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Posts Tagged ‘Poetry’

Archaeology: The Silence of the World

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 2, 2026| 4 Comments »

Archaeology: The Silence of the World— Coming to Principle Gallery

I can imagine the silence when the world
will have stilled itself—no more poems tossed
off the tongue, no more screams
of raven lugging entrails of porcupine,
no more tales of the Navajo, or Louisiana black man,
or old-time Vermonter,
no more breathing in the ear of last lover…

The Silence of the World, Galway Kinnell

These are the opening lines from the first poem I encountered from Galway Kinnell, who I briefly wrote about t a few days ago. That idea of the world being without the hive activity of humans, forever cast in silence, stuck in my mind. It was just kind of hovering there for several weeks but came back to the surface in the past week as I worked on the new painting shown above.

It’s from my ongoing Archaeology series which first came about in 2008, after I returned to an exercise from a 5th grade art class when I was feeling deeply blocked creatively. I have only painted a handful of these Archaeology pieces in recent years, despite the fact that I do enjoy the process of painting them and that they have always been well received, both here and abroad.

Why that is, I don’t know. I suppose it’s as simple as the heart and spirit having to be in just the right place. Recently, I found that working on this piece and another in the same series have forced me to focus on the small moves that create the artifact fields in both. I needed to bring my mind back into the work and this really seemed to serve that purpose.

As I was working on this particular painting, that Kinnell poem–and its title specifically– began to haunt my thoughts. While many of the Archaeology paintings deal with the world beyond the time of man and how our existence will be reduced to buried artifacts, this piece brought other thoughts and questions to mind.

The primary question was: When humans are no more, does that mean that heaven no longer exists? Are heaven and hell attached to humans and will therefore cease to exist when the last human returns to dust?

I wasn’t bothered by either a yes or no answer to these questions. It will be what it will be without my opinion, fears, or hopes. Just wondering.

Yes or no, it will be a quieter world, filled with more silences. And that pleases me somehow. Humans seem to have a need to fill every empty space with sound and noise. And I think– without any evidence, of course– that this somehow throws the world out of equilibrium. That it seeks more silence.

And that is what I see in this painting. I chose to fill the artifact field mainly with chairs that represent the passing of man. For some unknown reason, I resisted making them Red Chairs. The upper part is painted in shades of blue that have a unifying silence in them. No noise from the contrast of colors or lightness.

Just a placid blueness.

And the tree in the foreground might be expressing in its twists the slightest delight in finally regaining the silence the world desired.

It’s a piece that fills me with a variety of feelings. I am saddened to see in it the end of our time and all that the human mind has produced that is good. Music, art, poetry, literature, and so on. But the idea of a reign of real silence along with the world returning to a greater equilibrium somehow satisfies me.

Don’t ask me why.

It’s given me a lot to both focus on and think about in here the studio. And I am grateful for that.

We all need things that make us think about things other than the things we think about. If you followed that, you’ve got a quicker mind than me.

Of course, I borrowed the title for this painting, Archaeology: The Silence of the World, from Kinnell’s poem which I have included below in its entirety.  I am also including a wonderful piece of music from composer Samuel Barber, his Adagio for Strings. This is performed here by the Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by Simon Rattle. The composition is built around beautiful silences that I feel reflect well on the painting.

Lovely music for a quiet Saturday morning, even if those damn humans are still out there making noise.

