I just finished reading Edward Hirsch's The Demon and the Angel: Searching for the Source of Artistic Inspiration. It's a fascinating read – he draws from all sorts of different sources, from Poetry to Painting to Modern Dance to Jazz, with lots of other digressions along the way. He takes Lorca's idea of the Duende …
poem seed – The Accident
By a convoluted process of link-surfing, I recently ran into a Les Murray poem – The Mare Out on the Road – that I first came across a couple of years ago in The Biplane Houses (Black Ink, 2006). It's an interesting poem for a lot of reasons. Structure for one – sort of "pantoum meets fugue, …
NaPoWriMo 09 – day 30 (and end!)
Imago A box, made of some dark wood with no scent, no discernible grain. Inlaid into the lid, a scene of welcome made from scales that shone like pearls in shallow water. A man and his daughter and a tree with arching limbs. Shall I tell you about angels? There was no latch, no lock, …
NaPoWriMo 09 – day 29
An Unusual Affection for Paperclips I am growing older, stiffer in knees and hips. How could I not admire the flexibility of paperclips? * Pleasure comes from simple things. Behold a child with a box of coloured paperclips! * Chaos is the final order, and settles among my things. I hold it at bay with bookmarks, …
NaPoWriMo 09 – day 28
Mending You are sitting close to the light, intent on thread and needle and the lining of my good coat, trailing like a slipped wing. Outside, snow has started falling again. You taught me to sew. Strange craft for a husband perhaps, and you learned it young. Frowning, you deftly unpick what I had tacked …
A Dark Feathered Art 