobriety #alcoholism #alcohol #literature #literaryquotes #literaturequotes #writersofinstagram #writer #writerslife
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Taking much time for stillness and healing and reflection this week as I settle in the beginnings of this new chapter. This line is from my poem “The Middle Place”, If you like this line, check out more in my book The Only Worlds We Know, link in bio.
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#poetry #buttonpoetry #writing #literature #quotes #art #grief #recovery #addiction #spokenword #spokenwordpoetry #poems #poet #spokenwordartist #poetryslam #poetsofinstagram #poetrycommunity #poetryofinstagram #slampoetry #michaellee #sober #sobriety #alcoholism #alcohol #literature #literaryquotes #literaturequotes #writersofinstagram #writer #writerslife
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It’s interesting for me to look at some of these excerpts from my poems and recontextualize the lines in our current moment—this is from my poem “Along the Spent Horizon”, a poem specifically about personal grief, but it is of course much more than that and when I isolate my own lines I am easily reminded of this. There are so many ends and beginnings, and every moment of history brings us to our present moment. Thinking about the new world we must make together, what we must leave behind, what we must take with us, what articulation of our pasts we require to give language to our present and future lives. There is no easy way… no, and that’s why we must do this work of documentation and articulation and interpretation, to hold the many truths for our many selves. I’m rambling now, but if we are to make a new beginning we must contend with our endings and know how and why we got there, here, by the roads we did. A new world is possible and it is owed. If you like this line, check out more in my book The Only Worlds We Know, link in bio.
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#poetry #buttonpoetry #writing #literature #quotes #art #grief #recovery #addiction #spokenword #spokenwordpoetry #poems #poet #spokenwordartist #poetryslam #poetsofinstagram #poetrycommunity #poetryofinstagram #slampoetry #michaellee #sober #sobriety #alcoholism #alcohol #literature #literaryquotes #literaturequotes #writersofinstagram #writer #writerslife
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Another excerpt from my poem “Just Yesterday” in my book “The Only Worlds We Know”. I wrote this piece after someone commented on my fb page years ago “I love your work, but it’s so sad-why don’t you write happy poems”. There is much joy in the word and there is much ugliness,
In and around us all and we do no favors to shy from it, to speak softly about hard things. To pretend the world is soft so that your path through it feels easier requires that the path for others remains difficult, unjust, dangerous, violent until it becomes unimaginable, and when we can no longer imagine something we cant believe believe it, and all emotion and actions requires belief, requires imagination. That being said I do have a few happy poems in my book! At least one anyway. Lol. link in bio.
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#poetry #buttonpoetry #writing #literature #quotes #art #grief #recovery #addiction #spokenword #spokenwordpoetry #poems #poet #spokenwordartist #poetryslam #poetsofinstagram #poetrycommunity #poetryofinstagram #slampoetry #michaellee #sober #sobriety #alcoholism #alcohol #literature #literaryquotes #literaturequotes #writersofinstagram #writer #writerslife
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Portrait of Evelyn Nesbitt by James Carroll Beckwith, c. 1901.

(Trigger warning: sexual assault)

The most famous character in English Canadian literature is Anne Shirley.

In a series of books written by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne arrives on Prince Edward Island as an orphan to be put to work on a farm owned by siblings Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert. The pair had expected to welcome a boy, but Anne manages to charm her hosts and subsequently embarks on a series of mischievous but endearing adventures.

Originally published in 1908, Anne of Green Gables, the first of six novels with her name in the title, has sold more than 50 million copies worldwide. In Japan, Anne is a cult figure: every year thousands of tourists, some with marriage plans, make the pilgrimage to Cavendish, where Montgomery set and wrote most of her stories.

Adaptations of Anne of Green Gables, for stage, screen and television, in formats ranging from musicals to anime, are so numerous that compiling a complete list may no longer be possible. The book has been dramatized as a radio play in Slovakia and as a vlog in Finland. From school plays to a Netflix miniseries, thousands of girls around the world have played Anne Shirley.

Even Anne Shirley has played Anne Shirley. Dawn O’Day, while starring in a 1934 movie version of Anne of Green Gables, was so taken with the character that she adopted the name as her own.

Anne Shirley was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Support Actress in 1937. Anne Shirley has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

When starting the novel, Montgomery was inspired by a picture of a beautiful New York model, Evelyn Nesbit, which she’d clipped from a magazine. In the author’s imagination, the supposed ingenue was a symbol of “youthful idealism and spirituality.” She pasted the picture to her bedroom wall and used it as the guide for creating her title character.

Montgomery turned her sense of who Evelyn Nesbit was into Anne Shirley.

Nesbit wasn’t quite an orphan: her father had died in 1895 when she was 11, leaving his widow and children destitute. School could not be an option in such desperate circumstances. Three years later, Nesbit was working 12-hour days, six days per week, at Wanamaker’s department store. So was her mother. So was her younger brother, who had just turned 12

One day a customer, struck by Nesbit’s beauty, asked permission to paint her portrait, offering $1 for five hours of work. More requests followed, each artist more famous than the last. Within a few months, Nesbit was on a path to becoming America’s first celebrity supermodel. Harper’s Baazar,  Ladies’ Home Journal, Cosmopolitan and Vanity Fair all featured her face on their covers.

Music hall managers vied to put Nesbit on the stage, knowing fans would come to ogle her and not care if she could sing or act. Rich bachelors, hoping their inheritances might lure Nesbit into marriage, made the biggest fuss.

The first one to rape her was Stanford White, a 47-year-old architect who had ingratiated himself with Nesbit’s mother and persuaded her to go to Pittsburgh for a respite–leaving him, effectively, in the position of guardian. He plied his temporary ward with champagne, likely laced with a tranquilizer, and used her body while she lay incapacitated.