I can imagine the silence when the world
will have stilled itself—no more poems tossed
off the tongue, no more screams
of raven lugging entrails of porcupine,
no more tales of the Navajo, or Louisiana black man,
or old-time Vermonter,
no more breathing in the ear of last lover,
no more angelic beings left to be kissed
into the claustrophobia of flesh,
no more temples giving light
from open doors into bitter winter nights, no more
curious weasel who leaves
her black ring frozen in the air,
no more tooth that gnaws through gum and bones into
the cathedral of the mouth.
No more splat when singer spits
mouthwash into the washbasin after the concert,
no more “Quit yer bawlin!”
from punk principal to slob schoolboy
when sore mother hauls
small boy into classroom by sore ear.
No more young woman in large hat in profile
in afternoon light saying, “So what, darling?
I don’t hate you. I love you. So what?”
No more flutesman trudging through snow
on 125th Street on the last Sunday morning of his jeopardy.
No more husband saying, “Snack bar’s the other way.”
No more wife replying, “You aren’t going to eat again, are you?”
No more husband replying, “I don’t want to eat,
I was just telling you where the snack bar is.”
No more wife replying, “For Chrissake! I know where it is.”
No more caesura or else everything one endless caesura,
no more feminine rhyme such as “lattice” and “thereat is,”
no more parallelismus membrorum panting in one ear,
no more Neruda’s slowly deepening voice saying,
“Federico, te acuerdas, debajo de la tierra . . .”
From across the valley the thud of an axe
arrives later than its strike
and the call of goodbye slowly separates itself
little by little from the vocal chords of everything.

– The Silence of the World, Galway Kinnell, The New Yorker, May 13, 2013

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Uncle Walt

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 16, 2026| 4 Comments »

Eye to Eye

I resist anything better than my own diversity,
And breathe the air and leave plenty after me,
And am not stuck up, and am in my place.

The moth and the fisheggs are in their place,
The suns I see and the suns I cannot see are in their place,
The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place.

These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me,
If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing,
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing,
If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.

This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,
This the common air that bathes the globe.

–Walt Whitman, Song of Myself (1855)

I was reading Mary Oliver‘s book of essays, Upstream, and her essay on Walt Whitman really resonated with me. As a young woman, Whitman became her close friend, the caring uncle, and the brother she had never had. He is Uncle Walt to me, a wizened and understanding being who accepts you as you are because he knows that what is in you is in him as well.

Her essay, in which she cites the short section above from his Song of Myself as a guiding light for her own relationship with nature and the world:

The moth and the fisheggs are in their place,
The suns I see and the suns I cannot see are in their place,
The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place.

Her writing made me pull out my old beat-up copy of Whitman’s work. I needed a fix from Uncle Walt and went to the section from which this passage came just to put it into better context for myself. Glad I did.

Shown above, it says so much about how he saw himself and the world. He proudly claimed his diversity of self, that messy mass of contradictions that is within us all. He also saw clearly that he was in place in the role that he had to play in the grand opera that is life, just as the moths and fisheggs and the sun high up in the sky were. I especially liked that he made mention of the suns he cannot see, given my propensity for sometimes showing multiple suns or moons in my skies.

To Uncle Walt, the natural world, which included him and you and me, was, and still is, just as it should be.

He then goes on to point out that his thoughts are nothing new, that they are simply echoes of thoughts that have come down through time. It is our purpose to ask questions and attempt to find answers of some sort, though our efforts will be forever futile.

Our attempts at solving the riddle that is life often create even more complex riddles.

That, too, is just as it should be. As he writes, This the common air that bathes the globe.

This short section from his grand poem says so much about how I have come to see the world, as well.  I imagine much of that comes from having an uncle like Walt. Or a brother or friend or simply an old man with a white beard who says a few words in passing.

Just as it should be.

Here’s a song that I thought I had recently shared here only to find that it has been 16 years. I guess for some of us that is recent. The song is another from Mermaid Avenue, an album featuring unrecorded songs written by Woody Guthrie set to music and performed by Billy Bragg and Wilco. This is Walt Whitman’s Niece.

I think I might have seen her at one of the family reunions.

Or not.

Who knows? It is, after all, a riddle, right?

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No purpose but what we made…

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on February 10, 2026| 1 Comment »

The Restless Seeker– At West End Gallery

No meaning but what we find here.
No purpose but what we make.

— This is what was bequeathed us, Gregory Orr (b. 1947)

 

I posted the poem and its accompanying animation, shown at the bottom of the page, about five years ago. It was written by American poet Gregory Orr and the two lines above from it made me think about the nature of both meaning and purpose, both things that I discuss here on a fairly regular basis. I don’t know why it seems like such an important subject to me.

