#20: Vermontana, Poems by Chris Martin with Artwork by Larry Heller

Chris Martin also grew up in Colorado Springs (which makes, improbably, 3 of us in this series). I never knew him until a few years ago, though, when he moved to San Francisco and went sniffing around for other poets, as poets are wont to do. He wrote more prolifically than anyone I’d ever known, honest.

After a misunderstanding, he sent me this book of poems, which I couldn’t resist. Now he lives in New York City, runs puppyflowers.com and I don’t know what else.

Larry Heller is dead, but he was one of the great Colorado Springs artists during the golden age of art here in the 1920s and ’30s when there was lots of leftover gold rush money floating around. He and his wife Dorothy or “Dot” were sort of Great Gatsby types – riding polo horses and racing cars and being decadently wealthy bon vivants. The reproductions of his work in this book don’t really do right by his magnificent paintings and lithographs, but I wrote a big story about him (which you can read at csindy.com if you’re so inclined, which also has a number of color images) and thought it would be nice to get his art out in the world since he never once sold a painting or print in his lifetime.

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