a new poem
Read MoreThe song by Caroline Herring - Tales of the Islander - evokes the work and spirit of the wonderful artist, Walter Inglis Anderson who spent many of his days in nature wondering - and working with watercolors. Caroline and Walter help give us a connection with our home in the larger world of nature.
Read MoreSo-called “protest” songs represent all songs in a way - all songs protest something that stands in the way of human dreams coming true - all our songs summoning and strengthening compassionate response (whether it be for true love or political justice.)
Read MoreA poem inspired by the humerus and the role it plays in love
Read MoreThis is a paper I wrote for “The Art of Confessional Poetry” at Texas State University taught by Cyrus Cassells. I am reprinting it here since someone requested to see it. It is a long essay on some selected 20th century “confessional” poets.
Read MoreA poem on the tragic mysteries of war and the many compartments of the human heart.
Read MoreA story from an early “initiation” at Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo.
Read More“Frogs don't usually swallow water like we do. Instead they absorb most of the moisture they need through their skin.”
Read MoreThis is not a reflection upon the Stone’ new album
Read Morea poem I’ve written in memoriam to Louise Glück, one of the great and most courageous modern American poets
Read MoreWhen I was 16 and Bob Dylan 23, he played a concert with my guitar.
Read MoreEach thought, feeling and touch is the gateway to the bright unknown.
Read MoreIn 1972 I lived in Munich, Germany for a year studying music composition with a composer, Wolf Rosenberg. I rented a room in an apartment on Hohenzollern Strasse, where soon a very “bad guy” moved in.
Read MoreThe blues are a direct form of emotion turned into poetry and song. Most poetry comes from the same place as the blues, it’s a condition of being human, all-to-human in this glorious and troubling world.
Read Morea selection of photos by Giovanni Pescetto of Dr. Fritz Smith
Read MoreThe hand is not only the organ of labour, it is also the product of labour. Only by labour, by adaptation to ever new operations, through the inheritance of muscles, ligaments, and, over longer periods of time, bones that had undergone special development and the ever-renewed employment of this inherited finesse in new, more and more complicated operations, have given the human hand the high degree of perfection required to conjure into being the pictures of a Raphael, the music of a Paganini.
Read MoreThe line, “That phraseless Melody—The Wind does—working like a Hand,” inspired this August newsletter. How can our hands doing bodywork, playing instruments, touching loved ones, in all our gestures embody the graceful spirit that Emily Dickinson evokes here?
Read MorePianos strings are “mis-tuned” slightly - on purpose! Why?
Read MoreBone flutes are among the oldest known artifacts of human technological ingenuity.
Read MoreOn April 23, our son, Jake, and the love of his life, Lauren, got married. May we all share in the highest blessing of these two creative, wonderful people.
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