Maybe I am trying to find justification for my own existence and the work I do? Let’s leave that for another day and move on.

We often speak of finding meaning and purpose in our lives but is it something to be found? It seems as though that it would be a difficult task to find something when you have no idea what you’re seeking.

Perhaps the seeking truly begins when we form an image or loose definition, even if it is on a subconscious level, of what values we would want to appear as part of the meaning and purpose of our life, should we ever stumble upon it. Once there is this vague conception in our mind of our desired purpose, maybe we then begin to create it.

Maybe what we believe is seeking is actually more or less gathering those bit and pieces of whatever makes up our individual meaning and purpose then assembling them in a form that comes near in its representation of that vague conception deep in our mind.

Using the painting at the top, The Restless Seeker, as an analogy, perhaps the boat does not represent a search for purpose or meaning. Maybe the boat itself is purpose and meaning, something I have constructed in order to navigate my way through this life?

As always, I can’t say for sure. But it sounds good at the moment.

The idea that our thoughts and desires form what we become is not a new idea, of course. It harkens back at least to the Buddha when he is believed to have stated:

The thought manifests as the word;

The word manifests as the deed;

The deed develops into habit;

And habit hardens into character;

So watch the thought and its ways with care,

And let it spring from love

Born out of concern for all beings…

As the shadow follows the body,

As we think, so we become.

Or to put it more concisely: Garbage in, garbage out.

As I wrote above, we structure our desired purpose on our own values. They might be traits we have observed and admired in others. Or on the set of morals and ethics we have developed, some handed down to us from our upbringing, and some obtained through our earliest experiences.

Perhaps some are even things we find lacking in ourselves and in the world around us?

I don’t know. Obviously.

It’s a difficult thing on which to put a single definition, especially before six in the morning. Even more difficult since every life has its own distinct meaning and purpose. My purpose and meaning is not yours and vice versa.

One size does not fit all.

As it should be.

I am just blabbing on in all directions at this point. Maybe that’s my purpose? Sounds about right…

Let’s end this with the poem and animated reading from Gregory Orr.

This is what was bequeathed us

This is what was bequeathed us:
This earth the beloved left
And, leaving,
Left to us.

No other world
But this one:
Willows and the river
And the factory
With its black smokestacks.

No other shore, only this bank
On which the living gather.

No meaning but what we find here.
No purpose but what we make.

That, and the beloved’s clear instructions:
Turn me into song; sing me awake.

–Gregory Orr (b. 1947)

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Follow the River

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 24, 2025| 3 Comments »

Follow the River— At West End Gallery

 

Look down the long valley and there stands a mountain
That someone has said is the end of the world.
Then what of this river that having arisen
Must find where to pour itself into and empty?
I never saw so much swift water run cloudless.
Oh, I have been often too anxious for rivers
To leave it to them to get out of their valleys.
The truth is the river flows into the canyon
Of Ceasing-to-Question-What-Doesn’t-Concern-Us,
As sooner or later we have to cease somewhere.
No place to get lost like too far in the distance.
It may be a mercy the dark closes round us
So broodingly soon in every direction.

–Robert Frost, Too Anxious for Rivers (1947)

The canyon of Ceasing-to-Question-What-Doesn’t-Concern-Us…

This line (and the title) caught my eye when I first came across this Robert Frost poem, Too Anxious for Rivers. I thought the first half the poem shown above (the full poem is included at the bottom of the page) was a fine companion to the painting at the top, Follow the River.  Both have an existential theme and feel.

I could see this river flowing into that particular canyon. There is something about that slash of that particular blue cutting through the center of the painting that speaks to me, something that calms me. I guess that is a good thing, as I, much like the title states, am sometimes too anxious for rivers. Too anxious to simply float along with the current.

So much energy wasted struggling against the rhythm and force of the river when I should be letting it guide me, rather than trying to make it deliver me where it refuses to go. 

The river will deliver you on its own terms and schedule.

