Pinus contorta – Shore Pine – Washington Coast
Islands, Ocean, Mainland and Cascade Mountains
Bill Moyers Interviews Oregon’s Barry Lopez
Barry Lopez has lived in the foothills of the Oregon Cascade mountains for 40 years. As a younger man he was a landscape photographer. He is unsurpassed as a western naturalist, scientist and philosopher. He is of course a journalist. His grasp of humanity is deep and highly spiritual. He sees the human situation as …
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Theodore Roethke In Seattle
_____________________________________________ From The Univesity of Washington Archives ____________________________________________________ From - The Stranger - Seattle Weekly Publication TUESDAY, MAY 15, 2012 BOOKS Heather McHugh Is Giving the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Reading at UW on Thursday posted by CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE on TUE, MAY 15, 2012 at 4:18 PM DAVID BELISLE Heather McHugh, the certified genius—by The Stranger and then, a few months later, …
Valerie & T.S. Eliot
An interesting character sketch and story. One that brings both people to life in a clear, crisp way. Valerie Eliot B. 1926 | By SAM ANDERSON Valerie and T. S. Eliot in 1957. (Angus McBean, from Houghton Library, Harvard University) SURELY SOMETHING HAS GONE WRONG WITH TIME. How else to explain that T. S. Eliot’s second wife, …
Huang Po (Huangbo Xiyun) ~ 黄檗希運 ~ zen buddhist ~ Chinese ~ Tang Dynasty ~ 850AD
Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love Huang Po taught his students they were already enlightened. I know of one student of Zen who threw a translation of Huang Po out of his apartment window, and the book, like a block of wood, made it, on more than one occasion, into an open trash can …
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Katharine Coles – Utah Poet
Hawks By Katharine Coles At the feeder finches scatter, then, Inches over the house, dragging their shadows, Two hawks sweep down into the canyon, Falling, ignoring paralyzed rabbit and vole, Wings pitched like sails to the wind, holding, Down to the crux where day’s pooled heat begins Its updraft, lifted by evening cool— The hawks, …
Human Psychology & Bacteria Intelligence
Illustration from Seed magazine It is inevitable that we learn about human psychology from other living creatures. It is proving that bacteria is a source of rich insights and an incredible wealth of scientific learning and understanding. This will proceed assuming that we put our arrogance and high place in the universe aside and look …
Poetics of Imagination – Northrop Frye
Frye stumbles on the idea of archetypal structure in literature. It resonates with Jungian thought, Gaston Bachelard, James Hillman and others in that poetics comes before philosophy or psychology. It seems to me that there is biological, deep structure, integration of the image and poetics, a structure that cannot be deconstructed but is elemental to human …
Distortion Is Character – Brian Eno
A very learned and wise monologue on art, creativity and character.
Kenneth Rexroth on Morris Graves – 1955
It is rare that a towering intellect will let an artist have the last words on the judgement of his own work and worth. But Rexroth has done just that here in this 1955 piece. This essay is a wide-ranging contemplation of Graves when he was in his prime. Rexroth was in his prime as …
Whidbey Island – 1854
Plate 68: Mount Rainier and Whidbey Island. Engraving by John M. Stanley, 1854. (Click to enlarge). From: University of Washington Library Archives #NA4173. Note: We'll go with the spelling of Whidbey.
