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The Sunday Poem : Nancy Simpson

June 15, 2013 in Sunday Poem, Words with 6 Comments

For 15 years poet Nancy Simpson was Resident Writer at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina

Note: This introduction is a guest post by Kathryn Stripling Byer, a writer who has also been featured as a Gwarlingo Sunday Poet. Kathryn’s essay appears in Nancy Simpson’s Living Above the Frost Line: New and Selected Poems from Carolina Wren Press (2010).

Nancy Simpson has enriched the literary community of North Carolina for over thirty years. Her work was first heralded by the late Richard Hugo when he read and celebrated her poems at the Callanwolde Literary Festival in Atlanta, shortly after she began to show her poetry around to friends and readers in the far reaches of western North Carolina. He praised her rich inner life and her ability to give expression to it as it manifested itself in her everyday life. Whether driving over the Nantahala Gorge in “Night Student,” expressing the complexity of self in “Driven into the interior,” or documenting the carnage of the first Gulf War in “Voices from the Fringe,” she brings the inner and outer worlds of her experience into a harmony that resonates like the current giving voice and shape to the mountain creeks she loves.

Living Above the Frost Line: Selected and New Poems traces the growth of a poet determined to survive despite the obstacles raised by age, mortality, and the inevitable losses that come from being alive in this world. Through her poetry she greets that half-drowned woman, harking from her Florida girlhood, who appears as her muse in “Bridge On the River Kwai, “ bearing gifts of memory and sustaining images. In return the poet gives her “a mountain, the safest place to be.” Rarely has the relationship between poet and muse been so beautifully expressed.

I met Nancy in the summer of 1978, when she invited me to read at the Clay County Library. My daughter was only a few months old, and I recall my husband walking her around the town square while I read, so that she would not disturb anyone should she begin to cry. Afterward Nancy and I stayed in close touch, sharing our poems and those of other poets we admired, as well as our desire to help generate a community of writers and readers in our mountain region. Some of her first poems were published in The Arts Journal, a monthly publication out of Asheville, for which I was Poetry Editor. Those years were time of transition for her as both poet and woman finding her way beyond the traditional roles of wife and mother. Her love for the western North Carolina landscape began to take metaphorical shape in her poetry, giving voice to the interplay between the human voice and that of the physical world around her.

After receiving her MFA degree from Warren Wilson’s low residency program, where she worked with Heather McHugh, her chapbook and full-length collection were published by State Street Press, edited by Judith Kitchen. A recipient of a North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship, Simpson has published widely in magazines ranging from The Georgia Review to Prairie Schooner, but her own work soon became secondary to promoting a literary community in the far western area of the state.

The John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina. One of Simpson’s poems, included here, explores the Cherokee origins of the name “Brasstown.” (Photo courtesy the John C. Campbell Folk School)

As a teacher in the Clay County Schools, she came to this calling instinctively, sensing the need for expression in her students’ lives. She has devoted numerous hours to mentoring both young and older writers, and finally helping to create what has become Netwest, part of the North Carolina Writers Network. Over the years, She has become the nurturer and cheerleader for countless writers in the western counties, teaching workshops, serving as Writer in Residence for the John C. Campbell Folk School, and editing two collections of work by mountain writers.

Her Selected and New Poems richly deserves the honor of being the first collection published in Carolina Wren’s Laureate Series. No one better illustrates the the gifts that poetry can offer than Nancy Simpson. She has never doubted its power to change lives and awaken our sense of wonder in the midst of the world in which we find ourselves. Brilliant writer, teacher, tireless editor, Nancy Simpson exemplifies the best in our state’s literary community.

—Kathryn Stripling Byer

Teaching Myself
How to Burn Last Year’s Leaves

If you live in a forest,
don’t burn on a windy day.
Look on the boundary oak
for the surveyor’s orange ribbon.
If it’s not dancing, if it dangles,
you can hope burning is safe.
Best, burn when rain is predicted.

Rake leaves onto the dirt driveway.
Make small leaf mounds.
Burn one or two leaf piles at a time.
Don’t let yourself think of the day
your young sons scorched the mountainside.
Do not look across the drive
where you old home place used to be.

Forget it. The cabin was dismantled,
bulldozed to the ground, buried.
Don’t think of the man who found you
burning leaves one spring and said,
Let me help you. Rake and burn
leaf piles 3 & 4, 5 & 6.

Let sudden wind frighten. Rake faster
when you hear thunder. Rake hot coals
into the gravel.
Stop only when rain
drives you back to the tool shed.
Tomorrow you will see bright green foliage
of five thousand day lilies lining your drive,
promising to bloom.

Tanfastic

At 12:17 this Sunday
he is uninhibited
in front of God and
everybody traveling
I-75 South, a man
lounging in the bed
of his red pickup truck.
He is getting his tan
the fast way, 80 mph
stretched out
on his chaise lounge,
his black bikini
drawing the sun down.
He is holding a blue
tumbler in his hand.
I can only guess
what he is drinking.
I want to make a pass,
I mean, get past him
in this god-awful traffic.
I want to see
the face of the woman
at the steering wheel
who is taking him for a ride.

I Never Knew How Blue Blueness Could Be: Maggie Nelson’s Bluets

June 12, 2013 in Books Worth Reading, Images, Words with 1 Comment

Helena Almeida, Inhabited Painting, 1975.
© Helena Almeida, courtesy Serralves Foundation Collection, Oporto, Portugal

One of the joys of Gwarlingo is meeting art lovers from around the world. Sigrun Hodne and I found each other early in Gwarlingo’s short history, and though she lives in Norway, and I in New Hampshire, I’m constantly amazed by how similar our passions are when it comes to books and art. (If you aren’t familiar with her excellent arts blog Sub Rosa, I encourage you to subscribe.)

Sigrun has studied architecture in Oxford, art history and film in Stavanger, Norway, and literature in Bergen, Norway. (She wrote her Master’s thesis on “Self and Subjectivity in Samuel Beckett’s trilogy; Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable”). She has taught aesthetics in art schools and universities and has done research in language and psychosis. She currently works as an art and literature critic and is attempting to make a living as a writer (no small feat!).

The cover of Maggie Nelson’s Bluets (Photo courtesy Kelli Anne Noftle via theoffendingadam.com)

There has been a strange serendipity with Sigrun across the miles. She will write about a particular artist, book, or subject at the same time I’m also investigating that specific topic.

So it was with Maggie Nelson’s book Bluets (Wave Books, 2009). I was late to the party with this one, but I quickly discovered why this slender volume is considered a literary masterpiece in certain circles (and a cult classic in others). Nelson’s meditation on the color blue, lost love, and depression is a brilliant, effective experiment that defies categorization. This is not only one of the best books I’ve read this year, but one of the best books I’ve read, period.

When Sigrun posted about Bluets on her blog at the very moment I was also discovering Nelson’s publication, I emailed and asked if she would be willing to write a short piece about the book. What follows is her essay, and a special excerpt from Bluets.

A special thanks to Sigrun Hodne, Maggie Nelson, and Wave Books for sharing their work.

Writer, critic, teacher, and blogger Sigrun Hodne in Norway (Photo courtesy Sigrun Hodne)

I Never Knew How Blue Blueness Could Be

by Sigrun Hodne

Lets dive in, give in, lets go where things already have gotten tricky, messy – confused, where words and meanings are bouncing off in different directions, lets have a look at fragment number fifty-one:

51. You might as well act as if objects had the colors, The Encyclopedia says. –Well, it is as you please. But what would it look like to act otherwise?

Indeed, what would it look like to act otherwise?

Maggie Nelson’s book Bluets (Wave Books, 2009) is a bastard, a hybrid, transgressing all and every genre, as they are yet known. Partly essay, partly poetry, it’s a collection of fragments, of quotations, a memoir with a hint of philosophical investigations. Bluets won’t land in any category. But let’s, for the sake of simplicity, call it a long lyrical essay.

A long lyrical essay on the color blue—blue in a public, scientific, and historical sense, but also blue in the most personal sense.

There are several plot-lines: love, pain, friendship, and loss, to mention just a few.

This is how it all begins:

1. Suppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a color. Suppose I were to speak this as though it were a confession; suppose I shredded my napkin as we spoke. It began slowly. An appreciation, an affinity. Then one day, it became more serious. Then (looking into an empty teacup, its bottom stained with thin brown excrement coiled into the shape of a sea horse) it became somehow personal.

In art-history, color has often been understood as secondary to form, as something that “fills” the form. In Nelson’s work color take on the lead role (– just as love, the color blue is not an optional supplement, an accidental add-on).

2. And so, I fell in love with a color—in this case, the color blue—as if falling under a spell, a spell I fought to stay under and get out from under, in turns.

A book about the color blue, what a peculiar idea!

