Leaf Fall

The leaves have been turning color and falling for a couple of weeks now, but today was the first day they fell in great numbers, all at once, in big, wind-driven swirls. We’ve had waves of wind and rain all afternoon and the trees, though some still have green leaves, are noticably more naked. (Is [...]

Meet James Ensor

Another review, by Dawn-Michelle Baude, of the James Ensor show at MOMA I mentioned back in June. I love the deadpan presentation of horrors — same as in the old Anglo-American murder ballad tradition — in Ensor’s painting. Oh, yes, it is a world of greed, hatred, and delusion (as the Buddha taught), but it is [...]

Another Reason to Celebrate Modernism

I had not known the work of the architect Charles Gwathmey until I read his obituary in the NY Times.The photograph of the small house he designed for his parents in 1966 is breathtaking and reminds one of the aesthetic power of the Modernist vision, in architecture, which I know only casually, and in poetry, [...]

What Kind of Poem Would this Be?

I wonder what the poetic equivalent of this art installation would be. Flarf? In the visual arts I find this kind of massive accumulation of detail deeply engaging. Why do I distrust it in poetry? Do I distrust it? I find Allen Ginsberg’s long catalogs moving and often very finely tuned, intellectually. “Black Acid Co-op” [...]

Hanoi Ceramics Seller

In Hanoi, lots of businesses are conducted from bicycles. Here, a merchant is selling ceramics carefully tied to her bike and balanced so that she can still ride even with a load that must be a couple of hundred pounds. Most of the pottery like this is made in the Village of Bat Trang [...]

Fine Writing

And not in a good way. It’s a shame to obscure the work of Edward Hopper with a haze of purple prose.

Luna Moth

Three days ago, we found a luna moth sheltering from the rain under the eaves of the front porch. It had attached itself to an old window screen waiting to go to the dump. Stayed two days, then yesterday when the sun came out took off. These huge, beautiful creatures live only a week after [...]

Actual Size Abstraction

James Ensor

There’s a show at MOMA I’d like to see, of James Ensor’s proto-modernist paintings. I find my own aesthetic roots in the period of western art and literature that runs from the end of the 19th century through the First World War — the period of what is sometimes called High Modernism. The NY Times [...]

Poem

I hesitate to post this poem, written just this afternoon, fearing that it is insufficiently respectful; but whatever disrespect it exhibits is only an attempt to express a more profound respect. One never gets entirely outside the lecture room, of course; but one chafes. The seat is hard, the oscillating fan insufficient to ventilate the [...]

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