February 28, 2020

The Music

Music of the Aztecs

…The music remains
in imagination.





Lines by Ethan Goffman from The Music of the Aztecs 
and photo by Jan Claire

February 24, 2020

Jung Connections: The Eternal Flux

Starting Jung 

If you would like to study the works and ideas of C.G. Jung, a good place to start is with his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, which can be found at the Internet Archive and Amazon.

“Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome.  Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away-an ephemeral apparition…  Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux.” ~ Carl Gustav Jung





Photo by Jan Claire and quotation from Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections
Jung, C. G. 1875-1961. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. New York: Pantheon Books, 1963.

February 22, 2020

Spring In February

Petals in Cold

Spring came in February
this year—magnolia
blossoms on campus trees’
bare boughs, dogwood
blossoms in white clouds…



 

Lines from Homeless God Bless by David B. Churchill
and painting by artist Carolyn Taylor

February 20, 2020

Glorious Blue

More Oceans

I wish there were more oceans
holding glorious blue cold
waters swelling with islands…



 

Lines by John MacDonald from The Music of the Aztecs 
and photo by Jan Claire

February 19, 2020

Emergence

The Secretaries

Stenographers emerge from mariposa hibernation.

Lovers in silk Armani suits.




 

Lines by Alan Britt from The Music of the Aztecs 
and video by Tonkadale Greenhouse

February 18, 2020

Inspiring Artists, Series 1: Welz-Stein

Catrin Welz-Stein 

From her blog "digital artworks by CWStein"
“In 2009 Catrin started to create digital images by collaging old illustrations and photographs. At the same time she discovered online social networks and her private images were then open to the public. The positive responses Catrin got there were her motivation to go on with her art until now.”

Other links where you may purchase her work:

REDBUBBLE
ARTFLAKES


You can also find her on Facebook and Instagram.





Photo by Jan Claire 

February 14, 2020

Just as She

Casablanca

Trying to forget her, just as she walks in
through the door. One of those nights
I had a drink and lost myself on a street
Where all of the buildings were white.




 

Lines by Reid Baron from The Music of the Aztecs 
and photo by Jan Claire

February 11, 2020

Themes of Poetry: Last Looks

Helen Vendler Lectures on Poets: Stevens, Plath, Lowell, Bishop, and Merrill

From the A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts at The National Gallery of Art, Helen Vendler, A. Kingsley Porter University Professor, Harvard University.
In this lecture series, Vendler "considers the final works of five modern American poets… as they examine life and death 'in a single steady gaze.'"

 Last Looks, Last Books: The Binocular Poetry of Death
Part 1: Introduction

Part 2: Wallace Stevens

Part 3: Sylvia Plath

Part 4: Robert Lowell

Part 5: Elizabeth Bishop

Part 6: James Merrill




Photo by Jan Claire

February 6, 2020

A Glimpse

No Direction Home

I put another calendar in the drawer …
For a moment, a glimpse:
fifty years’ worth of old
calendars, then the drawer closes.


 


Lines from Poetry is Mindfulness by David B. Churchill 
and photo by NASA: Astronomy Picture of the Day


February 3, 2020

Right Before

Riding into Charles Street Station

…I imagined living near the river,
perhaps in the building I saw
right before entering the tunnel.
I would grow used to the sight of
trains before midnight and the black waters
after.




Lines from En Plein Air by Marianne Szlyk [forthcoming by PonyOneDog Press
and video by Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority

In the Beginning

Poet You constellate the myths, O royal oracle of archetypes. Photo and poem by Jan Claire

PonyOneDog