13. At a job interview at a university, three men sitting across from me at a table. On my CV it says that I am currently working on a book about the color blue. I have been saying this for years without writing a word. It is, perhaps, my way of making my life feel “in progress” rather than an ash of sleeve falling off a lit cigarette. One of the men asks Why blue? People ask me this question often. I never know how to respond. We don’t get to choose what or whom we love, I want to say. We just don’t get to choose.

Let’s go back to where we started, repeating our initial question: “… what would it look like to act otherwise?”

53. “We mainly suppose the experiential quality to be an intrinsic quality of the physical object” —this is the so-called systematic illusion of color. Perhaps it is also that of love. But I am not willing to go there—not just yet. I believed in you.

“Acting otherwise,” rejecting the systematic illusion of color is, I believe, to abandon a very central social norm: an understanding of the world as a place looking in a certain way – the same way – for each and every one of us. Systematic illusions are the basis of our impression that we share an external reality; it’s the place we meet and interconnect. Systematic illusions make us believe in a common world. ‘Acting otherwise’ is to reject common sense, renouncing the company of humans, and thereby subjecting oneself to alienation and solitude. The extreme consequence of rejecting the systematic illusions of humanity is finally ostracization, solipsism—

—falling silent.

“… But I am not willing to go there—not just yet….”

Bluets, An Excerpt

by Maggie Nelson

14. I have enjoyed telling people that I am writing a book

about blue without actually doing it. Mosty what happens

in such cases is that people give you stories or leads

or gifts, and then you can play with these things instead

of with words. Over the past decade I have been given

blue inks, paintings, postcards, dyes, bracelets, rocks,

precious stones, watercolors, pigments, paperweights,

goblets, and candies. I have been introduced to a man

who had one of his front teeth replaced with lapis lazuli,

solely because he loved the stone, and to another who

worships blue so devoudy that he refuses to eat blue food

and grows only blue and white flowers in his garden,

which surrounds the blue ex-cathedral in which he lives.

I have met a man who is the primary grower of organic indigo

in the world, and another who sings Joni Mitchell’s

Blue in heartbreaking drag, and another with the face of a

derelict whose eyes literally leaked blue, and I called this

one the prince of blue, which was, in fact, his name.

15. I think of these people as my blue correspondents,

whose job it is to send me blue reports from the field.

The Sunday Poem : Gregory Orr

June 7, 2013 in Sunday Poem, Words with 4 Comments

Poet Gregory Orr reading at the 2012 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

With his new book, River Inside the River: Poems, Gregory Orr set a high bar for himself. His intention: to write three lengthy pieces that combine the intensity of lyric poetry with the thematic scope of narrative and myth. Fortunately, Orr’s literary talent and personal experience make him the ideal poet to realize such an ambitious project.

“I believe in poetry as a way of surviving the emotional chaos, spiritual confusions, and traumatic events that come with being alive,” Orr once told NPR.

The power of the written word has been the central theme in Gregory Orr’s work. In his book Poetry as Survival, he describes the delicate relationship between text and reader:

“Some readers have a higher threshold for disorder and need more disordering in the poems they read. Others have a lower threshold and need a larger proportion of order to disorder in the poems that give them pleasure or that resonate meaningfully with their own experiences. The essential point is that for a poem to move us it must bring us near our own threshold. We must feel genuinely threatened or destabilized by the poem’s vision of disordering, even as we are simultaneously reassured and convinced by its orderings.”

With River Inside the River Orr takes this philosophical position one step further by situating his own poetry and essays within a larger literary tradition, a chain of influence that includes the Bible, Milton’s Paradise Lost, William Blake’s prophetic poems, Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale,” and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.

Given that Orr’s book focuses on weighty themes like loss, redemption, death, and free will, it was a surprise to find so much wit in these poems. The simplicity of form and language puts Orr’s sense of humor, as well as his musicality, on center stage. Much like the Bible itself, River Inside the River is an epic blending of philosophy, poetry, and narrative.

The first sequence, “Eden and After,” is Orr’s retelling of Adam and Eve and their banishment from the Garden of Eden. (This is my favorite section of the book, and I’ve included an excerpt from “Eden and After” below.)

Orr has re-imagined the Biblical story as a moving and humorous tale of longing, discovery, and finally, acceptance. The flawless Eden is not enough for Orr’s Adam and Eve. It’s words that set Adam and Eve on “Their own path…Like a wound / Worn in the earth / By feet repeating— / Always to the garden’s edge.” In Orr’s universe, perfection and eternal life are not sufficient. It is impermanence, the fragility of nature, love, and life itself, that heightens awareness and creates larger meaning. Joy and suffering are inextricably linked.

The poems are a meditation not only on worldly imperfection, but also on the capacity of language to offer its own form of salvation. River Inside the River suggests a parallel between a poet creating poetry, God creating the world, and Adam creating names for all of the animals. The power of words and the power of creation are one in the same, as described in John 1:1-4:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

Some critics have argued that language is reductive and possesses the power to “kill” the experience, the person, or the object being “captured” in text. But Orr understands that words, poetry in particular, also have the power to give life, not only to the author, but to the reader and to the person or experience being described. Language has the power to both heal and commemorate. Reading River Inside the River it’s easy to imagine Orr breathing life into his words, much like God breathing life into the dust of the ground when he created Adam in Genesis.

Here is Orr talking about experimental poetry and “the covenant between the word and the world” in a recent interview with Mary Ellen Redmond for The Drunken Boat:

It’s as if there are always two things in every word. One of them is the music of the sound, and the other is some part of the word that wants to go towards something else in the world or something inside us. It doesn’t work with abstract nouns, but it certainly works with “clover” and “grass” and “maple” and “sparrow….”

Gregory Orr (Photo by Tricia Orr)

Whitman has this wonderful poem where he talks about a “a noiseless, patient spider.” And the spider is there all alone on a promontory and it sends out from itself “filament, filament, filament” to connect up to things. It’s not a web-building spider; it’s the kind that sends out the single threads. And Whitman says: That’s me. I am all alone like an isolated spider unless I can send out these filaments of language to connect me to things. To bring about that connection which is the basis of all meaning. Well, that’s what language does.

If you say, oh language is a game. Words are just music. Syntax is a joke. Communication: who needs it? Let’s have fun. Let’s play with words. Of course, play is an important part of poetry. But to turn it all into play, to turn it all into sounds and to give up this aspiration to connect meaningfully to the physical world, to the past or to objects and people seems to me solipsistic, narcissistic, [and] nihilistic. Now, you can do all those things and have fun, but ultimately it seems to be the end of meaning….

So, at that point, I got off the contemporary linguistics train, the experimentalist train….As a poet and person, I come from a place where trauma is a primary experience, so when any theory announces that the world doesn’t mean anything, I’m thinking—I already knew that. I knew that when I killed my younger brother in a hunting accident when I was twelve. I knew that when my mother died overnight when I was fourteen. That’s when I realized that the world doesn’t mean anything. That it’s filled with horror and violence, an arbitrary meaninglessness. So meaninglessness doesn’t have any attraction for me. In fact, it’s the name of the horror. It’s the name of isolation. It’s the name of everything that made life unbearable for me when I was a young person starting at the time of my brother’s death and not changing until I discovered writing poetry in my last year in high school.

At first, writing for me, as it is for many of us, was an outpouring of emotion in language onto the page. I had no ability to shape that language, no clue that the bringing of form and coherence would be gratifying to me, would bring me back toward the world of meaning. But from the outset, I understood that one function of language is to be expressive of what a self feels, sees, thinks, remembers. From the outset, I was excited to feel I could write about what I saw; write about I felt. I couldn’t make much sense of the world at that point, but merely turning the world into word was exhilarating to me.

“Eden and After” ends with Adam and Eve’s realization that they must create a new home for themselves:

No longer could
They sleep beneath
The trees, trusting
Branches not to break.

It was a habitation
They had to make:
Four walls and a roof—
A place to live,
A world inside the world.

This is the perfect segue to the next section of the book,” The City of Poetry,” in which Orr creates a visionary metropolis where “every poem is a house, and every house is a poem.” In this part of River Inside the River, Orr takes us on a virtual tour of poetics, imagining the the poets Blake, Whitman, and Rimbaud as figures in an imaginary landscape.

Orr wanders about this landscape too, his life experiences creating constructions of significance, which he explores both inside and out. While Orr expresses a deep empathy for Adam and Eve in “Eden and After,” his personal biography becomes more integral to the poems in section two of River Inside the River.

Eighteen and a volunteer
In the Movement,
I was kidnapped at gunpoint
In rural Alabama
And imprisoned
In a solitary cell
In a murderous town.
Oddly,
After the beatings and threats,
They let me keep a book of Keats.

I was sick and scared. It seemed
Likely I would die there.

I read his nightingale ode–
How he rose above his woes.

The poem was my ladder:
Rungs and lifts of escape.

Poet Gregory Orr (Photo courtesy the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation)

Once again, it is Orr’s own relationship to language that he places under the knife…

Until I heard Neruda read
His poems aloud,
I never even knew
I could fly
To the city of poems.

