Kiss Painting

Sandra was my literary theory TA at York Univeristy. She is a true artist and a gentle soul. The book is beautiful, the words are beautiful, but I expected nothing less.

From This Magazine ... Nov/Dec 2003For those of us who think living life by our politics means not buying sweatshop products, voting NDP and recycling our Côtes Du Rhône bottles, Sandra Jeppesen's Kiss Painting (Gutter Press) is a slap in the face. At its core, the book is a tale of three friends: street kids, punk rock anarchist squatters, who meet, live together, move away and travel to the ends of the earth to find each other. Surrounding this core is a tale of loyalty and love, in which a ragtag tribe of society's outcasts-or, rather, people who have rejected society-create a generous, compassionate community out of the squalor and chaos within and around them. The writing style is easy, delicious prose-poetry, non-linear but holding enough together to put flesh on the three main characters. Jeppesen creates a harmony of beat poetry, street poetry and Molly Bloom, with a faint note of Hubert Selby Jr., that never rings false. Discussions of politics don't dominate the book but are mingled believably with the dialogue; this lack of domination reminds the reader that even a street-punk lifestyle is as much about identity as it is about politics; people still need to explore their path, make peace with their past and love others. Ultimately, beauty and wonder have a way of forcing themselves into every life. As an ex-hardcore-musician, I felt like a sell-out reading this book. Kiss Painting is a reminder to aging activists of how life could have been, had we had the courage to dive in, rather than merely dangle our feet. -Sue McCluskey