Here's something beautiful to accompany Robin Becker's poem.
I like the photographer's comments on the picture: "Sometimes late at night, when you are falling asleep in front of the television, the world slows down and the colours blur. This is what that looks like..."
Once in a cradle in Norway folded
like Odin's eight-legged horse Sleipnir
as a ship in full sail transported the dead to Valhalla
Once on a mountain in Taos after making love
in my thirties the decade of turquoise and silver
After your brother walked into the Atlantic
to scatter your mothers ashes his khakis soaked
to the knees his shirtsleeves blowing
At the top of the cottage in a thunderstorm
once or twice each summer covetous of my solitude
Immediately following lunch
against circadian rhythms, once
in a bunk bed in a dormitory in the White Mountains
Once in a hollow tree in Wyoming
A snow squall blew in the guide said tie up your horses
The last night in the Katmandu guest house
where I saw a bird fly from a monk's mouth
a consolidated sleep of East and West
Once on a horsehair mattress two feet thick
I woke up singing
as in the apocryphal story of my birth
at Temple University Hospital
On the mesa with the burrowing owls
on the mesa with the prairie dogs
Willing to be lucky
I ran the perimeter road in my sleep
entrained to the cycles of light and dark
Sometimes my dead sister visited my dreams
Once on the beach in New Jersey
after the turtles deposited their eggs
before my parents grew old, nocturnal
by Robin Becker
From Domain of Perfect Affection © 2006.
The city of Leeuwarden has something new in the town square. If you like your eggs sunny side up and you live in the Netherlands, you're in luck.
Dutch artist Henk Hofstra has taken care of everything. In a big way. His newest art environment is called "Art-Eggcident Leeuwarden." Each of those eggs is 100 feet wide.
via the Wooster Collective
I can't remember how I first landed on the Frankenstyles site, but the quirky, challenging designs of Stephen Kelleher never disappoint.
As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking,--John, I
sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what
can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,
drive, he sd, for
christ's sake, look
out where yr going.
by Robert Creeley
photo by ___cath via flickr
m a r t a . c o m - Check out the gorgeous photography of Catalan artist Marta Barceló. Breathtaking!
Remember WordArt, the font font of the 90s? It's back in Back to WordArt. Check out this fun 18 seconds by Berlin-based artist Mike Ruiz, a.k.a. Mikey Awesome. (via rhizome)
Avoid go but went Went where, out out amongst words there
So, being benign void longing ethics then bending
How about it roustabout drilling deeply into middle earth
I was a roughneck land laborer I mowed endless civic greens
The men said slow down with the weed whacking
Exchanging sky with campground fire Went venting picking up
Refuse We wore boots of thick cow leather
The roof slanted toward the lake
Peterson announced the great tureen of ear
We partook, we partook
Colons bulging eggplant proportions were the shipwrecks
Gunky oil yet she managed to wear a ravishing corona
Bobbing bubbly scanning scansion with thick inside saying
You done it
I'll have tea with this ear, thank you
Then bobbing again
For appellations
Horrible tablatures in a picnic setting Sincerity danced a Balanchine ballet
With mental commitment robots
The jewels bled blood
Ketchup in a revolving rebellion, GM
I-ness witness
They weren't born me said death
by Brenda Iijima
published in the new issue of Coconut
Artist and illustrator Emmanuel Polanco opens his notebook and shares. Check out his new blog.
Here's an Alice in Wonderland inspired doodle. Is the white rabbit wearing head gear?
My friend Ann Sieber sent me a link this week to Jiyeon Song's site Experiential Typography, saying she thought I might like it. I do!
"The One Day Poem Pavilion demonstrates the poetic, transitory, site-sensitive and time-based nature of light and shadow. Using a complex array of perforations, the pavilionâs surface allows light to pass through creating shifting patterns, whichâduring specific times of the yearâtransform into the legible text of a poem. The specific arrangements of the perforations reveal different shadow-poems according to the solar calendar...."
The poem Song chose is a sijo, a form from classical Korean poetry. Here's the breakdown:
You can learn more about this form here or here. And you can see the pavilion through time-lapse photography on YouTube.
Song did this project as part of a master's thesis at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.
Jim just loves to garden, yes he does.
He likes nothing better than to put on
his little overalls and his straw hat.
He says, "Let's go get those tools, Jim."
But then doubt begins to set in.
He says, "What is a garden, anyway?"
And thoughts about a "modernistic" garden
begin to trouble him, eat away at his resolve.
He stands in the driveway a long time.
"Horticulture is a groping in the dark
into the obscure and unfamiliar,
kneeling before a disinterested secret,
slapping it, punching it like a Chinese puzzle,
birdbrained babbling gibberish, dig and
destroy, pull out and apply salt,
hoe and spray, before it spreads, burn roots,
where not desired, with gloved hands, poisonous,
the self-sacrifice of it, the self-love,
into the interior, thunderclap, excruciating,
through the nose, the earsplitting necrology
of it, the withering, shrivelling,
the handy hose holder and Persian insect powder
and smut fungi, the enemies of the iris,
wireworms are worse than their parents,
there is no way out, flowers as big as heads,
pock-marked, disfigured, blinking insolently
at me, the me who so loves to garden
because it prevents the heaving of the ground
and the untimely death of porch furniture,
and dark, murky days in a large city
and the dream home under a permanent storm
is also a factor to keep in mind."
by James Tate
Hello Lucky presents Flora and Fauna featuring work by Rene Cruz, Woody Golden, David Krueger, Dana Pike, and Christine West.
Flora and Fauna will open Thursday April 24, with a reception from 5 - 7:30 pm.
Hello Lucky is located at 1025 Studewood Street, Houston, Texas 77008.
via SpaceTaker