He had arrived
That day on a plane
For his first visit
To Manhattan, the city
Of Whitman, one of his heroes.

“Vienes volando,” he intoned—
“You come flying”—
Refrain from an elegy
In which he summoned
A friend’s spirit over the Andes.

I stood in the crowded room
And remembered my own loved dead.

The Sunday Poem : Hyesim Translated by Ian Haight & T’ae-yong Ho

June 1, 2013 in Sunday Poem, Words with 0 Comments

Chin’gak Kuksa Hyesim was the first Zen Master dedicated to poetry in Korea. As translator Ian Haight explains in his introduction to Magnolia and Lotus: Selected Poems of Hyesim (White Pine Press, 2012), the tradition of Zen Buddhist poetry begins with his writing.

Translating poetry by a revered monk of Korean antiquity has its challenges. Very little is known about Hyesim’s life as a recluse. We do know that he opted to study Confucianism and Buddhism over pursuing a career, which suggests that he came from a family of good social position. After only three years of studying under the influential monk Pojo Kusa Chinul, he was named a Master.

When Master Chinul died five years later in 1210, Hyesim was made Chief Abbot by Royal Order. He received the title Zen Master and Grand Zen Master from King Kojong, and was given a golden robe by the general of the king’s army, an honor bestowed on only the most highly respected monks.

Magnolia and Lotus is drawn from the only known book of Hyseim’s poetry, Poems by Muuija, a transcript kept in the archives of the University of Kumasawa in Japan. Translators Ian Haight and T’ae-Yong Ho worked from an original Chinese manuscript, also using Korean language scholarship and translations for reference and context.

The book is an important text in Korean letters. It is only the second collection of poetry by a Buddhist Master in Korea, and the poems, though often about Buddhism, are not only about this theme. Hyesim also writes about friendship, departure, and what it means to be Chief Abbot at a temple. “One can easily find a common thread of humanity throughout Hyesim’s writing,” explains Haight.

Here is the title poem from the collection…

Magnolia, the Lotus of Trees

Observing leaves: at first, I doubt they are persimmon—
looking at the blossoms, I doubt they are lotus.
How fortunate there are no fixed forms—
this tree has no comparison.

“I like this poem for a number of reasons and, at the translator’s ever-present risk of presumption, believe it captures the voice of Hyesim,” says Haight.

There resides so much Buddhism in these four simple lines: the non-judgmental doubting of what is observed, and how shifting perspective reveals different possibilities in assumptions; the idea of the blossoms themselves—both lotus flowers and magnolias as representations of wisdom, beauty, truth, and enlightenment; the appreciative acceptance of not knowing what a flower is because its fixed form cannot be determined, and how this understanding could be applied to everything comprehended by the mind; finally, a penetrating recognition: that there is nothing to compare with the singularity of what is observed—everything under the sun has uniqueness. A train of thought that is simultaneously paradoxical and circular couched in deceptive simplicity—yes, this poem feels very Buddhist. The poems in this collection present a world observed with reverence and admiration by a monk who lived more than 700 years ago. It feels natural to identify the collection as a unified voice of Hyesim.

“Plantain” is one of my favorite poems in Magnolia & Lotus and is a good example of how Hyesim uses nature to contemplate the ideal. The simplicity of this poem avoids sentimentality in favor of expressing a deeper truth: that art can’t always improve upon reality. Certain things, such as plantains, are perfect just as they are.

In other pieces, the poet focuses on various objects. Hyesim believed that an individual who was free of illusion could perceive the beauty, truth, and the abstract qualities of an object through poems that prompted clarity and understanding.

Hyesim’s writing embraces paradox, as well—paradox ”between large and small, material reality and emptiness, nothingness and fullness, and existence and non-existence.”

His language also works on multiple levels. According to Haight, the description of “boiling tea,” to give one example, can also be seen as a metaphor for meditation.

“The poems in this book are built around an imagined life of Hyesim and his purpose for writing poems,” says Haight.

What did Hyesim experience in meditation? How did his wisdom grow with progressive enlightenment? What did he place importance on in life; as a monk; as an early founder of Korea’s largest Buddhist sect, the Chogye Order? If he eventually relinquished this position, what did he then do? What were his thoughts in his final years? Each of the translated poems, attentive to the nuances of Hyesim’s Buddhist and Confucian background as well as the landscape of Korea, posits the point of view of Hyesim, his voice, and his time. My hope is that this collection—utilizing metaphor, rhythmic language and imagery—invites a reader into relaxed companionship with Hyesim and his life.

Bridging the gap of time and culture can make it challenging to understand all of the layers of meaning contained in these short poems, and yet there is much to appreciate about the language, simplicity, and ideas in these works.

At the center of Hyesim’s poetry is the notion of awareness. Language, sound, nature, art, and the acknowledgement of life’s paradoxes can be aids to clarity and human consciousness. The Buddhist idea of letting go of attachments and seeing the world as it truly is is the central theme in Hyesim’s writing. “Their bedrock is thusness,” writes the poet Jane Hirshfield, “their images’ beauty is pellucid and new, their view without limit.” I agree with writer Chase Twichell: “there’s not a single opaque word in the book.” These poems “might have been written yesterday or tomorrow, and anywhere.”

Because the clearing of the mind was of central importance to Hyesim, it seems ridiculous to over-intellectualize or struggle too much with the cultural divide while reading. As Haight himself argues, out of respect for awareness, it is probably best to let these poems speak for themselves.

Songgwangsa Temple in Korea where Chin’gak Kuksa Hyesim became Abbot in 1208.

Plantain

A plantain is an unlit
green candle of beeswax

the spread leaves, a vernal coat’s sleeves
desiring to dance.

I see this image in my intoxicated eyes
though the plantain itself

is better
than my comparisons.

Singing Moon

Clouds meander trails of air above—
light briefly shines

as there is no lake, my single moon
recedes from view.

Do not dismiss the moon tonight
just because you believe

it will set in the west, rise again tomorrow
in the east.

The Sunday Poem : James Crews

May 18, 2013 in Sunday Poem, Words with 2 Comments

Writer James Crews (photo courtesy the author)

James Crews’ latest collection, The Book of What Stays, is full of evocative landscapes and secret lives. There is the old woman in Chernobyl who refuses to leave her home and the bent, one-eyed swallows. There is ice fishing with Patsy Cline and a pack of Coors. There is “the purpling, churning CGI sky” over I-80 out West. There is both a farmer’s wife, and an arsonist’s wife. Crews’ poems have a silent power that sneaks up on you.

But it was his series of poems about the Cuban-born visual artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres that left the deepest impression the first time I read The Book of What Stays.

In my experience, poetry about visual art rarely succeeds, perhaps because it is difficult for text to compete with the original work of art. (Poet and art critic John Yau is the rare exception—a writer who can use visual art as a jumping off point to make something original and brilliant).

Crews’ series on Gonzalez-Torres succeeds because it inhabits the life and work of the artist and his partner Ross, who died of AIDS in 1991. In other words, the poems are an exercise in both empathy and imagination.

The 20 poems that comprise One Hundred Small Yellow Envelopes are a “speculative narrative.” “They have been imagined from the life and art of Felix Gonzalez-Torres and are not meant to be strictly biographical,” James explained to me via email.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres and cat Maria, New York, New York, August 3, 1995. (Photo by John Jonas Gruen via jonno.com)

Crews’ poems actually add to our understanding of Gonzalez-Torres and his work. After all, biography, criticism, and the art itself are simply facets of a larger story. Crews’ poems flesh out sides of Gonzalez-Torres that might have remained hidden were it not for this imaginative narrative.

Reading Crews’ book reminded me of a conversation I had recently with an artist friend who lived in New York through the 80s, and is still there today. “You have no idea how horrific the AIDS epidemic was,” he told me. “There were funerals every week. I lost so many friends. New York became a city of ghosts, and it still is in many ways.”

One Hundred Small Yellow Envelopes, which makes up the heart of The Book of What Stays, taps into this sense of grief and loss, much like the art of Gonzalez-Torres. But neither artist morbidly fixates on death. Instead, both Crews and Gonzalez-Torres focus on the temporal nature of life—it’s beauty and it’s brevity.

I saw Gonzalez-Torres’ piece Untitled (Placebo) at MoMA last year and immediately fell in love with the giant rectangular carpet of silver candy. Gonzalez-Torres made a number of these works comprised of 335 pounds of candy wrapped in silver paper. Many museum-goers are shocked to learn that the artist intended for them to remove a piece of candy from the installation.