Northwest Polytheism – James Hillman
"The power of myth, its reality, resides precisely in its power to seize and influence psychic life. The Greeks knew this so well, and so they had no depth psychology and psychopathology such as we have. They had myths. And we have no myths as such—instead, depth psychology and psychopathology. Therefore…psychology shows myths in modern …
An Island Neighbor – Haliaeetus leucocephalus washingtoniensis
"The Haida believed both animals and people had souls, which were essentially the same. The bodies of different animals were merely their "canoes" and all were capable of assuming other forms at will; "or better, they possessed a human form, and assumed their other forms when consorting with men." The killer whales were believed to …
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Czeslaw Milosz – A Treatise On Poetry
From the Preface - A Treatise On Poetry, 2001, HarperCollins, NY, translated by Robert Haas: First, plain speech in the mother tongue. Hearing it you should be able to see, as if in a flash of summer lightning, Apple trees, a river, a bend of a road. And it should contain more than images. Singsong …
Greys Harbor Littoral – Seagrass of the Pacific Ocean
Diego Rivera – Detroit Mural
Behold the Sun
San Francisco Poet – FERLINGHETTI: A REBIRTH OF WONDER – Theatrical Trailer
Richard Serra – Art Installations
I am posting two installations by the San Francisco installation artist Richard Serra. The first is a neon installation that accompanies a row of horse tacks. This image suggests the domination of the natural over technology and is calming in its repetition of natural forms. The second installation reflects Serra's traditional large scale work, however …
The Absence – Paul Eluard
The Absence I speak to you across cities I speak to you across plains My mouth is upon your pillow Both faces of the walls come meeting My voice discovering you I speak to you of eternity O cities memories of cities Cities wrapped in our desires Cities come early cities come lately Cities strong …
Italo Calvino – Mr Palomar’s Philosophical Book of Mental Illustrations, Or Poets, Take Back The World.
Mr Palomar is an accomplished practitioner of zen buddhism. He is astute at seeing what is before him as it is. Where he gets into trouble is when seeing, or being, is not enough and he needs to develop his strategies and plans together with his angst at trying to do the right thing in …
Hope Gangloff – And This
Hope Gangloff – American Visual Artist
An amazing representation of American character, below the radar of hype. Hope Gangloff sees the reality of humans surrounding her and shows us them without the filters of commercialism, politics or ideology. http://www.hopegangloff.com/drawings.html
Sunrise This Morning
Fractals, Calculus and Jackson Pollock
“You’ve got to deny, ignore, and destroy a hell of a lot to get at truth.” - Jackson Pollock I enjoy viewing fractals and especially like the fact that they are more than a line, they show a surface too. (I do take pleasure in a creature showing itself.) Also, and perhaps most importantly, they do …
David Remnick – Art of The Profile – The New Yorker
“The Practice of the Wild” – Gary Snyder
January Waiting On the Edge
Coast Douglas-firs Reaching for the Sun
George Steiner – Paris Review
It is a very peculiar climate, summed up by that man of undoubted genius, Monsieur Derrida, when he says that every text is a “pretext.” This is one of the most formidably erroneous, destructive, brilliantly trivial wordplays ever launched. Meaning what? That whatever the stature of the poem, it waits for the deconstructive commentator; it …
Czeslaw Milosz – The Angels – Polish Production
The video for the line spoken by Czeslaw Milosz. Production completed with the participation of students in the art school under the supervision of Monica Opole Nowojskiej. Content of the poem: Czeslaw Milosz - The Angels You deducted white robes, Wings and even the existence, However, I believe you, Messengers. Where on the left side …
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Haida Animal People – Pacific
"The Haida believed both animals and people had souls, which were essentially the same. The bodies of different animals were merely their "canoes" and all were capable of assuming other forms at will; "or better, they possessed a human form, and assumed their other forms when consorting with men." The killer whales were believed to …
for this time only
“Ichigo-Ichie ” Once-in-a-Lifetime Ichi-go ichi-e (一期一会, literally “one time, one meeting”) is a Japanese term that describes a cultural concept often linked with famed tea master Sen no Rikyu. The term is often translated as “for this time only,” “never again,” or “one chance in a lifetime.”Ichi-go ichi-e is linked with Zen Buddhism and concepts …
The Quiet American – Graham Greene
photo credit: Clay Enos Graham Greene has a very European take on life that is artfully described in this book. The setting is Vietnam, Saigon, in the mid-fifties and while there is an ongoing stream of events that take place in his time there as a journalist, it is his relationship with his Vietnamese woman, …
Disorientation – The Eternal in the Moment.