This painting, Follow the River, is 30″ by 15″ on canvas. It is included in my current exhibit, Guiding Light, at the West End Gallery. The show is hanging until November 13.

Next Saturday, November 1 I will be giving a Gallery Talk at the West End Gallery, beginning at 11 AM. Today or tomorrow, I will be choosing the painting that will be given away in a drawing at the end of the talk to someone in attendance. As always, the Gallery Talk is free and open to everyone. I will be announcing the prize painting in the next few days so keep an eye out here.

Here’s a song, River Man, from Nick Drake. Nick Drake recorded three albums from 1969 to 1972 that never really found an audience at the time. Tragically, he died from an overdose of antidepressants in 1974 at the age of 26. In the years since, his work has gained that audience that eluded him during his short lifetime and has a cult following. I find this song particularly haunting.

And soothing like the flow of a river.

Look down the long valley and there stands a mountain
That someone has said is the end of the world.
Then what of this river that having arisen
Must find where to pour itself into and empty?
I never saw so much swift water run cloudless.
Oh, I have been often too anxious for rivers
To leave it to them to get out of their valleys.
The truth is the river flows into the canyon
Of Ceasing-to-Question-What-Doesn’t-Concern-Us,
As sooner or later we have to cease somewhere.
No place to get lost like too far in the distance.
It may be a mercy the dark closes round us
So broodingly soon in every direction.
The world as we know is an elephant’s howdah;
The elephant stands on the back of a turtle;
The turtle in turn on a rock in the ocean.
And how much longer a story has science
Before she must put out the light on the children
And tell them the rest of the story is dreaming?
“You children may dream it and tell it tomorrow.”
Time was we were molten, time was we were vapor.
What set us on fire and what set us revolving,
Lucretius the Epicurean might tell us
‘Twas something we knew all about to begin with
And needn’t have fared into space like his master
To find ‘twas the effort, the essay of love.

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The Restless Seeker

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged on September 21, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Restless Seeker– Coming to West End Gallery in October

He in his madness prays for storms, and dreams that storms will bring him peace”

― The Sail, Mikhail Lermontov

These are the last lines of the poem The Sail from early 19th century Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov. Actually, I haven’t been able to locate a translation of the poem that translates his lines with this wording, but since Leo Tolstoy quoted these lines in this way in his The Death of Ivan Ilych it has become the accepted wording. The meaning of these lines in any translation is pretty consistent in meaning– that there are some so desperate in their search that they will head into the teeth of storm and chaos because they believe that the calm naturally accompanies the storm.

As a bit of added info, the poet Lermontov lived his life as though he was the sailor seeking calm by heading into a storm. He packed a lot into his short life, including being acclaimed as the natural heir to Pushkin’s title as the greatest Russian poet, being exiled twice, serving in the Russian army where he led a troop of Cossacks described as a gang of dirty thugs whose duty was to charge headlong into their Chechen enemy forces, and dueling twice. The second duel left him dead after a direct shot to his heart at the age of 26.

He apparently adhered to the words of the old Faron Young song– I want to live fast, love hard, die young, and leave a beautiful memory.

The poem itself, below, seemed to fit well with the new painting shown at the top. Titled The Restless Seeker, it is   6″ by 18″ on canvas and included in my solo exhibit, Guiding Light, at the West End Gallery that opens on October 17.

There is a stormy and otherworldly quality that comes with its chaotic sky and blood red sun/moon. Oddly enough, though it is a painting that is filled with motion, there is also a calm determination in it along with a feeling of defiant courage in the boat and its sails that I find particularly appealing. Maybe it’s the focused calm mustered by those ultimately endure the storm.

It’s a quality that we need a bit more of in these troubled times. That might be part of its appeal for me.

For this week’s Sunday Morning Music, here’s a song that has been shared here a couple of times over the years. It is The Ship Song from the always interesting Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

A lonely sail is flashing white
Amdist the blue mist of the sea!…
What does it seek in foreign lands?
What did it leave behind at home?..