Feliz Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Placebo), 1991. Candies individually wrapped in silver cellophane (endless supply). (Photo taken at MoMA in New York City, 2012 by Michelle Aldredge)

Feliz Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Placebo), detail, 1991. Candies individually wrapped in silver cellophane (endless supply). (Photo taken at MoMA in New York City, 2012 by Michelle Aldredge)

Many of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ works are temporal in nature. In this 1991 untitled piece, viewers are encouraged to take a page of the art work with them. (Photo source unknown)

Gonzalez-Torres also produced a series of works printed on giant stacks of paper. Again, viewers are meant to take a piece of the artwork with them. The artist’s instructions for both pieces refer to “an endless supply” of candy and paper. What makes these installations so poignant and powerful is that they are simultaneously finite and infinite. They are constantly morphing and changing as museum goers interact with them, but they can also be restored to an original state. It is a powerful metaphor for the fleeting nature of life. And it is this sense of impermanence that James Crews has captured so beautifully in his collection.

Here are six works from the One Hundred Small Yellow Envelopes series, most in the imagined voice of Felix Gonzalez-Torres (note that “Letter to Felix” is in the voice of his partner Ross). As James explains in the notes section of his book, two monographs, one edited by William S. Bartman and the other by Julie Ault, were the primary inspiration for the series, as were certain pieces of visual art, mostly by Gonzalez-Torres himself.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Golden), 1995. Plastic beads and metal rod, variable dimensions. (Photo by Thorsten Monschein © The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York)

Felix Gonzales Torres, Untitled (Placebo – Landscape – for Roni) detail, 1993,
Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York (Photo by Andre Morain © The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation)

The one exception is the first poem (Gold Field), which conjures the close friendship and artistic collaboration between Gonzalez-Torres and Roni Horn. John Curcio explains their connection further:

Gonzalez-Torres first became acquainted with Horn’s Forms from the Gold Field during her 1990 solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. Gonzalez-Torres was thoroughly impressed by the simplicity and beauty of the work and shared the impact that the work made on him when the two artists met in 1993. As a gesture to their newfound friendship and shared sensibility, Horn sent him a square of gold foil just a few days after they first met. Being struck by the gesture, he created Untitled (Placebo – Landscape – for Roni) (1993), an endlessly replaceable candy spill of gold cellophane–wrapped sweets.

Whenever a poem was inspired by a specific piece of art by Gonzalez-Torres, a corresponding photograph is included below the poem. The poems are meant to stand on their own (and do), but the photos may help you flesh out your understanding.

It’s important to remember, however, that Crews is not attempting to reduce or translate Gonzalez-Torres’ art into language. Instead, he is illuminating it, like someone turning on a light in a dark room, Crews’ speculative narrative reveals things we might never have seen without this elucidation.

But perhaps the best insight about poetry, life, and art comes from Crews himself in his poem “An Unexpected Warm Day in Wisconsin”: “Choose your views,” Crews insightfully observes, “or they will choose you.”

A special thanks to artist Corwin Levi for introducing me to the work of James Crews. It’s been a pleasure.

(The Gold Field)

Wandering through the museum today, Ross and I came upon a piece called The Gold Field, a slice of a slice of sunlight installed in its own white room. We memorized it, this blanket made of real gold foil, still creased as if from its last body. It was the rectangle of yellow when Ross pulled up the shade this morning. Was each small plot of scorched grass at the cemetery in San Juan where my mother brought me each month. Never step there, she said once, pointing at my foot that had come to rest on a pile of fresh dirt.

The sculpture didn’t need words. It lifted us above the jobs, the small rented rooms, the small minds. I leaned in, as close as I could get without touching it just to be near its heat. I put my hand on his shoulder, wanted to curl up with him right there on the floor and rest. Every sunrise and sunset from now on, I thought, will spread this field of golden light across the bed as we wake up together.

Roni Horn, Gold Mats, Paired—for Ross and Felix, 1994–95. Gold, edition number three of three 49 x 60 x .0008 in. each. Gift of Muriel Kallis Newman in honor of James Cuno. (Image © 1995 Roni Horn courtesy the Art Institute of Chicago)

The Sunday Poem : Diane Lockward

May 11, 2013 in Sunday Poem, Words with 2 Comments

Poet Diane Lockward of West Caldwell, New Jersey, discusses her work at Chatham High School (Photo by Stephen Briggs)

Diane Lockward’s latest collection of poetry, Temptation by Water, is a book of dualities. These closely observed poems, which are largely free verse, are both witty and fierce and explore themes like domesticity and sensuality, grief and humor, aging and reawakening.

As Marjorie Tesser writes in the Harvard Review, “the theme of this book, set out in the epigraph and title poem, is temptation. In the first poems, desire has led to disaster. In ‘Imploded,’ the heart is compared to a destroyed building, ‘Just the soft mushroom of dust and ash, / the quiet collapse inside.’ Soon, the sources of hurt and disappointment become apparent: a lover who proved more flash than substance, a beloved child whose addictions have caused pain, a parent who is aging.”

“There are many temptations in these pages,” writes Barbara Daniels, “including a too-expensive sexy red dress and disturbing, desirable men, one of whom is so dangerous he comes with a warning label: “all trans fats and palm oil,” “a four-hour erection,” “the Mickey Finn of obsessions” (“Side Effects”).

Much has been lost and broken in the world of these poems, including a family that cannot be mended despite a repair crew that comes in to sew a woman’s mouth shut and teach her son how to shoot, and most tellingly, the spouse or lover who leaves despite prayers for a miracle. Lockward forces readers to look when they might not want to—at terrifying dreams, poisoned starlings plummeting from the sky, and the rosy anus of a beloved infant, “the lilliputian donut hole, / the dark star puckered like a kiss” (“It Runs This Deep”). She gazes unblinkingly at the bleeding leg of a young raccoon, young neighbors passionately tangled in each other’s arms, and dying butterflies captured for a science project. If a kill jar and a pin through the thorax of a butterfly are necessary, so be it, Lockward implies.

Here are four of my favorite poems from Lockward’s collection.

Enjoy your Sunday and happy birthday to Diane, whose birthday is Wednesday, May 15th!

Diane Lockward

Implosion

Today an abandoned power plant in Tampa.
Beautiful, really, the way the building fell in
on itself, enveloped in a plume of smoke,
bricks tumbling like disaster in slow motion.

Convergence of math and physics,
this fine art of blasting.

Not one person hurt by flying debris,
epitomic destruction of what’s not needed—

like the small building of the heart,
its pumping machine grown idle,
furnace snuffed, the years of vacancy.
Grief, a vagrant huddled in the corridor.
Brick edifice fragile as shells.

Comes the condemnation, the inrush of air,
the structural blowdown.

This is the way a heart melts.
No fire, no flames, no heat.
Just the soft mushroom of dust and ash,
the quiet collapse inside.

The Sunday Poem : Kate Kingston

May 4, 2013 in Sunday Poem, Words with 1 Comment

Writer Kate Kingston lives in Trinidad, Colorado (Photo by Ron Thompson)

I knew I was going to like the poet Kate Kingston the minute she shared this story during our first dinner together at Brush Creek Ranch in Wyoming:

“When my youngest son was a teenager, he told me me, ‘No one over thirty can snowboard.’ I said, ‘Do you want to make a bet?’ We did. I won. I was in my forties, and by the time I was fifty I gave up skiing and have been snowboarding ever since. Why? It’s more poetic. More in tune with the mountain.”

I met Kate in April at Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts where we were both writers in residence for a month. Kate is not only a talented poet, but she also has a zest for life that is contagious. She is always up for an adventure, whether it’s snowboarding, skiing, riding horses, traveling to Spain or Mexico, or teaching Spanish to a room of rowdy high school students. We were hard-pressed to keep up with Kate’s bottomless well of energy.

Kate Kingston during her residency at Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts in Saratoga, Wyoming. A small-world coincidence: the cowboy who took us riding turned out to be a former high school student of Kate’s from Colorado. (Photo courtesy Kate Kingston)

Playfulness is an essential part of the creative process. In order to work well, we must also play well, as our residency at Brush Creek continually reminded us. (My own creative work always flourished after a long hike or a game of basketball.)

The sense of wonder and freedom we once knew as a child can be hard to rediscover. Playfulness is literally schooled out of us. Physical education and the arts are the first things to go when education funding is cut. And as adults, we wear our busy schedules like a badge of honor, as though the fullness of our calendar has a direct correlation to our own self worth.

But as artists, we must play in order to survive. Without it, there can be no receptivity, empathy, or happy accidents during the creative process. Play puts us in a state of readiness for the act of making our best work. I thought of this each time I saw Kate Kingston cross-country ski by my studio window. What may look like “goofing off” to an outsider is actually a critical part of the creative process. The boundary between life and art is really non-existent. Kate’s gliding through snow beside the gushing creek was its own form of poetry.

Michelle riding a horse during her residency at Brush Creek Ranch in Wyoming. The hat was on loan from Sunday Poet Kate Kingston! (Photo by Eun Young Lee)

Michelle riding a horse during her residency at Brush Creek Ranch in Wyoming. The hat was on loan from Kate! (Photo by Eun Young Lee)

Kate reading her poems to the other artists in residence during her open studio at Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts. Composer Eun Young Lee looks on. (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

One snowy night during her open studio, Kate revealed more details about her writing process. So many people think that poems just appear, fully formed, she said, but they actually require a lot of gestation, work, and revision (as well as play). Stacks of paperback journals covered a table in Kate’s studio. These notebooks, where she records daily encounters, observations, and thoughts, serve as inspiration for her poetry. Kate read a sample page from her journal—a description of an afternoon spent skiing in Colorado. The prose was vigorous, astute, and surprisingly eloquent for a journal entry.

