Happy Birthday, Beethoven - Violin Concerto in D. Major, Op. 61
Rosalyn Drexler - "Embrace" (1964)
From Thomas Merton
“So night comes. Then what?
You sit in the dark. What is wrong with that?“
- Thomas Merton, from “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”
From "The Coming of Light"
"Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows..."- Mark Strand
Gerhard Richter - "Two Candles (Zwei Kerzen)" - 1982
William Eggleston - Untitled (c. 1968-74) from "For Now"
William Eggleston - "Untitled, Biloxi, Mississippi" (1974)
If you've liked what you've seen on the site...
Consider checking out my book of poems, NORTH AMERICAN STADIUMS (paperback version now available).
Published by Milkweed Editions (2018), the book is described by Booklist as “Exquisite…Chambers executes a magic that is perhaps unique to poetry: he conjures a moment from nothing, draws the reader inside, and disperses the spell with something as gentle as a shift in the wind direction, or a quiet revelation…A crackling first act by a promising new poet.”
Thanks so much, and I hope you continue to enjoy the photos, poems, prose, and music here!
Emma Amos - Three Paintings
Emma Amos - “Seated Figure and Nude” (1966)
Emma Amos - “Godzilla” (1966)
Emma Amos - “Runners with Cheetah” (1983)
Richard Benson - Three Photographs
Barbara Benson, 1968 (copyright Richard Benson)
Woman, Luquillo, Puerto Rico, 1977-1982 (copyright Richard Benson)
Sarah Benson, 1978 (copyright Richard Benson)
From Psalm 139
Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven; thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.
If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me.
- Psalm 139: 7-11
On Art
“Greek writers had style; Latin writers had a style—each his own—which is a very different thing.
They knew that ‘art was to conceal art…’ ”
- Aubrey de Selincourt, in his introduction to Livy’s “The Early History of Rome”
Johannes Brahms - The "Rain" Sonata (Violina Sonata no. 1 in G Major)
David Means, from "Lightning Man"
To get away from Chicago, he bought the old family farm, rebuilt the big barn, installing along its roof line six rods with fat blue bulbs attached to thick braided aluminum wires dangling from the barn’s sides. The horizon in those parts let the sky win. Even the corn seemed to be hunching low in anticipation of the next strike. In the evenings he read Kant and began dating a woman named Stacy, a large-boned farm widow who dabbled in poetry and quote from T.S. Eliot, the whole first section of “Ash Wednesday,” for example, and entire scenes from The Cocktail Party. Nick was fifty now, lean from the fieldwork, with chronic back pain from driving the combine. But he loved the work. He loved the long stretches of being alone in the cab, listening to Mozart sonatas while the corn marched forward into the arch lights, eager to be engulfed by the mawing machine. Behind the cab—in the starlit darkness—emerged the bald swath of landscape.
- from “Lightning Man”, in the collection The Secret Goldfish
Thomas Merton, from "Contemplation in a World of Action"
Take the enjoyment of our daily bread. Bread is true, isn’t it? Well, I don’t know. Maybe one of the troubles with modern life is that bread is no longer true bread. But around here, in this monastery, we have good bread.
Things that are good are good; and if one is responding to that goodness, one is in contact with a truth from which one is getting something. The truth is doing us good. The truth of the sunshine, the truth of the rain, the truth of fresh air, the truth of the wind in the trees, these are truths. And they are always accessible!
Let us be exposed to these in such a way that they do us good, because they are very accessible forms of truth; and if we allow ourselves to be benefited by the forms of truth that are really accessible to us, instead of rejecting and disparaging and despising them as “merely natural,” we will be in a better position to profit by higher forms of truth when they come our way.
- Thomas Merton, from “Contemplation in a World of Action”
Two by Cezanne (at the PMOA in Philadelphia)
“Still Life With Flowers in an Olive Jar” - 1880
“Mont Saint Victoire” - 1902-1904
From Sappho
To have beauty is to have only that,
but to have goodness
is to be beautiful
too.
(26—LP 50, E58)
Three by Isadora Kosofsky
Jeanie, from Isadora Kosofsky’s series “The Three.” 2011, copyright Isadora Kosofsky
Jeanie and Will, from Isadora Kosofsky’s series “The Three.” 2011, copyright Isadora Kosofsky
Untitled, 2011. By Isadora Kosofsky, copyright Isadora Kosofsky
On Yom Kippur
As You separate sacred from profane,
separate us from our wrongful ways.
Give us a future—
our children countless as grains of sand.
Give us peace—
majestic and beautiful as the starry night.