Tag: Sean Howard

New Poetry and the Penumbra Effect

SpinozablueMay 9, 2021May 24, 2021Art, BlogArt, Avery Tuck, Emma Stonex, Italo Calvino, Joshua Bocher, Literature, Maggie Doherty, Poetry, Sean Howard

We’ve added new poetry from Joshua Bocher, Sean Howard, and Avery Tuck. Please leave comments on our Contact Us page, if you’re so inclined.

Recent readings/rereadings include the aforementioned Maggie Doherty’s The Equivalents, which was excellent. It makes a fine pairing too with Square Haunting, by Francesca Wade, which I read last year. Group bios about unfairly neglected women in the arts help set the record straight and expand our horizons in the bargain.

Just finished The Lamplighters, by Emma Stonex, a very fine and subtle story about lighthouses, the men who once kept them running, and their families.…

Sean Howard’s star damage

SpinozablueApril 27, 2021PoetryGrammar wars, Sean Howard, The Damage

grammar (sentenced, for nietzsche)

the history professor
telling new students
“just keep it simple,
short sweet simple:
subject verb noun
all you need
!”

battle lines

april 27, 2019

bus into bristol, goose-
step on banner: military
boot camp! royal marine
instructor to lick – yum! –
you into shape. (this
being the 21st
century, the
bootprint
green
!)

the damage

some students from
atlanta, visiting cape
breton, ‘freaked the
fuck out’ by
the milky
way

—by Sean Howard

Sean Howard is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Unrecovered: 9/11 Poems (Gaspereau Press, 2021).…

New Year Poetry and Photography

SpinozablueMarch 25, 2021March 26, 2021BlogClick Click Domino, Elisabeth Roudinesco, Frederick Pollack, Hilary Sideris, Music, Photography, Poetry, Ricky Garni, Sean Howard

We’ve had some strong additions recently to our Spinozablue archives, most of them by previous contributors. Poetry by Hilary Sideris, Ricky Garni, Sean Howard, and Frederick Pollack grace our pages in 2021, and Ricky Garni brings us some of his photography as well. Please give them a close read/look and add comments on the Contact us page.

* * *

Have started another book by Elisabeth Roudinesco, Why Psychoanalysis? Of special interest to me so far is her depiction of French society as generally depressive and obsessed with pharmacology as the answer, not the old Talking Couch — which she prefers.…

Sean Howard: definitions (poetic gestures)

SpinozablueMarch 24, 2021March 24, 2021PoetryPoetry, Sean Howard

definitions (poetic gestures)

voters?
X slaves

*

descartes, the man
who saw himself
in half

*

prose racket –
poetry’s
mime

The Art Lovers (Departure Lounge, Cork Airport)

Shadows slowly
brushing barley –

cheers from The
Last Call

bar

ridge (poetic height)

the oak, statues
of silence,

gesture grand-
ly to the

planes

being poems, main-à-dieu bay

plo-
vers,
tou-
ch
&
go

*

wil-
let,
car-
ved
dou-
bt

*

seal-
pier-
ced
mis-
t

—by Sean Howard

Sean Howard is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Unrecovered: 9/11 Poems (Gaspereau Press, 2021).…

Rebirth Comes Soon Enough

SpinozablueApril 1, 2009March 16, 2021BlogDoreen LeBlanc, Poetry, Sean Howard

Spring Comes to Lake Shanghai, by Wu Li. 17th Century

It’s been a long winter. Like winter would never leave. Ever leave. Even though it was fairly mild where I live, the mood was winter for a long time. The mind of winter. The soul of cold. Perhaps it’s the state of the world. The economy. The cultural and political fights. Endless and ultimately boring. Perhaps. That said, spring is here and just in nick of time.

By the way, who is this Nick character and what did he do with Chronos?

* * * * *

We have two new sets of poems on tap: Doreen LeBlanc and Sean Howard grace our pages again.…

Sean Howard: Modern Moments

SpinozablueMarch 31, 2009March 16, 2021PoetryCollage, Nova Scotia, Poetry, Sean Howard

modern moments (main-à-dieu, nova scotia)

sun & cloud (reproduction)

bright

band, slow mov-

ing, copy-

ing

the

sea

nest (goodyear)

rock-

weed, dulse &

sorrel, moss a-

round the

tire

night journey (disconnect)

shoot-

ing star,

far

cry, jet st-

reams in

the

bay

wandering (index poems)

i

bloom: dark-

ness visi-

ble

***

thought,

made of images:

time, tubes &

walls

ii

beams, bend-

ing moments… st-

iffness method:

super posit-

ion

iii

factory: of future.

(manufacturing

people

…)

iv

dante, eagle-

eyed in florence:

‘lethe? light in

love’

v

descartes’

devil, god-

like man. fire:

flint flow-

ers

vi

alchemy: all

cock?…

Project for the Self

SpinozablueFebruary 2, 2009March 16, 2021Blog, LiteratureExistentialism, Leo Tolstoy, meaning, Philosophy, Sean Howard

What has it? What brings it? What gives meaning to our existence in the here and now? The afterlife? Paradoxes aside, the search for meaning has meaning itself, above and beyond any cleverness in the equation. To express that meaning, however, has become problematic in our late date — our cynical, jaded, post-post-guileless world. Post-guileless in the sense that we no longer can stop self-referencing or self-consciousness enough to just be. Enough to let be be the finale of seem, to borrow a brilliant phrase from Wallace Stevens.

It’s hip to search for meaning without letting others really know.…

Meaningful Searches, Exits and Traps

SpinozablueFebruary 1, 2009March 16, 2021PhilosophyCarl Jung, Leo Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Philosophy, Sean Howard, Wittgenstein

The (Post-)Modern Search for Meaning:

Tolstoy’s Escape from the Trap

A Reflection by Sean Howard

For the last few years, a close friend has been complaining, with light touch but increasingly heavy heart, of a deep-seated creative malaise, an impasse in his search for an authentic voice and message. Among other sources, his depression can be traced to his intense and academically accomplished engagement with Wittgenstein, whose humbling exposé of the ‘language game’ – and, therewith, what my friend calls “capital-P Philosophy” – leaves him both full of admiration and “with everything – and nothing – to say”. Or, rather, with a desire to say ‘something true’ thwarted by sensitivity to the unrealizable nature of any such (language-based) project.…