A Book of Bothersome Cats by Janet Kozachek

$20.99

 

“Janet Kozachek dares us to underestimate her.

 

Light verse? Anthropomorphic cats? Listen and look deeply into this beautiful book for all the layers the author has laid for us like gentle surprises.Tucked into corners and borders, the delight lies in the details: Procrastinator Cat’s bedside reading; Bully Cat’s elaborate jacket; the Guru Cat sitting on a rattlesnake; a cigar held in the paw of the floofy Fat Cat; suggestive portraits on Proper Cat’s dining room wall; and my favorite, the marvelous, coiling tunnel to the rabbit underground of Conspiracy Cat.The author sets an expectation for twists at the turn of every page.

As a polymath and multi-artist, Kozachek has way too much understanding and artistic ammunition to take her magnificently annoying array of cats less seriously. Her book has both softness and claws, and her wry, rhyming wit also holds compassion for human folly.

 

In the tradition of Eliot and Lear, A Book of Bothersome Cats sent this pandemic reader laughing back to Stanley Kunitz’s more serious concerns. In our darkest days, he advised us, “Live in the layers, not on the litter.” Kozachek’s book howls quietly, with a big, silent grin and a twitching tail that does not go away.”

–William Epes, founder of the online arts resource group “strand line break,” host of the multi-arts, open mic series Tuesday Duets.

 

“Janet Kozachek’s A Book of Bothersome Cats, a sequel to her Book of Marvelous Cats, is playful and fun. Its rhymes and colorful feline characters make it seem suited to children, but the foibles and flaws the bothersome cats possess are decidedly adult maladies. Her illustrations, as always, are precise and intricate, inviting long study to encourage appreciation of every detail. Like all cats, the bothersome cats are complicated characters who are nevertheless endearing and well worth getting to know.”

–JoAngela Edwins, Ph.D. Professor of English, Francis Marion University. Poet Laureate of the Pee Dee Region of South Carolina. Author, Play. Winner of the SC Academy of Authors’ Carrie McCray Nickens Poetry Fellowship, Pushcart Prize.

 

 

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Description

A Book of Bothersome Cats

by Janet Kozachek

$20.99, Full-length, paper

979-8-88838-251-6

2023

Janet Kozachek hails from Princeton Junction, New Jersey, where her rural formative years were spent drawing and writing in nature. Her subsequent education was unusually eclectic, having traveled, worked and studied in Europe, China and the United States. She obtained her Master of Fine Arts Degree in Drawing and Painting from Parsons School of Design in New York, where she also studied poetry with J.D. McClatchy. Her Certificate of Graduate Study in Chinese Art from the Central Academy of Fine Art (CAFA) in the People’s Republic of China included the study of Chinese poetry and painting. Her undergraduate study at Rutgers was in science (biology) and art.

In addition to her painting, Janet Kozachek is a well-known mosaic artist, and was the Founding President of the Society of American Mosaic Artists. Her work is in a number of museums and private collections, and she was the recipient of the award for excellence in drawing from Art Fields (2019), a Puffin Foundation Award, National Endowment for the Arts awards, a Heritage Foundation Award, and a Humanities Council Award. Her poetry and illustrations have been published in Undefined magazine, the journal Ekphrasis, and Local Life. Ms. Kozachek is the author of The Book of Marvelous Cats, My Women, My Monsters, and A Rendering of Soliloquies – Figures Painted in Spots of Time. Janet Kozachek was the recipient of the 2020 Common Ground on the Hill Award for Excellence in the Traditional Arts.

When not writing, drawing, or painting in her studio in Orangeburg, South Carolina, Janet Kozachek finds joy in cooking, gardening, and making ceramic musical instruments.  Her work can be found in the Artisans Center in Walterboro, South Carolina.

www.janetkozachek.net

kozachekart.blogspot.com

kozachek@bellsouth.net

Janet Kozachek is an internationally trained and exhibited artist. She holds a Master of Fine Arts Degree in painting and drawing from Parsons School of Design in New York and a Certificate of graduate study from the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing (CAFA). She is the author of The Book of Marvelous Cats, My Women My Monsters, and A Rendering of Soliloquies – Figures Painted in Spots of Time.

 

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