Meditation on Pockets

Pockets Are generally over or around Erogenous zones, they seem to dive In the direction of those Dark places, and indeed It is their nature to be dark Themselves, keeping a kind Of thieves’ kitchen for the things Sequestered from the world For long or little while, The keys, the handkerchiefs, The sad and vagrant […]

Claiming the Poem

I’m running a few weeks behind on my Times Book Review reading, but here’s a piece by Jim Holt from the April 5th edition that rang true. Holt does a compelling job of advocating for memorizing poetry. Imagine that. At a time when so many poems can be accessed online, Holt makes the claim—and I […]

Clear in Hindsight

In the past, when I began to study Zen, it was all a mistake. Wandering through numberless mountains and rivers, I wanted to find something to know. It’s all clear in hindsight. Having learned this, what do I have? Release a crow into the night and it flies flecked with snow. – Dayang Jingxuan Dayang […]

What Breaks Will Break

Homestead in Dakota Territory Wintering Dakota Territory, 1884 Already, winter makes a corpse of things. Snow reshapes what ice has taken. You’ve lost interest in letters. So let sunrise come. Let smoke grow darker by the light of day— what I could spare of you I’ve burned already. The fencepost needs repair. Let sunrise come. […]

Gong Sounding

A few more thoughts gleaned from the Guggenheim show, The Third Mind. This show was as closely aligned to my view of artmaking as any other exhibit I’ve ever seen. The experience is still reverberating for me several days later. Here are some provocative words from two giants, John Cage and Philip Guston. We learned […]