Many writers use daily journals and diaries as inspiration for their prose and poetry. (The writer David Sedaris has been keeping a diary obsessively since 1977 and has described its importance to his own writing process: “That’s how I start the day — by writing about the day before,” he recently told Fresh Air’s Terry Gross.) Like Sedaris, Kate also begins each day with free writing.

The notebook excerpt Kate read to us that night contained the seeds of future poems; already she was making creative connections and recording scenes with language and imagery that were original and unexpected.

This process has its advantages—it allows an artist to capture a moment while the experience is still fresh and unfiltered. It is awareness in a raw state, before the critical mind can interfere. When a writer like Kingston or Sedaris returns to those journal pages days, weeks, even months later, there will be a sense of distance between the writer and the words on the page (a writer needs distance as much as freshness, after all). Kate’s writing process creates a special convergence between raw experience, intellect, critical judgment, and intuition.

One snowy night during her open studio, Kate revealed more details about her writing process. This is one of the journals where she records daily encounters, observations, and thoughts, which serve as inspiration for her poetry (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

Kate uses a journal like this one to record her daily encounters, observations, and thoughts, which serve as inspiration for her poetry (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

Originally from Wisconsin, Kate has called Colorado home for many years now, and her work resonates with landscapes, stories, and images from the American West. Her adopted home suits her, for she brings an outsider’s eye to the lives of Native Americans, Hispanic women, mothers, daughters, bullfighters, and hardscrabble pioneer women. Spain and Mexico also feature prominently in her work, as does her love for the Spanish language.

Wyoming is like no other place I’ve been: the big sky, the snow-blindness, the antelope and elk, the desolate state highways that close for days on end when snow and wind turn roads into deathtraps for truck drivers. New Englanders have a reputation for self-sufficiency and independence, but until you’ve stood in the middle of a desolate Wyoming prairie with the biting, icy wind freezing your face and hands, you can’t imagine the courage and self-reliance those early Western settlers possessed.

It is observations like these that Kingston captures beautifully in her writing. Kate’s poems vibrate with history, but also future possibilities. She understands that awareness is everything in artistic practice, just as it is in daily life. To inhabit the lives of others through imagination is one of poetry’s special traits, and as readers, we’re privileged to experience the world through the eyes of Kate Kingston.

For today’s Sunday Poem feature, I have five poems from Kate’s latest collection, Shaking the Kaleidoscope (Lost Horse Press, 2012), to share.

Enjoy your Sunday.

The artists in residence at Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts in Saratoga, Wyoming. From left to right: Visual artist Roger Feldman, composer Jeffrey Roberts, painter Anne Connell, poet Kate Kingston, interdisciplinary artist Corwin Levi, writer Michelle Aldredge, and composer Eun Young Lee (Photo by Beth Nelson)

The artists in residence at Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts in April of 2013. From left to right: Visual artist Roger Feldman, composer Jeffrey Roberts, painter Anne Connell, poet Kate Kingston, interdisciplinary artist Corwin Levi, writer Michelle Aldredge, composer Eun Young Lee, and painter Sarah Fagan (Photo by Beth Nelson)

The main entrance to Brush Creek Ranch in Wyoming (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

Shaking the Kaleidoscope

I cannot recall violence,
only cigar smoke
and the ruined air of traffic,
exhaust
filling my nostrils, cannot
recall pistachios,
the way the shell cracks
between my teeth,
or myself dropping
from a metal
bar chipping my front
tooth on happiness,
the stain of blood in sand,
nothing like the matador
gored in the groin,
so that my lament rises
up next to Lorca
and smells of wet ashes.

I cannot recall the sound
of the trolley, its chime
diminished by cathedral bells
nor the prints my knees
left in sand when my mother
lifted me to the car,
cannot recall the taste of honey
nor the voice of the vendor
selling split melons,
nothing like the pigeon,
guttural warble echoing inside
the jojoba, iridescent neck
collecting sunlight, not unlike
this street woman asking
me for pesetas, her shoes
as silent as the voice
that refuses. Not violence
to refuse a woman a handful
of coins for her story
spelled out in the sad leather
of her everyday shoes.

I cannot recall violence,
but one morning my son’s face
turned blue. I forced
my own breath into his lungs,
cannot recall the sound of waves
claiming shore or the way
his feet toed-in, only the cadence
of silence, nothing like
the chain of mountain peaks
suffering from lack of rain.
I cannot recall the way a knife
slices coconut into quarter-moon
wedges, cannot recall cleats
biting into cobblestone, nor the bull
lifting his horns to the groin,
the matador spilling onto sand,
nothing like the pomegranate
or the blue face of a child
when his lungs will not pull air,
nothing like exhaust filling
my nostrils or pesetas
dropping into an open palm.

I cannot recall the taste
on my tongue when I was saved
by the skin-of-my-teeth, nothing
like a-nick-in-time, the sharp
rasp of tooth against metal
punctuating sand with red, nothing
like the matador lighting his cigar,
the infirmary bed vibrating
under his weight, nothing like
the word Olé etched in sand as bells
shake the sky from its reverie
of white distance, nothing like
the dog with no collar sniffing
my left foot, the dog who stole
the eyes of the beggar woman. Pesetas
are not like violence, they make no
sound unless you drop them
into a cup, nothing like the girl pulling
a balloon by the string. Her father
calls, Marí, ven aquí, and the balloon
rises to the cathedral spire.

I cannot recall violence,
how it wears a red hat and stands
on the corner selling news,
lives on the beach in corrugated
cardboard, changes its name
to Passion and stays out
long after midnight, cannot recall
violence, but by the crack
of my teeth on metal, I knew
the world resonated with chipped
porcelain, that I would go crazy,
have fun with it, shake it up,
and return to the sound of cathedral
bells slicing sky into bite size
pieces, nothing like the woman
on the corner of Canal and Recreo
peeling mangos into ripe moons
that resonate on my tongue.

The Sunday Poem : Christine Shan Shan Hou & Audra Wolowiec’s Concrete Sound

April 21, 2013 in Images, Sunday Poem, Words with 0 Comments

Concrete Sound (Photos courtesy Audra Wolowiec)

Last year Gwarlingo readers responded enthusiastically to Mary Ruefle and Jen Bervin’s erasure poems. Today’s Sunday Poem features another unique project that defies categorization—a collaboration between interdisciplinary artist Audra Wolowiec and poet, critic, and artist Christine Shan Shan Hou.

In conjunction with her one-person exhibition, Concrete Sound, at Norte Maar Gallery (shown below), Wolowiec worked with Hou to create a publication that is an extension of her installation. The limited-edition artist book, also called Concrete Sound, is based on a series of email exchanges of images and text between Wolowiec and Hou over the course of a month.

The result is a beautiful, handmade book that explores the idea of call and response, as well as other sound-related themes, such as deep listening and interpersonal communication. The hand-stitched volume uses collage and vellum to great effect. The transparent pages create not only layers of text, but also layers of meaning.

“Do we want concrete?” Hou writes in the unconventional introduction, printed on a single folded page, “As if uncertainty looms unconventionally like a black skirt in the corner. Sound waves its left hand amongst tremors. The women in search of an echo may unhook themselves from the mirror…Can personal history be detached from the body?”

The limited-edition artist book, Concrete Sound, is based on a series of email exchanges of images and text between Wolowiec and Hou over the course of a month and is an extension of Wolowiec’s installation by the same name. (Photo courtesy Audra Wolowiec)

Based on acoustic foam used in anechoic chambers, Audra Wolowiec’s installation, Concrete Sound, is etymologically linked to language as explored through concrete poetry and the role it played in early communication devices. On the coasts of England, large cement domes called ‘acoustic mirrors’ once used to detect sounds from oncoming troops, now lay dormant as reminders of the tactile nature of analog technology. (Photo courtesy Norte Maar Gallery)

Christine Shan Shan Hou reading from Concrete Sound at Norte Maar Gallery in 2011. (Photo courtesy the Norte Maar Gallery blog)

10 remaining copies of Concrete Sound are available for purchase from the authors. (Photo courtesy Audra Wolowiec)

The last 10 copies of Concrete Sound are available for purchase from the authors. (Photo courtesy Audra Wolowiec)

To better showcase Concrete Sound, I’ve made a special page on the Gwarlingo website with full-screen scans from the book. This will allow you to read the poems and view the pages in more detail.

Audra and Christine have also created a video that will give Gwarlingo readers a better sense of the project and it’s unusual features, like its vellum pages, photographs, and collages.

