Early morning in Small Point Maine I just returned from a long weekend in Small Point, Maine. This quiet outcropping surrounded by the Atlantic on three sides has been my favorite migratory site for many years. Annual visits here are like the kitchen wall where penciled lines mark a child’s growth. This landscape is my […]
Mary Ruefle
Fragments, and a Coming Together
I have written about Mary Ruefle’s book of essays, Madness, Rack and Honey so many times here that I thought it would be apropos to share one of her poetic ventures as well. I keep my copy of the slight but beguiling A Little White Shadow nearby. It is a visual and poetic pleasure to […]
Wise Ones
George Saunders (Photo: The Guardian) Is it just my bias or is it truly hard to find an artist who is a gifted creator and also wise? Another personal bias (since we’re divulging these proclivities): It is my experience that wisdom comes from those who have figured out how to get out beyond the distracting […]
Images, Ideas and Tension
The first part of the Return from Parnassus, by Cy Twombly The image cannot be dispossessed of a primordial freshness, which idea can never claim. An idea is derivative and tamed. The image is in the natural or wild state, and it has to be discovered there, not put there, obeying its own law and […]
Unhitching
Red Butte Garden in Salt Lake City In Mary Ruefle‘s Madness, Rack and Honey, she references the concept of “unhitching.” The very word delights me: the idea of not being tethered or contained, of being let loose. It can mean so many different things of course, but Ruefle is referencing its particular use in Claude […]
Safekeeping the Not Knowing
As most of my readers know, I rely on poets to describe—as much as it can be described—what takes place in the isolation of my painting studio day after day, month after month, year after year. There are so many who can wield the word wand so much better than I can, many of whom […]