{"id":1769,"date":"2016-05-06T09:36:57","date_gmt":"2016-05-06T13:36:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/?p=1769"},"modified":"2016-05-10T13:28:45","modified_gmt":"2016-05-10T17:28:45","slug":"art-from-the-burbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/art-from-the-burbs\/","title":{"rendered":"ART FROM THE BURBS?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Tania Runyan, author of four poetry collections, including <\/em>Delicious Air, which was awarded Book of the Year by the Conference on Christianity and Literature.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Can any real art come from the suburbs?
\n<\/em>This question popped up on my Facebook feed a few weeks ago. I immediately came to the defense of the writers, musicians, painters, and dancers who create their work on these leafy avenues.<\/p>\n

Because if anyone should receive an embossed certificate for living a fully committed suburban life, it\u2019s me.<\/p>\n

I grew up in southern California\u2013first in Lakewood, the town D.J. Waldie made famous in Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir,<\/em> then Rossmoor, one of our nation\u2019s first walled towns. After spending adulthood bouncing around the Chicago area <\/em>with my husband, we now live in a far-flung burb near the Wisconsin border. Our town adjoins a major amusement park and outlet mall.<\/p>\n

Suburbs have changed over the years. They\u2019re more diverse in their populations and often easier to afford than the cities they surround. But they are still the suburbs.<\/p>\n

Communities planned by developers lack the heritage and charm of historical cities or rural towns. I know this. I see the Nails\/Subway\/Fro-yo\/Walgreens strip malls flanking the boulevards overrun with Disney-stickered minivans. I don\u2019t pretend that the mass-market watercolor prints in my kid\u2019s orthodontist office are on par with the paintings hanging in the Art Institute of Chicago.<\/p>\n

But still, I take issue with the assumption that good art can\u2019t come from these places. Suburbs have their flaws, most notably their legacies of conformity and exclusion. \u201cWhite flight\u201d is an all-too-common dark spot on many families\u2019 timelines.<\/p>\n

But these legacies on their own don\u2019t remove the potential for creative expression. For a few generations, now, the suburbs haven\u2019t symbolized escape. They\u2019ve meant home, as real as a city storefront or rural dirt road.<\/p>\n

Where there is no art, we\u2019ve come to understand, there is no spirit. And even up in these dull parts the Spirit whips through me, batters me like a picket fence in a storm.<\/p>\n

In my forthcoming poetry collection What Will Soon Take Place<\/em>, I journey through the book of Revelation as a 40-something suburban mother of three. If I am to believe that God speaks through scripture through all time, I must trust that even someone like me, far removed from wild-eyed John in the cave on Patmos two thousand years ago, has a way to respond.<\/p>\n

What is real to me? Fast Food. Chain clothing stores. Dogs roaming the sidewalks. In these mundane patterns of suburbia, the voice of God still speaks.<\/p>\n


\nThe Things That Must Soon Take Place
\n<\/em>Will not rush through your heart like ball lightning.
\nThey will smolder under your skin as you wait
\nfor your chalupa in the drive-through
\nor latch the dressing room door at Old Navy,
\nwanting nothing more than to pull a preshrunk T
\nover your head in peace. But you must steady yourself
\non the purse hook, nauseated by the spirit
\nburying inside you like a tick. Soon you will see
\nseraphim wings in the price tags,
\nhear trumpets in the vents. You will awaken
\nto asphalt poking your soles like swords of fire,
\nto the grocery bagger’s billowing breath.
\nThese things will not horse through you
\nbut nudge you like a dog in the street,
\na matted earthbound begging for your touch,
\nwet nose you’ll never wipe off.<\/p>\n

\"Tania<\/p>\n

Tania Runyan, author of four poetry collections, including Delicious Air<\/em>, which was awarded Book of the Year by the Conference on Christianity and Literature. Her forthcoming volume will appear with Paraclete Press, What Will Soon Take Place<\/em>, an imaginative exploration of the final biblical book, The Revelation to John.<\/em> Her poems have appeared in many publications, including\u00a0Poetry, Image, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, The Christian Century, Atlanta Review, Indiana Review, Willow Springs, Nimrod<\/em>, and the anthology\u00a0In a Fine Frenzy: Poets Respond to Shakespeare<\/em>.\u00a0 She lives and writes in suburban Chicago.<\/p>\n

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By Tania Runyan, author of four poetry collections, including Delicious Air, which was awarded Book of the Year by the Conference on Christianity and Literature.   Can any real art come from the suburbs? This question popped up on my … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-paraclete-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1769\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.paracletepress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}