Marek Zyga captures a classical elegance and mystery in his sculpted figures. Having viewed the forms we seek possession, perhaps obsession - we want to know more: the history, the story, the actions, when they breathe and move again. Background: Mr Zyga's studio is in Poland near the German and Czech borders. He is exhibiting …
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Gary Synder – A Curse
Volcano Woman - Wayne Young - Northwest Coast (Nisga’a / Haida) acrylic on paper 30" x 23" 2005 ----------------------------------------- He Who Hunted Birds in His Father's Village The Dimensions of a Haida Myth Gary Synder The Curse From the Foreward: "A curse on monocultural industrial civilization and its almost deified economic and political systems that compete, exploit, an …
David Ferry’s Beautiful Theft – Dan Chiasson
Poetry is innately related to theft. The lyre was invented, the Greeks tell us, by Hermes, who then gave the instrument to Apollo as compensation for stealing cattle. One reason people’s aversion to poetry sometimes passes over into strong annoyance, or even resentment, is that poems steal our very language out from under us and …
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Sensing a Path
If genius is profuse, never ending - stuck in the middle of a work is - the wrong track, Genius is the track seen. Once seen it is impossible to keep from it. The superficial definitions, such as "genius is industry, genius is hard work, etc. " are nonsense. It is to see the track, …
N + 1: The Intellectual Situation
N + 1 has published an essay in their November, 2012 issue titled, "The Intellectual Situation". It is a frolic through the current "serious" national commercial literary front, with assorted, some frontal others just a hip bump, attacks on The Atlantic, Harpers, The New Yorker and finally the Paris Review. The subtext is how each …
Albin Brunovsky – Adam & Eve
Many of Brunovsky's illustrations are explorations of Adam and Eve characters; they are depicted in the midst of the natural world of plants and trees and are captured in ways that promote a very strong affinity to their surroundings - the same makeup, the same DNA perhaps. The humans look like they belong in their …
Pacific Return
Impressions of “Dispatches” by Michael Herr
Leading Image: The Desire and the Satisfaction, 1893 (pastel on card), by Jan Theodore Toorop (1858–1928) Impressions of "Dispatches" by Michael Herr I am a long way into Dispatches and I remember the experience like I do my own dreams. Herr's book is poetic in force: showing the inside of Herr's brain more than most authors …
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The Dead and the Living
The dead surround the living. The living are the core of the dead. In this core are the dimensions of time and space. What surrounds the core is timelessness. from Hold Everything Dear - John Berger
John Muir’s Description of The Pacific Northwest in 1901
"The vast Pacific Coast reserves in Washington and Oregon--the Cascade, Washington, Mount Rainier, Olympic, Bull Run, and Ashland, named in order of size--include more than 12,500,000 acres of magnificent forests of beautiful and gigantic trees. They extend over the wild, unexplored Olympic Mountains and both flanks of the Cascade Range, the wet and the dry. …
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Janus, in Ovid’s Poem “Fasti”
From Ovid's Poem "Fasti" (8 AD) "See how Janus appears first in my song To announce a happy year for you, Germanicus. Two-headed Janus, source of the silently gliding year, The only god who is able to see behind him, Be favourable to the leaders, whose labours win Peace for the fertile earth, peace for the seas: Be …
Bolivia Enshrines Natural World’s Rights With Equal Status for Mother Earth
photo: Esto es Bolivia Bolivia enshrines natural world's rights with equal status for Mother Earth Law of Mother Earth expected to prompt radical new conservation and social measures in South American nation John Vidal in La Paz ,The Guardian, Sunday 10 April 2011 13.17 EDT Bolivia is set to pass the world's first laws granting all …
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Native Grove of Rhododendrons
Along the hiking trail at Greenbank Farms woods in central Whidbey Island.
The First Time On The Pacific
The First Time On The Pacific just eighteen. my nerves were adjusted. not only the speed but the direction. the pattern of rush lifted from stars and space, the place between planets and each other. is it black? what does it hold? the place we can't see, cannot understand. but we feel it. it shoots …
Nikky Finney – Poet
2011 National Book Award in Poetry - Head Off & Split Background http://nikkyfinney.net/index.html Lead photo by Forrest Clonts
West Pacific Review 