I’m still sitting in the fragrance of the excerpted passages from the Francis Clines article that I posted earlier this week. This visual image for example has a powerful persistence for me: For his opening classes at Harvard, Heaney usually prescribes selections from East European poets, stark verse that is hardly the language of bogus […]
Art/Language
More From Seamus
Like an old friend who drops in and ends up staying a few days, Seamus Heaney has been on my mind ever since I read those few lines I posted yesterday. Here’s a short poem by him that delights, enchants, creates longing (the good kind.) Song A rowan like a lipsticked girl. Between the by-road […]
Timorous or Bold
I found a passage from a poem by Seamus Heaney, quite by chance. It stopped me in my tracks: ”The way we are living, timorous or bold, will have been our life.” Just coming out of a long period of living life beneath the surface of things, those words cut through to the bone. So […]
Jorie Graham: Prayer
This poem by Jorie Graham has had particular resonance for me today. I share it with the intention of passing its magic along to anyone else who might need its wisdom. Prayer Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the way to create current, […]
Coming Up for Air
I’ve been burrowed in my studio for several days, getting work ready for an upcoming show in San Francisco. For the first time in nine years there is no heat in my studio on weekends, so I have had balance and moderation forced on my otherwise excessive self. I’ve missed the introspection and insight that […]
Tang Dynasty Wisdom
Cold Mountain 3, by Brice Marden Here’s a thoughtful and provoking passage from one of my favorite blogs, Joe Felso: Ruminations. He references Han-shan, the same poet who inspired Brice Marden’s Cold Mountain series of paintings, who feels similar in spirit to my earlier posting on Master Linji, also from the Tang Dynasty: I wonder […]
Leon Ferrari
Leon Ferrari (images courtesy of Cecelia de Torres Gallery) The Museum of Modern Art catalog for January 2008 arrived in the mail and I was stunned by the cover. It features a recent purchase, a drawing by Argentinian artist Leon Ferrari. I don’t know Ferrari’s work well but his name caught my eye when I […]
Thoughts On a Moonbeam for a New Year
Moonbeam The mist rose with a little sound. Like a thud. Which was the heart beating. And the sun rose, briefly diluted. And after what seemed years, it sank again and twilight washed over the shore and deepened there. And from out of nowhere lovers came, people who still had bodies and hearts. Who still […]
Poetry is White
One of my Christmas gifts from my friend Cindy was Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon, a book of poems by Pablo Neruda translated by Stephen Mitchell. Based on my preliminary reading of a few of my favorite Neruda poems in this volume, thumbs up. Here’s a sample comparison of Mitchell’s translation with a popular […]
Authenticity and its Discontents
In responding to my previous post about theory and art making, Elatia Harris left a comment that is so full of potent issues I felt it needed to be brought forward, into the headlights. She touches on issues that many visual artists (including myself) mull over, struggle with and voice frustration about. I don’t necessarily […]