Music & Poetry Mash Up: Same Love - Macklemore & Ryan Lewis + Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds - William Shakespeare

marriage - joe heller

same love

+

let me not to the marriage of true minds

Let me not to the marriage of true minds   
Admit impediments. Love is not love   
Which alters when it alteration finds,   
Or bends with the remover to remove:   
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark, 
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;   
It is the star to every wandering bark,   
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.   
Love ’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks   
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,   
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.   
  If this be error, and upon me prov’d,   
  I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

 

War and Words - Story & Poetry

 short stories from the long war

It is not you who will speak: let the disaster speak in you.

—Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster

 

Ten years.
 

Not even poetry can rock this disaster to sleep.

 

I Was In A Hurry

Yesterday I lost a country.
I was in a hurry,
and didn't notice when it fell from me
like a broken branch from a forgetful tree.
Please, if anyone passes by
and stumbles across it,
perhaps in a suitcase
open to the sky,
or engraved on a rock
like a gaping wound,
or wrapped
in the blankets of emigrants,
or canceled
like a losing lottery ticket,
or helplessly forgotten
in Purgatory,
or rushing forward without a goal
like the questions of children,
or rising with the smoke of war,
or rolling in a helmet on the sand,
or stolen in Ali Baba's jar,
or disguised in the uniform of a policeman
who stirred up the prisoners
and fled,
or squatting in the mind of a woman
who tries to smile,
or scattered like the dreams
of new immigrants in America.
If anyone stumbles across it,
return it to me, please.
Please return it, sir.
Please return it, madam.
It is my country...
I was in a hurry
when I lost it yesterday.

"I Was in a Hurry" by Dunya Mikhail, translated by Elizabeth Winslow, from The War Works Hard, copyright 1993, 1997, 2000, 2005 by Dunya Mikhail. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

 

More:

Revisiting Iraq Through The Eyes Of An Exiled Poet

 

Iraq War – 10 Years Later

 

Writing the War Out: How One Veteran Has Used Writing to Confront Trauma - Nina Porzucki

Fire and Forget: Stories from the Long War -

 

Credible Information, 1999 - 2003 - Mark Pawlak
Dear George Bush - Kristin Prevallet

Artist of the Day: Still - Kat Hannah

still

Although the title of this strange and wonderful painting suggests stillness, peace, tranquility, that thin red hoop illustrates the nature this day, (mine), perfectly.

Some days you jump through hoops. Or, skip on one foot, then the other through whatever hoops are in your path. Other days it's possible to dodge them altogether. And then there are days when you float through very slowly.

What is your experience with making it through hoops?
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artist bio: I'm Kat Hannah and I create imaginative, yet strangely familiar figures, with the occasional oddly behaving animal thrown in the mix. Following a fine art degree in sculpture, primarily of large metal found objects, painting of a narrative nature has emerged as my primary focus. These figures, at times bittersweet and reflective – are much like the times in our lives.

Artist of the Day: Dogwood - Carolyn Cochrane

dogwood
 
daffodils

tulips

hyacinth

dogwood

It does not phase me at all, I mean one little bit, that it snowed all day.

I'm resolved the snow is just spring in disguise.

---
artist bio: Hello! I'm Carolyn Cochrane, a 35 year old self-taught photographer with a passion for creating beautiful images inspired by nature. My eyes are always scanning my surroundings for meaning and beauty. I've always been captivated by color, textures, shapes and light. From the time I was very young, I've been a crafty right-brained gal, fascinated by art. For years I searched for the right way to express myself creatively but could never find the perfect fit. I've dabbled in music, painting, jewelry making, scrap booking, crocheting…the list goes on and on. When I finally gave photography a try at the age of 32, I knew I had found my true passion. I've always been so enchanted by the beauty and wonder of our natural world. There's nothing I love more than being outside on a beautiful day with my camera. My photography has a pure, clean, uncomplicated style. For me, the simplest of subjects are often the most powerful. I am smitten with the process of digitally enhancing my images. Creating different moods through the use of color, light and texture is the best form of expression I've ever found. A little piece of my heart and soul is in each image I create. I especially LOVE colors and the moods they evoke. To me enhancing the color in my images is like painting, but without the mess! Nothing thrills me more than when an image I create has an impact on someone else. It's my hope that my work will inspire and touch you. Our world is full of such beauty and it is my ultimate pleasure to share it with you. Sometimes photography can take us where words can't. 