The next rapist was Henry Kendall Thaw, the son of a coal and railroad baron, who claimed to have watched 40 performances of Nesbit’s show. As part of his courtship, he accompanied the Nesbits on a tour of Europe. Following White’s example, Thaw was able to persuade the mother that her daughter could be left in his care, without a chaperone. He proposed marriage while the duo were in Paris. When Nesbit declined, the heir to a $40-million fortune demanded to know the reason why he was being rejected. Eventually he wore Nesbit down and she confessed that White had stolen her virginity. Made impure by that encounter, she knew she would not make a suitable wife for a man from a prominent conservative family.

Thaw took Nesbit to several shrines devoted to virgin martyrs before they headed for an isolated Austrian castle he’d rented near the top of a mountain. There, he locked her in a room and tortured her for two weeks, using a whip to beat her in between sexual assaults.

One morning, having released all his temper and (in his mind) purified his potential bride, Thaw, in an upbeat mood, came to Nesbit and liberated her from the castle prison. He apologized for being rough and insisted they finish their European tour.

A “fallen” woman in that era had few options. To protect her reputation, Nesbit married Thaw on April 4th, 1905. She did get him to promise to behave like a “Benedictine monk.” In turn, Thaw assured his bride she was forgiven for what she had done with White.

Thaw took his monastic pledge seriously. He forbade Nesbit from discussing her previous work and confined her to the supervision of his sanctimonious mother. Meanwhile, he became a crusader against moral turpitude, sharing strategies with Anthony Comstock on how to eradicate vice.

(Prior to his marriage, Thaw had frequented bordellos, injecting himself with cocaine and morphine to augment his sexual experiences.)

Paranoia soon set in and Thaw became convinced that minions of sin were targeting him for assassination. He presumed that Stanford White must be their leader. Thaw started carrying a gun with him wherever he went.

On June 26th, 1906, both men attended a performance at the rooftop stage above Madison Square Gardens. During the finale, Thaw drew his pistol, approached his antagonist and fired three bullets from a distance of two feet. According to police reports, the attack left White’s face shredded to the point it was no longer recognizable.

Thaw stood over the dead man and shouted, “I did it because he ruined my wife!”

Although the district attorney was willing to accept a plea of clinical insanity, Thaw’s mother thought that result would besmirch the family name, She spent $500,000 on doctors who testified Thaw had suffered from a temporary “brain storm.“

It took two trials but the strategy worked. Jurors concurred that Thaw was insane at the time of the murder but would eventually recover. After a seven-year stay (aside from a brief escape to Canada) in an asylum essentially turned into a luxury residence, Thaw received the all-clear from the courts and resumed his playboy ways, newly divorced from his wife.

Of course, the person really being judged during the trials was Nesbit, She had to admit on the witness stand that White, technically, had been her lover. The yellow press sold newspapers with lurid headlines: “Woman Whose Beauty Spelled Death and Ruin,” for example. It took only a week after White’s death for Thomas Edison to complete a film, Rooftop Murder, which played at the nickelodeons.

A red velvet swing came to symbolize the tragedy. It hung from the ceiling of Stanford White’s residence. Before the rapes, before the murder, before the journalists, Nesbit would climb on to it and ask White to push her, higher and higher and higher.

After the verdict, Thaw’s family stopped paying Nesbit’s allowance. Returning to show business, she was able to overcome her notoriety to perform in vaudeville and silent movies. The popularity she’d enjoyed, however, would never return.

During Prohibition, she operated a New York speakeasy. Alcoholism contributed to a suicide attempt in 1926.

She worked in burlesque for a while and taught sculpting and ceramics.

Her last venture into the public eye came in 1955, when Twentieth Century Fox released a highly-fictionalized account of the rivalry between Thaw and White. Called The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, Marilyn Monroe was tapped to play Nesbit but expressed disinterest. The part went to Joan Collins.

Nesbit made $10,000 working for the producers as a technical consultant.

She died in a California nursing home in 1967, age 82, not knowing there was another version of her life, that in a different story she had red hair, lived on an idyllic island farm and only struggled with alcohol that one time she confused current wine for raspberry cordial.

Had she known the picture that inspired her was of “that Nesbit girl,” Montgomery wouldn’t have pasted it on her bedroom wall. She wouldn’t have interpreted it as a representation of “youthful idealism and spirituality.”

But, unaware of the scandalous connection, she could see what she wanted to see.

Perhaps any photograph, especially out of context, shows us what we want to see. It occurs to me that all art may be like that–equally capable of telling great truths and pernicious lies. Whatever the intention of the creator, the audience ultimately determines the meaning.

Like Montgomery, when I came across Beckwith’s painting, I thought I’d found a depiction of innocence and purity. Now that I’ve learned Nesbit’s story and know what is going to happen to her, I look into those dark eyes on the canvass and see unrelenting sadness.

AAAAAAAAH MY HEART!! For Heavenlycondemned over on FA of their Starfinder character’s backstory.

For a story on Antabus

(Mark Kauffman. 1949)

Here’s the poster I made for an upcoming event featuring my boyfriend’s music project, Square Breathing. It’s an album release and art show for his new album, Imprints of Shattered Arms (which is available to stream for FREE, here)! He’ll be performing the full album and selling CD zines illustrated by Jamesy Turner. A number of other artist friends will be showing art and selling goods, including me! The show is this Saturday 5:30PM - 9:30PM at Picasso’s lounge, 2101 Maryland Ave., ‪#‎baltimore‬ Maryland, 21218