Marly Youmans's Blog, page 144

Photo of baby bantam citron-spangled hamburg chicks
 by Ryan Zierke under a Creative Commons license at Wikipedia.

Everybody (most everybody?) knows about Flannery O' Connor and chickens. And if you have read this blog for a very long time, you may remember that I have a chicken pact going with novelist Howard Bahr. But do you know about L. Frank Baum and chickens?

According to the

Photo:  Andrei Rublev's famous painting of the Trinity,
one of the reproduced illustrations brought along by
the icon painter from Holy Trinity monastery.

Continued from The Icon Painter (notes and musings on an August 11th talk by an icon painter from Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, New York, part of a six-lecture Arts & Theology series sponsored by Christ Church and Cooperstown IAM

Photo: the interior of the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Jordanville,
showing the iconstasis that separates sanctuary from nave.
For more pictures of the cathedral and monastery, go here.

I find it fascinating when I encounter somebody who thinks in a way that is to some degree fresh and new to me. It is interesting to try and enter in and follow along the path of thought and belief. Probably I

Photo:  The Throne of Psyche (Mercer University Press, 2011.
 My poems are hanging out with a Hanoi water puppet dragon
 and a Deborah Guertze print.)
Having been delayed by various unexpected events, I have a dire need to retreat from the field today and read and burnish the final manuscript of A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage until my eyeballs are pickled! In the meantime, meet me

Photo by Robin Rudd: The Throne of Psyche, 2011.

A reply to Notes on poetic form at Via Negativa

Dear Dave,

I'd say that you are continually finding the forms that suit you, as am I.  I like the way you work, and I don't think that you are on a plateau but are moving on and searching, as you should be.

But to say that does not mean that my use of more or less "set" forms is confining or

 


Photo by Nate Miller
 Love you will find only where you may show yourself weak without provoking strength.

--Theodor Adorno

Normality is death.
--Theodor Adorno
Clare Dudman reminded me of Adorno in a comment, and how now and then it flits through my head that I really must read him. I'm always seeing quotes from him and thinking that I should. But not today. Today and tomorrow

Sometimes you are surprised to find evidence of someone you know in unexpected places. It's an odd sensation, the pleasure a little like meeting a friend unexpectedly. I had a longish ferrywoman's stint yesterday, picking up my son at Beaver Cross Camp, and made a discovery.
The camp used to be on the shores of Lake Otsego and only twelve minutes away from home. The cabins clustered close to

Here's a lovely guest post by South Carolina writer and historian, Suzannah Smith Miles, from Charleston, South Carolina and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Suzannah is known for both her books and magazine work on North and South Carolina history, and she writes regularly for Charleston Magazine and WNC (Western North Carolina) Magazine out of Asheville. Known for presenting history in a light

Gary Dietz, a former student from eons ago when I had a brief incarnation as teacher has put one of my poems into Prezi. Go see the results. I'll turn off comments--give him any, please!

Today I visited Windy Skies for the first time and encountered the figure of an itinerant peddler, attempting to sell his flutes in the midst of Indian traffic. The image struck me as an apt metaphor for the poet in the 21st century—a wanderer with a sheaf of songs and hand reaching out with a handmade gift while the world whirls by, faster and faster, not like a dervish but like a manic child's