You Reading This, Be Ready Starting here, what do you want to remember? How sunlight creeps along a shining floor? What scent of old wood hovers, what softened sound from outside fills the air? Will you ever bring a better gift for the world than the breathing respect that you carry wherever you go right […]
Poetry
Women and Painting
In the words of Marlene Dumas: I paint because I am a woman. (It’s a logical necessity.) If painting is female and insanity is a female malady, then all women painters are mad and all male painters are women. I paint because I am an artificial blonde woman. (Brunettes have no excuse.) If all good […]
Craving the Lightning
A few lines to remember during those times when things don’t seem to be coming together: I haven’t written a single poem in months. I’ve lived humbly, reading the paper, pondering the riddle of power and the reasons for obedience. I’ve watched sunsets (crimson, anxious), I’ve heard the birds grow quiet and night’s muteness. I’ve […]
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Quiet Disasters
Fall of Icarus, by Breughel Musee des Beux Arts About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters; how well, they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, […]
Hiding, and Seeking
From Adam Zagajewski’s poem, The Self: It is small and no more visible than a cricket in August. It likes to dress up, to masquerade, as all dwarves do. It lodges between granite blocks, between serviceable truths. It even fits under a bandage, under adhesive. Neither custom officers nor their beautiful dogs will find it. […]
- Art/Language
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In Search of Sardines
Why I Am Not a Painter I am not a painter, I am a poet. Why? I think I would rather be a painter, but I am not. Well, for instance, Mike Goldberg is starting a painting. I drop in. “Sit down and have a drink” he says. I drink; we drink. I look up. […]