You’ll notice that certain text and poems appear lighter than others as a result of being viewed beneath the transparent vellum. Such subtleties don’t translate digitally, but 10 lucky Gwarlingo readers can purchase the last copies of this limited-edition book directly from the artists. (Note: The first edition of Concrete Sound has sold out, but Christine and Audra have just issued a second edition of the book, now available for purchase! The cost is $25 and includes domestic shipping. International shipping is an extra $5.) Click the PayPal button below to purchase your own copy of Concrete Sound…

About Christine Shan Shan Hou

Christine Hou

Christine Shan Shan Hou is a poet, critic, and artist living in Brooklyn, New York. Publications include Accumulations (Publication Studio, 2010) and Concrete Sound (2011), a collaborative artists’ book with Audra Wolowiec. Additional poems appear in Weekday, EOAGH, Critical Correspondence, Bone Bouquet, and Belladonna #148. Her awards include The Flow Chart Foundation/The Academy for American Poets and the Zora Neale Hurston Scholarship. Her criticism has been published in The Brooklyn Rail, The Performance Club, Hyperallergic Weekend, IDIOM, and Fake Pretty. For more information about Christine and her work, please visit her website.

About Audra Wolowiec

Audra Wolowiec (Photo by Katarina Hybenova)

Audra Wolowiec is an interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York, whose work oscillates between sculpture, sound, text and performance. She received an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and has shown work at Norte Maar, Magnan-Metz, and Art in General. Her work has been featured in The Brooklyn Rail, textsound, and Thresholds (MIT Dept of Architecture). She currently teaches at Parsons in the Art, Media and Technology Department. For more information about Audra and her work, please visit her website.

View the video and read full screen-excerpts from Concrete Sound here.

The Sunday Poem : Mari L’Esperance

April 13, 2013 in Sunday Poem, Words with 1 Comment

Mari L’Esperance (Photo by Martin Takigawa)

“My hope is that my readers approach a poem – any poem – in order to be transformed in some way,” says Sunday Poet Mari L’Esperance. “Not dramatically, but to feel by the end of the poem as though something has shifted for them internally so that they then perceive themselves and the world a bit differently. That’s what I want as a reader: to be changed by a poem.”

Mari’s most recent collection, The Darkened Temple, was awarded a Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. The collection explores a landscape of loss—loss that is both personal and political. There is war, displacement, illness, imprisonment, violence, and a mother who has disappeared without a trace, but there is also redemption in these straightforward, lyric poems.

“I’m essentially a lyric poet,” L’Esperance explained in an interview with Ashlie Kauffman, and it’s the form that most appeals to me in the work of others. The form allows for an intense concentration of sense, sound, and image, as well as the ability to make leaps in the same that don’t feel as possible in other, more expansive forms.”

L’Esperance’s mother vanished in 1995 leaving no clues to her whereabouts. Some of the strongest poems in The Darkened Temple explore the mourning and trauma of losing a loved one under such strange and mysterious circumstances.

“The central theme, which I believe is fairly obvious, is the disappearance of my mother (when I was 33 and a student at NYU),” L’Esperance told Kauffman. ”But my hope is that the manuscript as a whole, even individual poems, manage to transcend mere autobiography, as reducing it to the fact of my mother’s disappearance would be just that—reductive. I have also concluded (and I’m going to get archetypal here) that the book says something about the devaluation of the feminine in our culture—that the ‘disappeared mother’ also represents the feminine that has been exiled or subsumed in favor of the masculine ethos (in both men and women).”

The Darkened Temple is divided into three sections, which Mari describes in her interview with Kauffman:

“The first is a circling or gathering, featuring poems that address traumatic loss from personal, cultural, and historic perspectives. The poems in the second section take the reader down into the depths of the speaker’s experience of traumatic loss and focus on the central theme. Finally, the third section relieves the intensity and pressure of the second section with poems that embody a sense of emergence and release. Taking the manuscript as a whole, there’s (to me) a sense of having descended into the underworld and then returned to some semblance of hope by book’s end.”

Mari’s influences are wide-ranging. Brenda Hillman, Stanley Kunitz, Jean Valentine, Philip Levine, and William Stafford are among the poets she most admires, but as she explained to Kauffman, her Japanese heritage has also impacted her writing:

“My mother was Japanese (born and raised) and taught me much about Japanese culture and the arts. I visit Japan as often as I’m able—every other year or so—and it’s a place that is very close to my heart… The Japanese value sadness—in fact, beauty and sadness go hand in hand. Films and stories have indeterminate, often sad endings, which can frustrate many Westerners. I think this intrinsic valuing of sadness and beauty, combined, is what fuels many of the poems in my book. And the Japanese are also stoic and value endurance, accepting what life has handed to them…which, on a collective level, has been a hindrance to them as a nation. But this endurance and acceptance are part of my poetic sensibility.”

“I do believe in inspiration,” L’Esperance told How A Poem Happens, “but that rarefied and somewhat altered state can only sustain itself for so long; it must be corralled, brought down to earth, and channeled into language. I’m a slow and undisciplined writer and often allow long periods of time to pass between poems, so perhaps I rely too much on inspiration and not enough on ‘pot scrubbing,’ as my friend Sage Cohen has called the largely messy, unglamorous, and plain old hard work of writing.”

I have five poems from The Darkened Temple to share with you today. If you enjoy Mari’s work, please consider sharing it through email, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Enjoy your Sunday!

Returning to Earth

When Emperor Hirohito announced
Japan’s defeat over national radio,
his divinity was broken, fell away
and settled in fine gold dust at his feet.

His people understood the gravity
of the occasion—a god does not speak
over the airwaves with a human voice,
ordinary and flecked with static. A god
does not speak in the common voice
of the earthbound, thick with shame.

At the station, my mother, a schoolgirl,
looked on as men in uniform lurched
from the platform into the path
of incoming trains, their slack bodies
landing on the tracks without sound.

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My name is Michelle Aldredge. I’m a writer, photographer, and the creator of Gwarlingo. At Gwarlingo, I share in-depth conversations with artists, as well as some of my own exciting finds in contemporary art. I've done radio appearances on NHPR and consulted on arts projects big and small. From 1999-2012 I worked at The MacDowell Colony, the nation's oldest artist retreat, but I've also done time at an arts magazine, a library, an art museum, and a raptor rehabilitation center. You can read more about me and my work here. Thanks for visiting. Come back. Come often.

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The Art of Focus - 5 Ways to Free Yourself from Digital Dependency: Our day begins with good intentions. We resolve that today will be different from yesterday, because today, we we’ll stay on task. But then we turn on our computers and smart-phones, and before we know it, we’ve fallen down the rabbit hole. How do we make the most of technology without frittering our lives away? How do we create time and space for deep thinking, creation, and real connection within the chaos of digital life?

13 Years, 3500 Artists, 7 Memorable Lessons: After thirteen remarkable years of working at The MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, I decided to leave the Colony in May of 2012. Letting go of a 9-5 job (with a regular paycheck and benefits) in order to expand an arts website is a risky thing to do, but I've loved every minute of the Gwarlingo adventure. Did I learn something from working with over 3500 artists in those 13 years? Hell yeah. Read more here.

52 Pieces by British Street Artist Banksy: Banksy is a walking, breathing oxymoron. Depending on who you ask, he is either a genius or an overhyped vandal, a talented documentary filmmaker or a brilliant faker. He is both a lefty and a critic of liberal piety. He flips off the art world establishment, and yet courts the very art world he claims to detest. He is a street artist who sells his work for high sums in galleries and auction houses, and “an anarchist environmentalist who travels by chauffeured S.U.V. Is Banksy an arch prankster or an art genius? Read more here. (Above: Cardinal Sin by Banksy)

How Creativity Works: Why do creative epiphanies happen? Are there specific things we can do to encourage innovation in our personal lives and in the workplace? What can Bob Dylan, Julia Child, and Picasso teach us about the creative process? Read more about Jonah Lehrer's book Imagine: How Creativity Works here.

The Illusionist: At first glance, the work of Swiss artist Felice Varini looks like interesting, abstract art superimposed on an architectural space. But these are actually brilliantly composed installations--real paintings in real spaces that hover eerily in front of it. See more of Varini's work here.

The Spectacular Snow Drawings of Simon Beck: Beck creates these incredible designs by simply walking in the snow. These massive installations take two days to complete. See more photos here.

Creativity is the Power to Act: Ai Weiwei's interviews and blog posts are a thought-provoking read. “Creativity is the power to act," Ai says. "It’s the power “to reject the past, to change the status quo, and to seek new potential.” Ai is an architect, sculptor, curator, poet, critic, publisher, and photographer--an artist who created installations out of 1,200 bicycles and 100 million handmade porcelain sunflower seeds. Read more about Ai's writing, political activism, and art work here.

Not Your Average Flashmob: Last month the Copenhagen Philharmonic pulled off an audacious stunt—performing Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt on a crowded, moving metro train for unsuspecting passengers. Readers loved this video. I dare you to watch it without smiling.

