Forty Illusions Before Midnight Birds never fly away Fish never swim away The sun never sets We are idiots of ego The only revolutions That matter are the violent ones The ones that force us to cast off Me mine me mine The only revolutions that matter Are those that reveal All is relative All is contingent and evanescent Like the leaf that falls because She says so The earth is not the center Man is not the…
Nothing was as it seemed, when Van Gogh painted it. Roiling underneath the subject, flying above it, surrounding it, were his passions, his intensity, his flights into realms most of us could only guess at, if we can match him for moral imagination, or imagination period. With Van Gogh, a rose was not a rose was not a rose. Ray Succre writes poetry along these same lines, or conjunctions, or coincidences, with a mask or two thrown in for good…
This past October, we were blessed with a remarkable collection of Van Gogh’s letters, newly translated and complete, without censorship: Vincent van Gogh: The Letters: The Complete Illustrated and Annotated Edition (Vol. 1-6) (Hardcover) ~ Nienke Bakker (Editor), Leo Jansen (Editor), Hans Luijten (Editor) The collection contains pretty much every one of his paintings, is heavily annotated, and runs to more than 2000 pages. It will certainly revolutionize our understanding of one of the greatest and most misunderstood artists of…
Sometimes, poetry is like a mystery, like a detective story put to song. Sometimes similes and metaphors string bits of life (like notes) into a song, a symphony, or a collage of chords never heard together. The point. Yes, that’s often the point. The bridge works for visuals as well. And for tactiles. The bridges work between humans, between nature, between humans and nature and beyond. Inside, outside, vertically, horizontally, depth and foreground, finding all dimensions, incorporating disparate elements. Harmonizing….
My poem from yesterday was about many things, but chiefly about fighting the inability to write. Poems, prose, in journals. The painting above is about something else, though it ties some things together for me. Kandinsky, in this work from his Der Blaue Reiter period, was painting in part theoretically, putting theories into his paintings, arming his colors with monads of thought. Color as spirit. Spiritual color(s). Color to invoke the spiritual. And music as the bridge of bridges. “Colour…
In Medias Res There is a flurry of noise Of images and batterings As if I weather more than storms More than wild winds The flurry surrounds and confuses Distorts and narrows The field my focus My open-ended vision I’m too much a part of the world – right now Too much a swamped victim Of my own acquiescence Flattened like pictures Floating down pre-Raphaelite streams – by Douglas Pinson
There are, of course, hundreds of beautiful regions in the world. Too many to see in one lifetime. So we must pick and choose carefully. Pick and choose carefully where to visit and where to live – if we have that choice and chance. Provence is one among hundreds, but unique. Unique being a word we can apply to those hundreds of places as well. And so it goes. Thousands, if we talk about towns, villages, cities, and so on….
One of my favorite places in France is Provence. Yes, I know. It’s not like I discovered it, of course. It’s been a very popular destination for . . . well, centuries. But especially in the modern era. Popularized best, perhaps, by painters such as Paul Cezanne and Vincent Van Gogh, and more recently by writers such as Peter Mayle. I recently watched a movie of one of his novels, A Good Year, starring Marion Cotillard (Vie En Rose), Abbie…
I first discovered Imogen Heap’s glorious sweet voice while watching Zack Braff’s film, “Garden State.” Bought the soundtrack. Followed the trail from there. Heap’s music is like no other, with her surreal, ethereal, ghostly musical tones and sequences, crafted by a magically eccentric woman-child, waiting to be set free by that music. Electronica with a truly human face. Ethereality with the gaze of a beautiful child become beautiful woman who never forgot that child and can’t. Imogen Heap’s influences are…
Kafka’s not just one of my favorite writers. He’s my friend. As in, on many a dicey occasion, the thought of his work, his life, his struggles, the obstacles he overcame, kept me trudging through the mud. Interior castles, trials beyond judgment, my own hunger artist period, my own sense of the hollow . . . . It was as if he walked with me in my shoes, the shoes I borrowed from him. The shoes I then took off…