Ivan Illich & Jerry Brown – Natural Affinities?
THE ART OF SUFFERING by Jerry Brown When in 1976, I first met Ivan Illich at the Green Gulch Farm, he told me that his current focus was the study of economics. Then, I didn't understand that by the word economics, Illich meant a way of life where things are experienced only under assumptions of …
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Annie Leibovitz Interview
The Underside of Silicon Valley – Rebecca Solnit
Solnit is a San Francisco native and has written about the town from many perspectives including art, photography and geography. This article appears in "Tom Dispatch" and is part of a dark take on the current explosion of revelations on government spying and recently the FBI's admission that it is using drones domestically. From both …
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Organic in Cascadia: A Sequence of Energies – Paul E Nelson
Saul Bellow: Letters
Excellent writing about a master of fiction and American life. Saul Bellow: Letters In the newly published collected correspondence of Saul Bellow... BY LEO ROBSON PUBLISHED 11 NOVEMBER 2010 Letters Saul Bellow, edited by Benjamin Taylor Penguin, 571pp, £30 "Of course I am not a Freudian," Saul Bellow wrote to Philip Roth in 1974. "For one fierce …
Thinking Out Loud
Only citizens through their responsive government can monitor and guide the behaviour of corporations and their interaction with people and the natural, fragile earth. We need more people who are intelligent, informed, and unbiased and who articulate the truths that media won't.-rlw
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 – 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
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 …
“The Practice of the Wild” – Gary Snyder
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 …
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 …
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 …
Literary Estimations – Gore Vidal on Italo Calvino
Gore Vidal has always been highly intelligent, disciplined and cranky, and as this video shows, has left himself open to being dismantled due to his use of crude attacks on literary colleagues - not only attacks, but outright belittlement. No one can relish the idea of going up against his sharp tongue. However, by doing …
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William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) – America Breaking Away To Find Its Voice.
Louise Erdrich
Louise is a very powerful woman, speaker and individual. In twenty minutes she is able to frame a profile of the Native American expereince.
The San Francisco Renaissance – Kenneth Rexroth
Czeslaw Milosz – Biography – The Wilno Poet Under California Skies
Czeslaw Milosz - The Wilno Poet Under California Skies November 2012 It is not an anomaly to be transformed by the breadth and scope of the Northern California landscape. To stand on a mountain and look over the rocky shore and the expanse of the blue Pacific is a powerful sensation. While one's awe eventually …
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Gary Snyder – Thoreau Prize
THE VEXING SIMPLICITY OF NEIL YOUNG – Alec Wilkinson
OCTOBER 17, 2012 THE VEXING SIMPLICITY OF NEIL YOUNG POSTED BY ALEC WILKINSON I was a little surprised when Neil Young published his memoir, “Waging Heavy Peace,” because he is the only artist I have ever encountered who is proud of not reading. Reading would distract him from writing songs, he once told me, meaning interfere …
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Seattle and Its Mayor, Mike McGinn – Were We Ever a Civilized Part of the World?
Seattle and Its Mayor - Were We Ever a Civilized Part of the World? Seattle, like the rest of the nation, has decided that cordiality - respect of opinion and differences - is yesterday's practice. Several months ago a local journalist said this: "I honestly believe that Mayor Mike McGinn is the worst office …
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Scientists Adopt Tiny Washington Island as a Warming Bellwether
Matthew Ryan Williams for The New York Times Cathy Pfister is part of a team of scientists conducting research on Tatoosh Island, Wash. By STACEY SOLIE Published: October 6, 2012 fi Scientists Adopt Tiny Island as a Warming Bellwether By STACEY SOLIE TATOOSH ISLAND, Wash. — From a stretch of rocky shoreline on this tiny island, one …
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THEREFORE, YE SOFT PIPES, PLAY ON – ECHOVAR
PHOTO BY AP PHOTO/PAUL SAKUMA
Poem – Living Beings – Near a Western Red Cedar
we are the same as those who came before. yet our distance from our kind is great. do we not see that we the living, all of the living, are a clan? each with natures unique but living and this simple fact: our being. existence is a bond so great in this vast universe of …
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Walt Whitman’s Advice to Poets
From the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass: “Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat …
Richard Avedon
"You can't get at the thing itself, the real nature of the sitter, by stripping away the surface. The surface is all you've got. You can only get beyond the surface by working with the surfce. All you can do is to manipulate the surface—gesture, costume, expression—radically and correctly. And I think Schiele understood …
Lincoln – Poetics, Character, Precipice of War and Human Design.
Lincoln - Poetics, Character, Precipice of War and Human Design. Upon reading Edmund Wilson's profile of Lincoln in "Patriotic Gore - Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War," I am taken by the literary and poetic drama of the account. Lincoln is shown to be chiefly literary in character — it is what …
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Crete Spring: An Appreciation for James Hillman (1926 – 2011) by Louise Steinman
An excellent personal story about Hillman as a commemoration of his recent death.
West Pacific Review 