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ools and tall pines surrounding the much newer barnes museum and to stop at buena onda for fish tacos the calder gardens were designed by piet oudolf and are lovely evoking plains or meadows in the midst of a very urban environment the landscaping proves that pollinators will find their way to plants even when surrounded by traffic and skyscrapers delicate grasses were setting seeds when we arrived giving an airy lightness to what was a typical hot muggy summer in the city day bees and butterflies were as busy as the streets i have to say that i don t much like the museum s exterior but the interior architecture suits calder s works perfectly the galleries are unexpected curving textured with walls that range from wood to lava like to smoothly polished stone and they feature niches for seating and gazing in addition to huge windows that look out onto calder s larger stabiles that are situated in well like below ground outdoor spaces lighting allows intriguing shadows to be cast by the mobiles a soundscape softly fills one of the galleries docents offer detailed talks and answer visitor questions the whole place though on the small side in terms of quantity is a memorable experience on our way to the calder gardens we passed the monumental philadelphia museum of art and noticed that part of the parkway and the oval were blocked off there was a huge array of theater lights and speakers that technicians were raising in front of the museum s famous steps if we d visited toward the end of the week we d have found the parkway considerably more limited oh right july 4 in philadelphia always mayhem but this year the semiquincentennial we avoid independence day in philadelphia because i don t care for crowds though i ve been known to make exceptions for a march or a concert not to mention the traffic and parking or the fact that philadelphia in july is miserably hot and humid absolutely without exception anyway the nation s 250th doesn t feel all that celebratory to me i suppose i have become cynical but seeing all the setup in center city took me back to philadelphia on july 4 1976 when my family lived across the river in new jersey my parents they must have been crazy drove us into the city for the evening s bicentennial party i had just turned 18 my sister was 16 our brother was almost 12 we saw the musical 1776 on the big lawn in front of independence hall no lawn there now it s the liberty bell center we then walked around the city going from park to park to watch the fireworks the five of us holding hands sometimes trying to stay together and not get separated in the crowd an enormous crowd it was exhilarating and a bit scary and i recall thinking that it gave me a sense of what a war zone must feel like all those bangs and booms so loud and so frequent i could feel the vibrations in my body and sprays and fountains of light overhead and actual fountains reflecting sparklers and fireworks warning lights streetlamps cars driving past honking people singing and shouting there were protesters too but despite the protests we applauded their efforts and the right of citizens to protest and despite the presence of police and federal troopers i don t recall feeling fearful or anxious it may be the closest i ve ever gotten to feeling patriotic well i was very young and i wasn t following the controversies very closely curious about said controversies see this article i was aware of conflict and division in the usa but youth tends toward optimism and energy i was excited about art music books my college education that was 50 years ago there s much i have forgotten but the arts haven t let me down in all those years poetry sculpture music painting dance and the humanities sustain me still share this share on x opens in new window x share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on threads opens in new window threads share on bluesky opens in new window bluesky share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr more share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest share on reddit opens in new window reddit like loading 1 comment posted in aesthetics art ekphrasis and art talk nature and gardens tagged alexander calder art bicentennial calder gardens fourth of july garden museums philadelphia philadelphia museum of art piet oudolf sculpture workshops jun 28 ah summer historically not the best season for writing as far as i am concerned the garden yard and outdoor activities tend to take precedence over sitting with a notebook or in front of a screen sending out or revising work gets shunted to rainy days or to days so blisteringly hot and humid that i m forced to stay indoors with the dreaded air conditioner going so it is a bit out of the ordinary that i have participated in not one but two online poetry workshops this june and they were worthwhile first was a workshop sponsored by one art online magazine mark danowsky and louisa schnaithmann editors in which erin murphy read defined and gave examples of demi sonnets a form of her own invention she discussed using the form and offered suggestions for revising poems using the demi sonnet she had us writing to a prompt and revising one of our longer drafts to fit into a 7 line stanza an excellent practice for learning to be more concise the practice is fun and was useful to me i had already tried my hand at demi sonnets and at 7 line poems but using the process and form for revision was enlightening readers you must check out her work she has published lots of poetry collections later in the month lesley wheeler s poetry from the underworld was a 3 hour online workshop sponsored by sara ann winn of poet camp i ve been a fan of lesley s work and of lesley herself for some time now and thus jumped at the opportunity to attend a workshop with her wheeler had us explore the variety of ways we can consider the underworld and write about it or use the concept as a starting or ending point or metaphor for our work think about it hell persephone inanna spelunking oceans tunnels subways archaeology burrows mycorrhiza drilling depressive episodes digging death sigmund freud the unconscious yes the possibilities are nearly endless for poets she then covered quite a few revision process options and let us hear how her poem sex talk developed a moving personal and craft based discussion that all of us learned from i think kudos and gratitude writers or at least i need interaction with others who understand the purpose of and necessity for feedback fresh ideas process notes and further learning about the complicated work we try to do when in person meetings are not easily available i m grateful that there are people like mark and louisa and sara ann who are willing to make the effort to create online virtual spaces for workshops and critique groups meeting places for introverts and quasi hermits and gardeners and older folks or people with disabilities who cannot easily get out much i know how much coordinating and planning and pr is involved and i send love out to all of the humans who are willing to do this job i might also add that both of these workshops were very modestly priced not free teachers and facilitators need to be paid for their work that s important but not out of reach for those who haven t got lots of extra spending money it