I have two poet friends, both of them extremely gifted. One, a Midwesterner, has a work ethic a lot like my own. She is focused, driven and very committed to her writing. Her poems are finely honed and crafted through successive revisions. Every word is considered carefully, and you feel that intentionality when you read […]
Thumbing Through the Dreams
Two of the five poems that appeared on the New York Times op ed page on Wednesday, November 5, the first day of this new chapter in US history: When the Fog When the fog burnt off this morning Outsize JumboTron screens were hanging off the clouds, Scores of them, huge, acres and acres of […]
YEAH!
I am speechless with joy. So is everyone in my world. A message this morning from my friend Thalassa said, “I’m in love with my country again.” I know what you mean, and it feels intoxicating. The crowd in Grant Park. The euphoric celebrations everywhere, even overseas. The newspaper headlines (The Morgen Post in Hamburg […]
Election Day Ponderings: Art, Empathy and Politics
Can you tell that I can’t think about anything other than this election? Until this contest is over, that’s the only channel I’m on. To continue on the theme of my posting below, here is a provocative piece by John Stoehr from the excellent blog, Flyover. This adds yet another dimension to the discussion of […]
A Nation Divided, In Perpetua?
Election Day, finally. I have lost personal access to the timbre of evenhandedness in this political season, so it was with fascination that I read Eve LaPlante’s feature piece in the Boston Globe yesterday. She explores current research that suggests the hard-wired, biological and somewhat predetermined nature of a political point of view. A correlation […]
Legacies and Other Mysteries
Double Wedding Ring Quilt When they exchanged wedding rings did they know it was only the start of sorting through work baskets of “why” and “what it all means,” a ragbag of eye-strain and piece work? Now, seventy eight and seventy five, they hold the quilt between them as you snap their photograph. It scalloped […]
Photographic Evocation
A few memorable images from Time Magazine–their Photo of the Week series… Baby parrots being released into the wild. Photo: Renzo Gostoli Elephant eye. Photo: Barbara Walton Fireworks. Photo: Chumsak Kanoknan Photo: Bobby Yip
Term Limits
Kyle Gann posted this note on his blog, PostClassic: Thank You, Sarah Palin We in American music owe a great debt to John McCain and Sarah Palin. Those two have so cheapened and tainted the word “maverick” that it will be at least a generation, maybe two, before anyone will be able to use the […]
Subservient to Painting…More on Saville
I’m still on a Jenny Saville bender (see post below)…Here are a few passages from an interview with Saville conducted by Suzie Mackenzie of the Guardian. I found these passages provocative and insightful. She attributes the early “fascination with fat” to sitting on the floor watching her piano teacher. “From below she had these big, […]
Jenny Saville in Boston
Saville uses her own body for most of her paintings This week we heard painter Jenny Saville speak at Boston University. Thirty minutes before the lecture was scheduled to begin at Morse Auditorium, 500 people were already in a line snaking down Commonwealth Avenue. My initial reaction was, how cool. How often do you find […]