How to Feel Miserable as an Artist: This marvelous list, which is relevant to artists of all disciplines, was created by illustrator Keri Smith and is part of The Artist’s Survival Kit, which Keri wrote and designed. I like Keri’s list because it emphasizes the ways in which we tend to stay in our safe zones as artists. Read the full list here.

Hugo Author Brian Selznick Shares 20 Favorite Books: Martin Scorsese's film adaptation of Brian Selznick's book The Invention of Hugo Cabret has won over critics and fans alike. In this popular Gwarlingo exclusive, Selznick shares his own favorite books for children. There are some wonderful discoveries on the list for readers of all ages. View all 20 titles and see illustrations from Selznick's newest book, Wonderstruck here.

95 Rare Color Photographs: The second most popular post in Gwarlingo's short history has been this feature on the rare color photographs taken by FSA photographers like Jack Delano, Russell Lee, and Marion Post Wolcott. The overwhelming response to this piece leads me to believe that I'm not the only one who finds these early Kodachrome photos from the 30s and 40s a fascinating discovery.

Grace Paley on Writing: "If you want to write, keep a low overhead...The best training is to read and write, no matter what. Don’t live with a lover or roommate who doesn’t respect your work. Don’t lie, buy time, borrow to buy time. Write what will stop your breath if you don’t write." Read more here.

On Money, Fear, & the Artist: Being an artist is so hard because we’re operating in a parallel universe from the larger culture–one that values imagination, creativity, and ideas more than money or status. Read more about art and fear and explore Mark Wagner's amazing currency collages here.

Transforming the Familiar: Explore the luminous landscapes of photographer Barry Underwood.

Tour the Tate Modern: The Tate Modern in London, a former power plant, is the most visited modern art gallery in the world. I share some of the highlights from my own visit in this special tour.

The Journey to Freedom: Peter Wyer's Numinous City is inspired by the extraordinary true story of Ngawang Sangdrol, a Tibetan nun, imprisoned in Lhasa, Tibet at age 14. Sangdrol and other nuns managed to record songs on a smuggled cassette player while in prison, the fame of which ultimately led to her release. I spoke to Sangdrol and Wyer (pictured above) at a sneak preview of the opera at the Rubin Museum in New York City. Read more about this incredible story here.

Creative Spaces

Visit Kim Uchiyama's Tribeca Studio: "I think it's important for us to understand that we live in a society that doesn't value mystery. We want everything to be absolutely clear and unambiguous because this makes us feel more comfortable. We're often afraid of what is foreign or unfamiliar."

Red Heart the Ticker: A legendary songcatcher inspires two musicians on a Vermont farm. Listen to new music from Red Heart the Ticker and take a tour of their farm and studios in this special expanded edition of Gwarlingo's Creative Spaces series.

The Debut of Gwarlingo's Creative Spaces Series: Read an in-depth interview with MacArthur fellow Anna Schuleit and take a tour of her studio.

Explore the Archives

Beauty and the Beast (No. Not That One. The Other One): Why did it take me so long to finally see Jean Cocteau's masterpiece? Discover why this film classic is worth revisiting.

What Is Love? Joan Wickersham's critically acclaimed collection The News from Spain has some surprising answers. Click here to read my full review.

A Line Made By Flooding: In 2007 Eve Mosher created High Water Line, a public art project in Manhattan and Brooklyn that brought the topic of climate change directly to the city’s residents. “I never wanted this to be a reality,” Mosher said the week Hurricane Sandy devastated parts of New York and New Jersey. Read more here.

Before and After Dinner: Most people know André Gregory through his critically acclaimed film My Dinner with André, but Cindy Kleine's new documentary reveals so much more about the respected theatre director and raconteur. Read my full review of the film here.

A Good Man is Hard to Find: Click here to explore the artwork and propaganda posters from past presidential elections.

Ambient Cowboy by Ivy Baldwin Dance: It is fitting that a dance piece inspired by Philip Johnson’s famous Glass House should have a set design made of light. And not just any light—but a ribbon of light that glides over wall, floor, and dancers, then suddenly vanishes. Read my full review of Ivy Baldwin's Ambient Cowboy at New York Live Arts here.

Film & Fatherhood: How do you learn to be a father, particularly when there are no fathers around to be an example? This is the question at the heart of Samein Priester’s documentary 1st&4ever. The dilemma of fatherhood has taken on new significance for Samein since the tragic loss of his partner, artist Denyse Thomasos. Read more and watch the film in its entirety here.

The Utopia Minus Project: Gwarlingo readers loved Susan Briante's gritty, visceral poems about America's highways, suburbs, and abandoned urban landscapes paired with Margaret Lanzetta's rich, patterned canvases (many also inspired by American highways). See Briante's and Lanzetta's exclusive collaboration only on Gwarlingo.

Transforming New York City's Water Towers: Artists like Tom Fruin and Rachel Whiteread are creating memorable public sculptures out of the humble New York City water tower. In the Spring of 2013, 300 rooftop tanks will be transformed into works of art by established and emerging figures in art, music, science as well as public school students. Read more about water-tower art here.

Lessons from the Writing Life: Poet Matthew Zapruder and fiction writer Amy Hempel read and discuss new work at the Juniper Summer Writing Institute in Amherst, Massachusetts.Read more here.

My Review of Christian Marclay's The Clock: The Clock is artist Christian Marclay’s magnum opus, a mesmerizing 24-hour montage of thousands of time-related movie clips that have been masterfully edited and synchronized to show the actual time. Does it live up to the hype? Find out here.

Tales of Captivity and Freedom: In I Am an Executioner, Rajesh Parameswaran introduces us to a cast of heroes—and antiheroes: from the lovesick tiger who narrates the unforgettable opener, to the ex-CompUSA employee who masquerades as a doctor; from a railroad manager in a turn-of-the-century Indian village, to an elephant writing her autobiography; from a woman whose Thanksgiving preparations put her husband to eternal rest, to the newlywed executioner of the title, these characters inhabit a marvelous region between desire and death, playfulness and violence. Read an interview with Rajesh Parameswaran here.

Lewis Hyde on Art and Ownership: Lawsuits over image appropriation, music remixes, file sharing, and copyright infringement are on the rise and emerging as the central debate of the digital era. The Grey Album, a 2004 mash-up by Danger Mouse, is a prime example of the type of copyright dispute Lewis Hyde discusses in his most recent book, Common as Air. You can read a full interview with Hyde here.

Whistler, Fireworks, and a New Way of Seeing: James McNeill Whistler’s loose, impressionistic depiction of fireworks at night was not to everyone’s liking when the painting made its public debut in 1877. Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket sparked an infamous feud between the artist and the Victorian critic John Ruskin. During the libel trial that followed, Ruskin's lawyer asked Whistler, "The labour of two days is that for which you ask two hundred guineas?" The artist replied, “No, I ask it for the knowledge I have gained in the work of a lifetime.” Read more here.

Peter Hutton’s films of rivers, oceans, cargo ships, and landscapes are everything commercial movies are not—subtle, completely silent, thoughtful, and devoid of narrative. "Cinema tends to be this additive thing, it gets more complicated technologically," says Hutton. "I wanted to do it alone, keep it personal and private...It’s not about the pyrotechnics, it’s about something else---being inventive with limitations." Read an interview with Hutton and watch a video of his recent exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum here.

The Lines Between the Arts are Insignificant: Hiroshi Teshigahara's Antonio Gaudi is like no other film I can think of. This 72-minute visual poem on the Spanish Art-Nouveau architect avoids conventional narrative and instead, lets Gaudi’s buildings do the talking. "Gaudi worked beyond the borders of various arts,” Teshigahara once said, “and made me feel that the world in which I was living still left a great many possibilities.” Read more about Gaudi and Teshigahara here.

Re-Branding the Barnes: Has a 25-Billion-Dollar Art Collection Been Disneyfied? The controversial new Barnes Museum in Philadelphia has finally opened its doors to much acclaim and protest. Read the full story of how a spiteful, visionary genius created the greatest collection of Post-Impressionist art in the world, as well as a bureaucratic nightmare for his predecessors. My own review of Tod Williams and Billie Tsien's new building is also included here.

Doris Salcedo on the Perspective of the Defeated: This photograph of 1,550 wooden chairs piled between two buildings in Istanbul stopped me in my virtual tracks when I first saw it. Born in Colombia, Salcedo’s installations are meditations on the silenced lives of the marginalized--the gap between the powerful and the powerless. Read more about Salcedo's installations here.

The DIY Punk Philosophy of Jem Cohen: Artist Jem Cohen uses film as a solo medium to create cinematic collages and haunting meditations on memory and place. Cohen’s films are works of art–soulful, provocative, anti-commercial, mysterious, unconventional, and beautifully imperfect. The filmmaker has worked with an array of musicians through the years–Patti Smith, R.E.M., The Ex, Gil Shaham, Elliott Smith, Cat Power, and the late Vic Chesnutt. Read more about Jem's work here.