Waves heave, wind whistles,
The mast, it bends and creaks…
Alas, it seeks not happiness
Nor happiness does it escape!

Below, a current azure bright,
Above, a golden ray of sun…
Rebellious, it seeks out a storm
As if in storms it could find peace!

–The Sail, Mikhail Lermontov

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If I Can Dream

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on August 31, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Lux Templi-At the West End Gallery

I dream’d in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the
whole of the rest of the earth;
I dream’d that was the new City of Friends;
Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love—it led the
rest;
It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,
And in all their looks and words.

— Walt Whitman, I Dream’d in a Dream (1855)

Keeping it simple this morning since it is a Labor Day weekend. The theme today is dreaming of a better world and though it might seem that has little to do with the work or labor that is celebrated by this holiday, there is a connection.

After all, why do we work?

To provide a better life for ourselves.

Though it might seem like we toil simply to survive at times, we all still maintain a dream of a better world for ourselves in some form.

I would like to think that it is not asking too much that we extend that dream of betterment to all others. Wouldn’t our personal world be enriched and made better by the fulfillment of such a dream?

That’s all I have to say this morning. I have work to do. It might not better my life or anyone else’s in any way, but I am still going to make the effort. It’s all we can do– make an effort.

Here’s a bit of Sunday Morning Music. I went with two biggies today, two American icons– Walt Whitman and Elvis Presley. The song is If I Can Dream from Elvis’ legendary Comeback Special in 1968. I remember watching this as a kid with my dad and even then, being impressed with how hard this guy was working for our approval. You may or not be an Elvis fan, but there is no denying that the man is working hard here.

Dreams take that kind of effort.

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I Am/ John Clare

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 15, 2025| 2 Comments »

Placidarium (2017)

I long for scenes where man hath never trod
A place where woman never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
The grass below—above the vaulted sky.

–I Am, John Clare, ca 1845

I came across the post below from several years ago and was reminded of the painting shown above, Placidarium. It was painted in 2017 and instantly became a favorite of mine. The title was a conjured word that described a self-contained environment much like a terrarium or aquarium. I saw this as a self-contained ecosystem of tranquility. Over the years this painting has traveled far and wide in attempt to find a home that needs a placidarium of its own. And time and again, it has always returned to me like a boomerang.

Though I was pleased to have it with me once more, it was always a little disappointing when it would come back. Was there something in it that only I could see, a voice that only I could hear? That was certainly a possibility. Some work speaks so loudly to me that it feels like it must be audible to many others and sometimes that’s just not the case.

Some voices speak to only one person. Kind of like the many voices in my head that tell me to do terrible things. I am just kidding, of course– there’s not many voices, just one.

All kidding aside, the fact that this painting’s voice seemed to go unheard and the tranquil world it portrayed reminded me of this poem and the life experience of poet John Clare. I could see him lying untroubled as he slept among the flowers under this sky.

Sounds pretty damn good to me, as well.

[From 2021]

John Clare was an interesting case. He led a troubled existence for much of his 70 years on this planet. Born in Northampton in England to a family of rural farm laborers, Clare bounced from job to job and place to place, living a life of poverty. In an attempt to raise money to prevent his parent’s eviction from their home, Clare, through a local bookseller, submitted his poetry to the publisher who had published the works of John Keats. His book of verse, as well as a second soon after, was published and praised.

But even then, recognized as he was as a poetic genius in farmer’s garb, he struggled with his own mental demons. Much of the rest of his life was spent in English asylums. His most famous poem, I Am, whose final verse is shown above, was written in one such asylum, Northampton General Lunatic Asylum, around 1844 or 1845.

His work was somewhat overlooked after his death in 1864 at the Northampton Asylum, where he had spent his final 23 years. But in the 20th century his worked received new attention and Clare’s work was elevated and he has been deemed a major poet of the 19th century.

It’s a sad life, indeed. It reminds me of those times when I have been going through genealogy records, following an ancestor’s life as it progresses, and come upon a record from some sort of institution. It might be an almshouse– a poorhouse– or a county home, a place where they gathered the paupers, the handicapped and those with mental problems so that they would be out of sight.

