Blessed Union

Ish Klein preaches connectivity through poems and puppets.

by A.D. Amorosi

	print	email	reply	rss feed

Published: Jun 30, 2009

Anne Saint Peter THE ISH: Klein's work is an extension of her gentle, playful, daring soul.

[poetry ]

Ish Klein titled her first volume of poetry UNION! (Canarium Books, $14) as a nod to the Soyuz spacecraft, used by the Soviets to unite crew members and supplies with orbiting space stations. "Soyuz" is Russian for "union."

"I, too, am interested in linking with everything alive," says Klein. "That's the UNION! endeavor."

It's another chapter in the increasingly difficult-to-define volume of work I call IshArt. Klein, 39, is no mere Renaissance woman or mash-up princess; she's a filmmaker, actress, puppeteer and spoken word-er.

Her work is an extension of her gentle, playful, daring soul. It's also part-and-parcel with happily growing up the daughter of a sanitation worker.

"I was raised aware that people throw away perfectly good items all the time," says Klein, who has a knack for stitching together cultural flotsam, literally and figuratively, into something whole, hilarious or touching. "Also it's affected my posture because of looking down too often."

The difficulty for Klein — who was born in Long Beach, N.Y., attended Columbia U and moved to Philly in 2001, where she became friends with local film and prose denizens Scott Johnston, Molly Rushakoff, CAConrad and Marc Brodzik — is choosing her medium. Klein's vivid imagination blossoms in the YouTube chat-a-thon BOO! Show, short flicks like The Mentalist's Mental Cabinet of Vengeance, a role in Sweetbread Films' Eye of the Tiger, Thrill of the Chase and more than a few self-stitched puppets. What provokes Klein into making one idea a poignant poem worthy of tears and wonder as opposed to crafting a raggedy, effortlessly humorous puppet?

"Movies are experiments in interdependency; I write, direct and edit but it's necessary to work with others if you want to make better work and grow," says Klein. Then again, she once started filming a movie, got tired of wrangling actors and finished it using puppets. She's funny that way.

"The puppets I started making were [so I could] have little actors who I could love. They were made from a really nice sweater I had which was deteriorating at the elbows and cuffs."

Klein writes poems to change her state of mind. "If I feel really overwhelmed and worthless, I think, 'Well, if I can write something down, that's something and we'll see what happens.'"

What happens — after being inspired by poets John Beer, Robyn Schiff, Lamont Steptoe, Emily Dickinson, Rainer Maria Rilke and Pippi Longstocking author Astrid Lingren — is UNION!

The book is cut into four parts rather than chapters (Amid Ocean, Dry Land, Hard Earth, and Up and Away) and further subdivided into 26 smaller bits. "The poems are ... re-enactments of my experiences of development — my disillusionment with authority or loneliness, a rising up from the dead or near-dead. It also makes clear a commitment to love, problematic, at times, but necessary."

Without making UNION! into a self-help tome, Klein's passionate pleas and flowing conversational passages seem more like steps or life lessons. "I hope so," she says. "When a person realizes their life is being upheld by so many other people and the densities of energy, they're special because they are alive and can do many great things even while sitting still. They appreciate the endeavor of being alive."

Before UNION! you could hear Klein read poems like "G.," which discussed the "gangster that created the world outside of nature," on stages throughout the city and on YouTube, where she declares, "I'm amazing, I'm a fireman," after a poem of that name.

Her voice, famously, is baby-soft, high and capable of throwing off listeners to the tender import and occasional harsh hasty dread of her words: "A tree burning and budding/ Arising from a corpse at its base/ A suicide with a soft spot for shade. ... A chain saw to slay her decomposing place. Re-enter the fear" (from UNION!'s "There Is Always a War").

She knows that.

"My voice sounds sort of immature so that when I convey transgressive ideas, well, the effect could be comical," she admits. "Like if a Muppet were singing the Jim Morrison song where he wants to kill his father. Not that I sing that song or that I'm a Muppet." Ideally Klein would like readers to imagine their own voices — or that of a friend — as the narrator of UNION!'s poems. "They would see themselves at the center of each poem and would be the star. They would know that there are great and interesting things to do. They would really feel they are not alone."

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)

Ish Klein will present a puppet show and sign copies of UNION! Fri., July 3, 7 p.m., free, Germ Books, 2005 Frankford Ave., 215-423-5002, germbooks.com.

All reader comments are subject to our Terms of Use. By clicking Post Comment, you acknowledge that you have reviewed and agree to these Terms.

Name	please enter your name
Email (will not be published)	please enter a valid email
Comment	please enter a comment
Enter the security code on the right in the textbox below.
Security Code	please enter the code
	Join the City Paper Mailing List

1776
City of Nutterly Love
Kaleidoscope
A Rake's Progress
First Friday Focus
Collaboration 26