Detail of a sumi brushstroke, ink on rice paper Twigs (excerpt) Neither music, fame, nor wealth, not even poetry itself, could provide consolation for life’s brevity, or the fact that King Lear is a mere eighty pages long and comes to an end… And so it has taken me all of sixty years to understand […]
Poetry
- Aesthetics
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The Shape-Making Impulse
Yellow Porch, Richard Diebenkorn Today’s post is from the me with my head under the hood. Here are a few thoughts about what happens in the making and the molding. Sometimes that part of the process takes precedence, when it is helpful to step back a bit to see if you can see a larger […]
Fragments, and a Coming Together
I have written about Mary Ruefle’s book of essays, Madness, Rack and Honey so many times here that I thought it would be apropos to share one of her poetic ventures as well. I keep my copy of the slight but beguiling A Little White Shadow nearby. It is a visual and poetic pleasure to […]
Wise Ones
George Saunders (Photo: The Guardian) Is it just my bias or is it truly hard to find an artist who is a gifted creator and also wise? Another personal bias (since we’re divulging these proclivities): It is my experience that wisdom comes from those who have figured out how to get out beyond the distracting […]
Images, Ideas and Tension
The first part of the Return from Parnassus, by Cy Twombly The image cannot be dispossessed of a primordial freshness, which idea can never claim. An idea is derivative and tamed. The image is in the natural or wild state, and it has to be discovered there, not put there, obeying its own law and […]
Safekeeping the Not Knowing
As most of my readers know, I rely on poets to describe—as much as it can be described—what takes place in the isolation of my painting studio day after day, month after month, year after year. There are so many who can wield the word wand so much better than I can, many of whom […]
Star Birthing
(Painting detail with a cosmic flair) Star Birth of the Word ULASSA Just now, May 23, 2013, I have in my conceit created a brand new word, Ulassa, at 8:05 AM: as I write, Ulassa is an infant star that burns white hot hydrogen and Joins—who knows—988,000 English words or more, As a new birthed […]
Your Own Way of Looking at Things
Solitary boat man on the river in Hampi, India When I Met My Muse I glanced at her and took my glasses off – they were still singing. They buzzed like a locust on the coffee table and then ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and knew […]
The Don’t Know Mind
. . . and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes; and to keep on not knowing something important. –Wislawa Szymborska The idea of fragments and incompleteness was the topic of a blog post I wrote two weeks ago (Pieced Cloth) but it became the predominant leitmotif for life this past week. […]
- Art Making
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The Deeper Thing
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated Of dead and living. Not the intense moment Isolated, with no before and after, But a lifetime burning in every moment And not the lifetime of one man only But of old stones that cannot be deciphered. […]