Coming across these records always makes me very sad. I can imagine myself in these ancestors’ places, the feelings that I would no doubt be experiencing– the loss, the alienation, the confusion that must have plagued their minds.

But even more than that, my sadness comes from knowing that their voices were no doubt unheard by the time these records were registered. They had, by that time, become problems to be swept aside.

And they, no doubt, wanted little more than the peace of mind that Clare describes in that final verse– the untroubled sleep of a child in the grass beneath a high, clear sky.

I find my own desires for this life dwindling down to those same simple wants. And in this, I find a bond with these poor, troubled relations. And with Clare in that English asylum.

And that in turn makes me grateful for the small graces that allow me to live the life I live and to find expression for my own small I Am.

Sigh.

Here’s a fine reading of I Am from Tom O’Bedlam:

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How To Be a Poet–a Reminder

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on August 4, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Answering Light— At Principle Gallery,

make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

—Wendell Berry

I run the post below every five years or so. Since I’m busy this morning (trying to not disturb the silence) and it’s been five years, thought today would be as good a time as any to replay it.

Regardless of what we do, we all need a reminder now and then to heed the silence.

I came across this poem a while ago from poet/author Wendell Berry on Maria Popova‘s wonderful site, Brain Pickings. It’s a lovely rumination that could apply to any creative endeavor or to simply being a human being.

I particularly identified with the final verse that begins with the line: Accept what comes from silence and ends with the lines above. I’ve always thought there was great wisdom and power in silence, a source of self-revelation and creative energy. Perhaps that self-revelation is why so many of us shun the silence, fearing that it might reveal our true self to be something other than what we see in the mirror.

Berry’s words very much sum up how I attempt to tap into silence with my work, to find those little words that cone out of the silence, like prayers, and to find inner spaces to paint that are sacred to me and not yet desecrated by the din of the outside world.

At the bottom is a recording of Wendell Berry reading the poem which gives it even a little more depth, hearing his words in that rural Kentucky voice. It’s fairly short so please take a moment and give a listen.

HOW TO BE A POET
(to remind myself)

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill — more of each
than you have — inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

—Wendell Berry

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Pity the Nation

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on July 2, 2025| 4 Comments »

Pity the nation whose people are sheep
And whose shepherds mislead them

Pity the nation whose leaders are liars
Whose sages are silenced
And whose bigots haunt the airwaves

Pity the nation that raises not its voice
Except to praise conquerors
And acclaim the bully as hero
And aims to rule the world
By force and by torture

Pity the nation that knows
No other language but its own
And no other culture but its own

Pity the nation whose breath is money
And sleeps the sleep of the too well fed

Pity the nation oh pity the people
who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away

My country, tears of thee
Sweet land of liberty!

–Pity the Nation, Lawrence Ferlinghetti (after Khalil Gibran) 2007

I leave this here today without image, comment, or music, except to point out that Ferlinghetti took inspiration in 2007 from the Kahlil Gibran poem of the same title, published posthumously after his death in 1931. Both poems clearly speak to their own times as well as this present moment. Here is the Gibran poem:

Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.
Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave
and eats a bread it does not harvest.

Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero,
and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.

Pity a nation that despises a passion in its dream,
yet submits in its awakening.

Pity the nation that raises not its voice
save when it walks in a funeral,
boasts not except among its ruins,
and will rebel not save when its neck is laid
between the sword and the block.

Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox,
whose philosopher is a juggler,
and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking

Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting,
and farewells him with hooting,
only to welcome another with trumpeting again.

Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years
and whose strongmen are yet in the cradle.

Pity the nation divided into fragments,
each fragment deeming itself a nation.

