Rated May 08 2009 • 1 review • painting, chinese painting • metmuseum.org
Scholar Viewing a Waterfall Ma Yuan (ca. 1190-1225)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The wild birds that brush my sleeves dance by themselves;
The lonely birds that shun my presence are too froghtened to cry.
Rated May 06 2009 • 1 review • poetry, writing, biography • nytimes.com
Here is another thing to recommend Adina Hoffman's "My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet's Life in the Palestinian Century": It is, its publisher says, the first biography of a Palestinian writer to be issued in English.
Thus Ms. Hoffman essentially had me at hello. She managed to lose me not long after that, however, by waging a sit-down strike against linear storytelling and narrative momentum. (The book takes 300 pages to bring us to where Mr. Ali publishes his first poem.) But this does not mean that Mr. Ali and his poems are unworthy of our close attention. Ms. Hoffman writes about something she calls "the Taha Effect": that is, Mr. Ali's ability, once his first book was published when he was 52 (he is now in his late 70s), to charm audiences with his plainspoken demeanor, his "granular baritone" and his catcher's mitt of a face, which one observer has likened to a George Grosz painting.
Rated May 06 2009 • 1 review • photography, blogs, magazines • blogspot.com
Wipe That Simile Off Your Aphasia
as horses as for
as purple as we go
as heartbeat as if
as silverware as it were
as onion as I can
as cherries as feared
as combustion as want
as dog collar as expected
as oboes as anyone
as umbrella as catch can
as penmanship as it gets
as narcosis as could be
as hit parade as all that
as icebox as far as I know
as fax machine as one can imagine
as cyclones as hoped
as dictionary as you like
as shadow as promised
as drinking fountain as well
as grassfire as myself
as mirror as is
as never as this
--Harryette Mullen
From Sleeping with the Dictionary by Harryette Mullen, University of California Press, 2002.
Source: Sleeping with the Dictionary (University of California Press, 2002)
Rated May 06 2009 • 1 review • painting, photography, poetry • flickr.com
In Defense of Our Overgrown Garden
Last night the apple trees shook and gave each lettuce a heart
Six hard red apples broke through the greenhouse glass and
Landed in the middle of those ever-so-slightly green leaves
That seem no mix of seeds and soil but of pastels and light and
Chalk x's mark our oaks that are supposed to be cut down
I've seen the neighbors frown when they look over the fence
And see our espalier pear trees bowing out of shape I did like that
They looked like candelabras against the wall but what's the sense
In swooning over pruning I said as much to Mrs. Jones and I swear
She threw her cane at me and walked off down the street without
It has always puzzled me that people coo over bonsai trees when
You can squint your eyes and shrink anything without much of
A struggle ensued with some starlings and the strawberry nets
So after untangling the two I took the nets off and watched birds
With red beaks fly by all morning at the window I reread your letter
About how the castles you flew over made crenellated shadows on
The water in the rainbarrel has overflowed and made a small swamp
I think the potatoes might turn out slightly damp don't worry
If there is no fog on the day you come home I will build a bonfire
So the smoke will make the cedars look the way you like them
To close I'm sorry there won't be any salad and I love you
-- Matthea Harvey
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