Seamus Heaney. He’s a legend, at home and abroad. The first time I traveled through Ireland 10 years ago, I was incredulous to find his books for sale at the grocery check out counter and at the petrol station. While we get People magazine shoved in our faces, the Irish get volumes of Heaney. But […]
The Ones Who Knew So Little
Seasonal Much melting, and crows close to home. Snow giving its fingerprints this March morning. If I could, I would take your arm in the manner of our European forebears, linked elbows, fist pressed close to the heart, singing songs to the springtime, singing old songs. It would be this much to give the world, […]
Pulitzer’s Ideal (Dis-)Placements
Sometimes a shout out is needed. Here’s a link to a show at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts website that came to my attention by way of Tyler Green’s excellent blog, Modern Art Notes: Ideal (Dis-)Placements Here’s what Green wrote: Small, independent museums can do things big museums can’t (or don’t). They can take […]
Preferring the Hidden
The White Room The obvious is difficult To prove. Many prefer The hidden. I did, too. I listened to the trees. They had a secret Which they were about to Make known to me– And then didn’t. Summer came. Each tree On my street had its own Scheherazade. My nights Were a part of their […]
Thwarted by Awe
My posting about poetry from a few days ago (see April 1 below) drew some thoughtful and insightful responses. Here’s one from my dear friend and gifted poet Nicole that deserves highlighting up front. There are two thoughts I have regarding your posting on poetry today. As an instructor at a historically black college, I […]
To be Opened
A Green Crab’s Shell Not, exactly, green: closer to bronze preserved in kind brine, something retrieved from a Greco-Roman wreck, patinated and oddly muscular. We cannot know what his fantastic legs were like– though evidence suggests eight complexly folded scuttling works of armament, crowned by the foreclaws’ gesture of menace and power. A gull’s gobbled […]
Unnoticed, and Necessary
Variation On The Word Sleep I would like to watch you sleeping, which may not happen. I would like to watch you, sleeping. I would like to sleep with you, to enter your sleep as its smooth dark wave slides over my head and walk with you through that lucent wavering forest of bluegreen leaves […]
Order From Chaos
A few musings on the amazingly counter entropic gesture of pulling something into existence from what appears to be nothing… *** I have trusted to my intuition to find the subjects, and I have written intuitively. I have an idea when I start, I have a shape; but I will fully understand what I have […]
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Prescient Imaging
The creative process is mysterious, and I actually relish its unwillingness to be quantified and codified. Ongoing attempts to measure and metricize what it is and how it works are reminiscent of the classic image of the bubble under the tablecloth—that pocket of air that you can move around but cannot eradicate or hold in […]
Still Standing
I am not a poet. But I turn to poetry instinctively to navigating the inner life. As a painter I have given myself a hall pass to not have to chip away at language in an attempt to replicate, resuscitate or reconstitute those intense experiences that happen outside the domain of language. Outside my domain […]