–Kahlil Gibran, from The Garden of The Prophet (1933)

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Where does it begin? Where does it end?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 14, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Communing– Coming to Principle Gallery, June

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

–Robert Frost, The New York Times (Nov. 7, 1955)

I am at that point in preparing for my annual solo show at the Principle Gallery where fear and panic set in. I begin to doubt every movement or decision made in producing the work.  It’s a common occurrence with any of my exhibits at this juncture in the proceedings. You would think after nearly 70 such solo shows that these doubts would subside, that one would maintain absolute trust in their work and the processes they employ in producing it. But they never do. 

This feeling of angst made writing a blog post about my new work difficult this morning so I am once again running one of my most popular blogposts with hardly a day going by when it doesn’t get at least a handful of views. It is about a well-known essay from poet Robert Frost that describes in a poetic way how his work emerges.  I write about the many parallels to the way I paint that I see in Frost’s methodology.

Much of it certainly applies to the work from this show, which seemed to guide me rather than be guided by me.

A little bit of that was on display at the demonstration I gave recently at the West End Gallery. I will be doing another such demonstration at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria on Saturday, June 14, the day after the opening of my show, Entanglement, on Friday, June 13. 

The poet Robert Frost wrote a wonderful preface to the 1939 edition of his collected poems. It was titled The Figure a Poem Makes and it described how he viewed his process of unveiling the true nature of his work. Reading it, I was struck by the similarities between his development of a poem and how I view my process for a painting.

For example, the following paragraph-I have highlighted individual lines that jumped out at me. I probably could have highlighted them all:

It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same as for love. No one can really hold that the ecstasy should be static and stand still in one place. It begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life–not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion. It has denouement. It has an outcome that though unforeseen was predestined from the first image of the original mood-and indeed from the very mood. It is but a trick poem and no poem at all if the best of it was thought of first and saved for the last. It finds its own name as it goes and discovers the best waiting for it in some final phrase at once wise and sad-the happy-sad blend of the drinking song.

A painting often begins in delight, assuming direction, as Frost put it, with the first line laid down. A certain tone of color, the shape of a form, the way a line bends, the manner in which a brushstroke reveals the paint or in how the contrast of light and dark excites the eye. The delights pull you in and keep you engaged and it is not until you have finished that you are able to understand the sum of these elements, to detect the wisdom, the meaning, behind it all. It is only then that you know what you have uncovered and how it should be named.

The work itself, if left to its own means, knows what it is and will tell you.

Then there is this gem of a paragraph:

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader. For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn’t know I knew. I am in a place, in a situation, as if I had materialized from cloud or risen out of the ground. There is a glad recognition of the long lost and the rest follows. Step by step the wonder of unexpected supply keeps growing. The impressions most useful to my purpose seem always those I was unaware of and so made no note of at the time when taken, and the conclusion is come to that like giants we are always hurling experience ahead of us to pave the future with against the day when we may want to strike a line of purpose across it for somewhere. The line will have the more charm for not being mechanically straight. We enjoy the straight crookedness of a good walking stick.

I have often spoke of the need to have my emotions near the surface when I work, to always need to feel excited and surprised by what I am working on. To recognize new things I never knew as being part of me. If I am not moved by the thing I am working on at any given time, how can I expect others to be moved by it? This paragraph speaks clearly to my experience as an artist.

Then there is the final sentences of the essay:

Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting. A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into being. Its most precious quality will remain its having run itself and carried away the poet with it. Read it a hundred times: it will forever keep its freshness as a petal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went.

My translation of this, as a painter, is that the work must be free to move and grow of its own volition. It tells you where it wants to go and, if you don’t constrain it and try to push it to a place to which it was not intended, will reveal its truth to you. If you can do that, it remains always fresh, always in the present and always filled the excitement and surprise that it contained in that burst when it was created.

And that, to feel always fresh and in the present, is the goal of all art, be it painting, poetry, music, or dance.

I don’t want to bore you too much. It’s a great essay and is a valuable read for anyone who makes art in any form. You can see the whole book, The Collected Poems of Robert Frost, and read this essay in full by clicking here. The link takes you to one of my favorite sites on the whole interwebs, the Internet Archive, which has a huge library of available books that you can view in book form online. With its great search engine, it is a super reference tool.

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