Guy Davenport on Balthus

“…Both Balthus and Spencer give us the surface of the canvas as a mimesis of natural textures, not paint. In Picasso, Van Gogh, on out to…Pollock, it is paint. The difference is a philosophical one, perhaps even a religious one.

Spencer’s iconography of saws, ironwork, human flesh reseen without the authority of neoclassical conventions, kettles, drying laundry, the location of shadows in naked light, parallels Balthus’s return to a realism of an accomplished eye that demands accuracy of detail and that generalizes nothing.”

- Guy Davenport, from “A Balthus Notebook”

Jeune fille a la fenetre (1955)

Arcade Fire - "Wasted Hours"

Lael Neale - "All Good Things Will Come to Pass"

Peter Matthiessen, from "The Snow Leopard"

“There is so much that enchants me in this spare, silent place that I move softly so as not to break a spell. Because the taking of life has been forbidden by the Lama of Shey, bharal and wolves alike draw near the monastery. On the hills and in the stone beds of the river are fossils from blue ancient days when all this soaring rock lay beneath the sea. And all about are the prayer stones, prayer flags, prayer wheels, and prayer mills in the torrent, calling on all the elements in nature to join in celebration of the One.

What I hear from my tent is a delicate wind-bell and the river from the east, in this easterly wind that may bring a change in the weather. At daybreak, two great ravens come, their long toes scratching on the prayer walls.”

Kelsey Waldon - "Your Lone Journey"

Bonnie Raitt - "Streetlights"

Marilynne Robinson, from Gilead

“As I have said, I think she experienced a good deal of sorrow in those years. I have never asked, but one thing I have learned in my life is what settled, habitual sadness looks like, and when I saw her I thought, Where have you come from, my dear child? She came in during the first prayer and sat in the last pew and looked up at me, and from that moment hers was the only face I saw. I heard a man say once that Christians worship sorrow. That is by no means true. But we do believe there is a sacred mystery in it, it’s fair to say that. There is something in her face I have always felt I must be sufficient to, as if there is a truth in it that tests the meaning of what I say.”

The Robert Cray Band - "Change of Heart, Change of Mind"

"This Time" - Waylon Jennings

Cole Swensen - "Only"

It’s something to be sole—in fact, it’s the definition of a thing—to be discrete, integral, except that, of course nothing really is—a kernel nestled in its own palm. Thinking of only as lonely stripped of introspection—a stone on a beach about three inches long—not the beach, but the stone—and sovereign in the sun.

(from The American Poetry Review)