Artist of the Day: the bird had flown - Brooke Schmidt

brooke schmidt

'In the window full of ferns
there hung a birdcage, unlocked.
The birds had flown, all but one
that lingered in the green, its three
notes of wood and water climbing
through the fronds, the miles and
miles before it enchanting the
recollection of flights in a previous
life before the egg.'

Kintnersville, Pennsylvania based artist Brooke Schmidt's found poem constructions are lovely. So are her Polaroids taken on a vintage SX-70 Polaroid Land Camera.
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artist bio: I work in a little white studio in my backyard in Pennsylvania surrounded by boxes and trays of book words, cocoons, bird skulls, feathers, tiny bottles, pieces of garnet, leaves, wings, chunks of beeswax and measuring tapes. My degree is in painting but I mainly work nowadays on paper ~ sewing, collaging, poem-forming and sculpting from unusual materials. My altered books include my narrative prose and poetry, often gleaned from within the framework of what is found inside the book; finding my words as part of a larger story already told, much like we do in life. Some of my work deals with brevity and solitude and the awkwardness of life, while other works are about connection, cycles, fullness, beauty. The beauty of living, however it is done. I love using objects and images that are symbolic of these ideas, like wishbones, feathers and ocean waves. My polaroids are taken with an SX-70 Polaroid Land Camera with mostly expired Polaroid 600 film. Instant film delights me and the hunt, capture and whirr of the process is deeply fulfilling. I photograph my daily life and travels.

Music & Poetry Mash Up: The Gods Are in the Valley - Dana Levine + Rabbit Runs a Destiny - Duquette Johnston

churny

Rabbit Runs a Destiny

+

The Gods Are in the Valley
The mind sports god-extensions.

It's the mountain from which
the tributaries spring: self, self, self, self—

rivering up
on curling plumes
from his elaborate
head-piece

of smoke.

His head's on fire.

Like a paleolithic shaman
working now in the realm of air, he

folds his hands—

No more casting bones
for the consulting seeker, this gesture

seems to mean.
Your business, his flaming head suggests,

is with your thought-machine.

How it churns and churns.

Lord Should and Not-Enough,
Mute the Gigantor, looming dumb

with her stringy hair—

Deadalive Mom-n-Dad (in the sarcophagi
of parentheses

you've placed them)—

He's a yogi, your man
with a hat of smoke. Serene, chugging out streams

of constructed air...

Mind's an accident
of bio-wiring, is one line of thinking.

We're animals that shit out
consciousness, is another.

The yogi says:
you must understand yourself

as projected vapor.
Thus achieve your

superpower.
 

Artist of the Day: Dream Beast - Tracy Stokes

beast

bunny

hatted

elvis

I discovered this artist earlier, but haven't been close to a computer since early morning. Looking at these paintings is a fine way to close the day.
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artist bio: My name is Tracy. I'm a self-taught mixed media artist living & painting on the slopes of Devil's Peak in Cape Town. I was born at the tip of Africa and grew up in the desert landscape of Namibia where I spent my childhood years playing in the dust, stepping on thorns and running free in dry riverbeds.As soon as I was old enough to leave home, I headed back for the bright lights of Cape Town. London followed a few years later, and before I knew it, I was married, with two children and pushing forty. For a while I thought I’d never get home again. But my homing instinct was strong, and I found my way back to the Mother City in 2008. Once safely ensconced at the foot of Table Mountain, I started creating, and I haven’t stopped since. This is how I really found my way back home. These days I spend my time painting, exploring the delights of the local countryside and hanging out with my family and other fun folks. My website: http://wildish.co.za
My Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/TracyStokesArt