Roger King Explores Love & Fatigue in America: “What does it mean to live in between?” writes novelist Andrea Barrett of Roger King’s latest book. “Not only between geographical locations, but between health and illness, commitment and freedom, love and loss?” In this in-depth interview with British novelist Roger King, we discuss writing, King's fight with chronic fatigue syndrome, his aid work in Africa and Asia, American healthcare, and more.

Artist Matthew Northridge: Matthew Northridge uses paper like no other artist I know. Matt gave me a tour of his solo show at Kansas Gallery during a recent visit to New York City. Explore more of his work here.

The Most Memorable Experiences in the Arts: I asked an array of artists to tell me about their most memorable experiences in the arts during 2011. Singer Rosanne Cash (pictured above), Moosewood cookbook author Mollie Katzen, journalists William Powers and Jeff Sharlet, British composer Tarik O'Regan and others share their surprising picks here.

Exhuming the Forgotten: Filmmaker Errol Morris said that Bill Morrison's Decasia might be ”the greatest movie ever made.” Assembled entirely from decaying, highly flammable, early nitrate footage, this masterpiece belongs in the tradition of Stan Brakhage’s films and Michael Lessy’s memorable book Wisconsin Death Trip; it is simultaneously poetic, haunting, and compelling. The entire piece is a meditation on ruin and the temporal nature not only of film, but of life itself. Learn more about Decasia and Bill Morrison's other films here.

New England Artists Finally Get Their Due: Read my review of the de Cordoova Biennial, featuring work by Mary Lum, Anna Von Mertens, Chris Taylor, Ann Pibal, Steve Lambert (shown above), Cullen Bryant Washington, Jr., and More.

The World of E.B. White: In 1951 the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals accused writer E.B. White of not paying his dog tax and “harboring” an unlicensed dog. White wrote this hilarious letter in response to the ASPCA. Read the letter and an overview of White's work here.

A Retreat in the Sky: Explore the art, architecture, gardens, and history of New York's High Line Park, built on an old, elevated railway. (Above photo © Joel Sternfeld courtesy Friends of the High Line)

Composer Steve Reich with reel to reel tape recorders

The Sound of Four Hands Clapping: In 1971 composer Steve Reich embarked on a five-week trip to study music and drumming in Ghana. Shortly after his return, he wrote “Clapping Music.” In this 1972 video Reich performs this classic piece with percussionist Russell Hartenberger.

The Evolution of Photographer Bill Jacobson: “There has always been a poetic stance in my work,” says photographer Bill Jacobson. “Whether in focus or out, it’s never been about a single narrative, but rather something beneath the surface of what’s being photographed." Explore Jacobson's work here.

An Accidental Classic: Sibylle Baier’s critically-acclaimed Colour Green was published 30 years after it was first recorded on a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Baier starred in Wim Wender's films and wrote her own songs, but abandoned her career to move to America and raise her family. Read more about how this classic finally found an audience here.

Errol Morris on Photography: What makes an “honest” photograph? Is the medium of photography more factual and authentic than other art forms? Can a photo be objective or does it always have a point of view? When does a photograph document reality? When is it propaganda? When is it art? Filmmaker Errol Morris addresses all of these questions and more in his new book Believing is Seeing.

Ira Glass on the Creative Process: Ira Glass, the host of NPR’s This American Life, gives some useful advice about the art of story telling. Remember the method you learned in college–opening paragraph, thesis sentence, supporting material? Glass says to throw that tired technique out the window!

Essay: On Crows Openness is a state of mind that the nature lover and the artist share. Art, like bird watching, is about seeing, hearing, and understanding. It requires stillness. It demands that we remain open to the unexpected. Read the entire essay here.

Nairobi-London Sound Clash: I discovered the Owiny Sigoma Band during a 2011 trip to London. This highly original, Nairobi-London sound clash, which blends traditional Kenyan Luo styles with contemporary western influences, is like nothing else I’ve heard before. Their debut album, which pulses with mellow grooves, lyre riffs, and hypnotic drums, is organic, quirky and rough around the edges, but in a good way. Listen to the record here.

This Revolution is for Display Purposes Only: Click here to explore the world of street art, the first article in an ongoing series.

The Urban Frenzy of Olive Ayhens: Olive Ayhens' neo-expressionist pen and ink and watercolor drawings are a knock-out: textured, original, and deliberately unruly. Working on location, Ayhens draws the lively center of New York City, personifying its skyscrapers in a style that is vigorous and playful, as well as idiosyncratic.

Occupy Writers: Who could have guessed that one of the sanest pieces of writing about the Occupy movement would come from children's book author Lemony Snicket? Read “13 Observations Made by Lemony Snicket while Watching Occupy Wall Street from a Discreet Distance" here.

P.J. Harvey's "Let England Shake": "I only sing the songs that I can still believe," says singer P.J. Harvey. The emotionally charged "Let England Shake" is one of the strongest records of her career. Listen to samples and watch videos of Harvey's collaboration with filmmaker Seamus Murphy here.

A Secret Garden in the City: These gardens on the roof of Rockefeller Center are one of the best-kept secrets in New York City.

The Discomfort Zone: V.S. Naipaul believes that female writers are inferior and sentimental. Jonathan Franzen observes that "you can't deconstruct and undress at the same time." Has writing about love without hipster irony become a radical act for male novelists today? Read the full story here.

Ten Rules for Writing Fiction: Writers like Zadie Smith, Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood, and Richard Ford offer guidance on the art of fiction writing. A sampling of their advice: "Have children." "Don't have children." "Get an accountant." "No amount of self-inflicted misery, altered states, black pullovers or being publicly obnoxious will ever add up to your being a writer. Writers write." Damn. What am I going to do with all of those black turtlenecks?

Music by Goldfish: How aware are we of sound as we move through the course of our day? Which sounds do we register and which do we ignore? Do we even give the subject much thought? “Quintetto” by the Italian artist collective Quiet Ensemble is an intriguing blend of music, sound and installation art.

Doubt is Your Revelation: Jeff Sharlet's most recent book, Sweet Heaven When I Die, is a collection of 13 essays about belief, skepticism, and spirituality. Sharlet writes about Brad Will, an anarchist journalist who filmed his own murder by police; BattleCry, an evangelical youth movement devoted to spreading its particular brand of the Christian message; a new-age healer named Sondra Shaye; and renowned intellectual Cornel West.

Watch an Animation Classic: Yuriy Norshteyn’s Hedgehog in the Fog is one of the most stunning animated films ever made. Nick Park is a fan of Norshteyn's work and so is Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki. Click here to watch the 10-minute short film and to learn more about the Russian animator.

Composer & Cellist Paul Brantley: Brantley makes a case that Bach's cantatas are theologically subversive and gives Gwarlingo listeners a preview of his own Gnostic Cantata.

Animal Architecture: What if architects designed shelters not only to accommodate humans, but also to accommodate the animals? A five-star hotel for bugs? A towering home for bats? Why not?

More Than a Voice: A writer. A performer. A pianist. A cabaret act. A storyteller. An opera singer with a 3-4 octave range. Is there anything Joseph Keckler doesn't do?

Poetry Bombing: Explore two very different poetry bombing projects--one from the Chilean art collective Casagrande and the other by artist Agustina Woodgate.

George Bernard Shaw Exposed: Not many people realize that George Bernard Shaw was a passionate amateur photographer, as well as a prolific writer. When Shaw died at the age of 94, he left behind over 10,000 photographic prints and over 10,000 negatives in his home in Ayot St Lawrence.

Olafur Eliasson, the Danish artist who brought the sun to Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall and created man-made waterfalls in New York City, has a new project--Din blinde passager (Your blind passenger), a 295-foot-long tunnel filled with dense fog.

Movie Barcodes: A movie barcode for The Wizard of Oz. Click here to read more about movie barcodes and the use of color in cinema.

Breathbox by Antti Paalanen: Watch a mesmerizing piece of music by Finnish accordion master Antti Paalanen. "Mesmerizing accordion music?" you ask. Yes. Really.

The Fear of Failure: Even if you don't know his name, you know his work. Legendary designer Milton Glaser discusses the myth of creative genius and gives advice on how artists can move past the fear of failure. “Find out what you’re capable of doing or not capable of doing,” says Glaser. “Admit what is.” “Embrace the failure.” Watch Glaser's talk here.

Documenting a Revolution: Two filmmakers, who risked their lives to document the looting of archeological sites during the Iraq war, now find themselves in the heart of the Egyptian Revolution.

Teaching Myself How to Burn Last Year’s Leaves

Tanfastic

I Never Knew How Blue Blueness Could Be

by Sigrun Hodne

Bluets, An Excerpt

by Maggie Nelson

Magnolia, the Lotus of Trees

Plantain

Singing Moon

(The Gold Field)

Implosion

Shaking the Kaleidoscope

About Christine Shan Shan Hou

About Audra Wolowiec

Returning to Earth

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