An excerpt from Bulabula 1, a painting currently hanging in my show at Lyman-Eyer Gallery in Provincetown A Ball Rolls on a Point The whole ball of who we are presses into the green baize at a single tiny spot. An aural track of crackle betrays our passage through the fibrous jungle. It’s hot and […]
Poetry
- Aesthetics
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Raccoons and Uncertainty
Markings on wood, from the African art collection at the Brooklyn Museum: Beautifully ambiguous Poems, poets and poetry provide a parallel universe that sometimes helps make a little more sense of my own huddled world of paintings, painters and art. A good example is this excerpt from an essay by Joel Brouwer that appeared on […]
Water Washing Over a Shelly Back
Soul What am I doing inside this old man’s body? I feel like I’m the insides of a lobster, All thought, and all digestion, and pornographic Inquiry, and getting about, and bewilderment, And fear, avoidance of trouble, belief in what, God knows, vague memories of friends, and what They said last night, and seeing, outside […]
Winter, the Unfinished, The Abandoned
Spring blossoms at the Arnold Arboretum, Boston *** The Sudden Spring The coyote had just spoken and lay down to rest in a snowdrift. March, like a fly awakened too early, droned between somnolence and a furious boredom. No one remembers the autumnal prophet, teller of drowsy stories to be continued… Winter, the unfinished, the […]
- Art Making
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Thingness
Kyaiktiyo Pagoda, featured in the film MANA: Beyond Belief, is a Buddhist pilgrimage site in Burma. Tradition claims that the boulder was placed on the cliff 2500 years ago by Burmese spirits. A gilded boulder sits on top and is believed to contain a hair of the Buddha. ______ This is a Wonderful Poem Come […]
Yield and Surrender
Yet another excerpt from the interview with Ted Kooser (see the post below as well) in Guernica magazine. This one is about yield: If you can find two poems in a book, it could be a pretty good book for you. You know, two poems you really like. There are some poets who are fairly […]
- Aesthetics
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Drift
We live in an age where pluralism and inclusiveness are the norm (Tea Party excluded), but disenfranchising divisions are still occurring. Music, visual art, poetry, prose, architecture—all the artistic métiers have within their creative borders a whole slew of tribes that speak their own patois. Look at the language barrier that exists between two people […]
Both/And
Emily Dickinson wrote, “My business is circumference.” What a wonderful image and phrase, and so Dickinsonian in its simple but powerful directness. (And what a master of the small she was. She described herself as “New Englandly”—her language pared down to essentials, her verses modest in size. As Barbara Novak points out, “Modesty and understatement […]
- Aesthetics
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What the Soft Animal Loves
Atesse, from a recent series of paintings One aspect of having online access into every nook and cranny of the world (as well as the latest thoughts of millions of bloggers) is being able to see into the extraordinary range of human passions. I’m not referring to the largest engine of human cyber passion, pornography, […]
But There Are, Still, The Roses
Boston-based actor Paula Plum read this poem at a memorial service recently for Talbot Waterman—Yale professor, biologist extraordinaire, music lover, traveler and friend. This was her tribute to Talbot’s 60+ year relationship with his partner Joe Gifford. “I usually read this poem at weddings,” Paula prefaced her reading, “but it can be a way of […]