3/29/16

Photo: Box Elder Bug on a painting

It is the difference between observing and noticing that makes for everyday poetry.  In the mode of observation we absorb the world around us being more or less astute.  This is the eating and digestion of our surroundings while noticing accounts for flavor.  The face of one noticing flexes and reveals the churning of mental gears.  Noticing engages the novelty of a scene and starts asking questions that determine quality and significance.  Read more…

1/10/2015

Photo: Lake Swim by Alex Cohen

In Akira Kurosawa’s 1990 film, Dreams, there is a scenario in which a museum-goer, staring thoughtfully at a Van Gogh painting, puts on his cap, tucks his kit under his arm and steps intrepidly into the painting.  This fantastical cinematic rendering sprouts from the uncanny feeling that paintings contain separate worlds.   Would that they were, says the voice of childlike curiosity in the background of our intellect, I should like to cross over into them, not just in mind but bodily!  This simple wish is a shared irrational desire teased by the illusion of depth conjured in painting. Read more…