In his novel Ulysses, James Joyce wrote: Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access . . . Joyce’s quote reminds me of something Herbert Marcuse once said about art: Art [functions to] break open a dimension inaccessible to other experience, a dimension in which human beings, nature, and things no longer stand…
I wrote this poem ten years ago, and just recently rediscovered it. It’s a poem about beauty (and my Great Aunt Thelma). I visited her in Wisconsin and was enraptured for the entire visit. It was the only time I spent with her as an adult, and it was also the last. Shortly after that…
When I was 14, I wanted to be a fashion designer. I sketched some designs (which I thought were marvelous), and sent them off to a design contest that was advertised in the back of my Teen magazine. I never heard from them, and therefore I decided that I must not have any talent for…
I heard some amazing poetry on public radio last week. Terry Gross interviewed Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno, a poet whose daughter was murdered by her ex-boyfriend. After her daughter’s death, Kathleen wrote a collection of beautiful, poignant poems, recently published as Slamming the Door Open. One reviewer called her poems “spare, unflinching, and powerful.” I couldn’t…
Art does not come from thinking, but from responding. Corita Kent
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