I’m not a systematic person, I never have been – and my guess is: I never will be … I work by chance (some of us call it synchronicity). Finishing book no. 7 on my reading-list first, is therefore definitively in line with my disposition. World Enough & Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down by…
Tag: Mark Doty
On-going reading list
plans for a never-ending summer Author Title 1. Julian Barnes Keeping an Eye Open: Essays on Art 2. Heidi Julavits The Folded Clock: A Diary 3. Sarah Manguso Ongoingness: The End of a Diary 4. Frances Morris, etc Agnes Martin 5. Nancy Princenthal Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art 6. Sally Mann Hold Still: A…
getting it!
From the perspective of the art critic: Art is not really seen until it’s narrated … Description is an ART to the degree that it gives us not just the world but the inner life of the witness. – Mark Doty …
perfectly useful concentration
What one seems to want in art, in experiencing it, is the same thing that is necessary for its creation, a self-forgetful, perfectly useless concentration. – Elizabeth Bishop, letter to Anne Stevenson, Jan. 1964 In the same boat: It’s very interesting to see how Bishop, in this short and powerful statement, parallels experiencing & creating…
I have fallen in love with a painting
Ekphrasis, writes Marjorie Munsterberg, is a particular kind of visual description and the oldest type of writing about art in the West. The goal of this literary form is to make the reader envision the thing described as if it were physically present. Homer’s description of Achilles’ shield in Book 18 of the Iliad stands at the beginning…
sub rosa 