s a challenging balancing act thank heaven for people who care about the arts 3 share this share on x opens in new window x share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on threads opens in new window threads share on bluesky opens in new window bluesky share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr more share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest share on reddit opens in new window reddit like loading 4 comments posted in books poetry teaching pedagogy writing tagged arts demi sonnet erin murphy form lesley wheeler one art a journal of poetry poems poet camp poetry poetry workshop revision summer underworld virtual not a luxury jun 19 i ve just finally gotten around to reading salman rushdie s memoir knife in which he writes a rt challenges orthodoxy to reject or vilify that art because it does that is to fail to understand its nature art sets the artist s passionate personal vision against the received ideas of its time art knows that received ideas are the enemies of art clichés are received ideas and so are ideologies without art our ability to think to see freshly and to renew our world would wither and die art is not a luxury it stands at the essence of our humanity and it asks for no special protection except the right to exist it accepts argument criticism even rejection it does not accept violence salman rushdie there are others who ve said this i think immediately of audre lorde poetry is not a luxury it is a vital necessity of our existence it forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change first made into language then into idea then into more tangible action poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought the farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives what makes a person really a writer really an artist is in my mind this quality of necessity and of the right to exist regardless of whether the nation state government religion or other ideology suggests that one ought to shut up for many years i questioned whether i was or would ever be really a writer now i feel that i am regardless of what the academy the current aesthetic the powers that be might say there s a deep contentment that accompanies this feeling somehow or other i got here it has little to do with publication or public acknowledgment and even less to do with remuneration maybe it s age crone wisdom anyone so for any of my readers who are younger people by which i mean under 55 who feel like impostors or dilettantes or who question whether they deserve the title of a serious writer i m going to suggest that you keep writing and endure and maybe stop asking yourself so many questions about your worth you don t have to be famous or acknowledged to be a writer you just have to be dedicated to writing and to learning about writing there s value even in that in looking hard at the rock experiences of your daily life and endeavoring to make something of those experiences stay curious stay unorthodox a recent anecdote to illustrate for a few years now i have been revising and revising a challenging poem that says something that is important to me even though the idea came from someone else i finally realized it would have to be a persona poem and would need to use the person s actual words as a starting point it s a poem about a major breach of faith a sad piece that questions orthodoxy in a significant way in a way that is braver than i would be able to do myself once i finally got the poem to work i had no idea who would want to publish it my best beloved found this poem troubling which is a reaction i m happy with because it should be troubling to readers that was the point and then i saw a call from a journal i have admired and read online for quite awhile looking for thorny pieces on this sort of topic working with the unorthodox isn t easy anyway the poem s been accepted i m thrilled i m a writer the poem is here scroll down quite a bit or better yet read the work in this issue of persimmon tree share this share on x opens in new window x share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on threads opens in new window threads share on bluesky opens in new window bluesky share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr more share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest share on reddit opens in new window reddit like loading 8 comments posted in art books poetry writing tagged art audre lorde book luxury memoir persona poem poetry salman rushdie writers ghost metaphors jun 15 i recently read a new yorker article about misophonia that referred to the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard chalkboards they were in every classroom throughout my schooling but by the time my own children were in sixth grade a middle school remodeling push had replaced them with whiteboards the college where i taught had whiteboards as do most boardrooms meeting places etc an occasional squeak of a too dry marker is about as aurally annoying as it gets who uses chalkboards anymore maybe the occasional cafe for daily specials and therefore why do we still use fingernails on a chalkboard when we want to describe something extremely irritating like many other phrases and images that phrase is frozen into our language there are hosts of them if you stop and think about it 33rpm albums may be back for some niche music listeners but most people under 20 have never actually heard a broken record pop culture moves so quickly what do young people think it means when blondie s debbie harry says she s in a phone booth ringing the telephone off the wall if they even happen to hear that song i think of these as ghost similes or metaphors still haunting our language long after the origins have gone out of date some of them hang around for decades maybe centuries others fade like last year s popular lingo i consider these things when i m working on a poem what will the words mean decades from now or to a person in another culture or to a very elderly reader it s not that i think my poems will be read decades from now heck they don t have a lot of readers even today but because poems convey information and imagery in order to evoke interpretation and to create pleasurable sound and rhythm poets need to think about the words we employ and why we use them allusions metaphors the lively sounds of slang or dialect popular culture or political references scientific terms various kinds of jargon words from languages other than english they are all words the writer s main tools and it can be harder than you d think to get the right tool for the job at the same time i don t want to overthink it gets in the way of writing poetry i seriously doubt that emily dickinson gave a second thought about being picked up in a carriage by death horse drawn carriages were a part of everyday life when whitman wrote of fishermen seining for menhaden on the long island shores a paumanok picture it s unlikely he thought the word mossbonkers would send readers running to a dictionary if we have to look up some words today to get a clear idea of what s happening in a poem i see no problem with that besides the whitman poem is so clear in its description we don t really need to an aside i just read a curated selection of ursula le guin s blog posts no time to spare written mostly between 2010 and 2015...