Language comes from the body. When babies learn language, they make movements, as if they are taking the words into their body, making...

When I was in my twenties I thought old age was an island only accessible by a bridge I’d never cross. But I’ve crossed it, and at...

MIT MUSEUM The sky is clotted. Tangled. Vapor trails, blinking lights of low flying aircraft. The stars are moving away from us, becoming...

Moving Water is on stage at A.P.E., 33 Hawley Street, Northampton, MA MOVING WATER For the last two years I’ve had the privilege of...

According to various spiritual traditions there are two deaths; one at the end of life, and one when the false self dies within life,...

Detail from The Couple, by Louise Bourgeois It was my work to live through the wound of love. A child without it, I blindly swam through...

I was towing the boat of my youth. It was slowing me down. So I cut the hawser and let it drift. I can see it still, fainter every day, a...

Semantics: when I say art, I also mean poetry, music, etc. There must be a word for the reflexive tendency to reject the old in favor of...

THE EXPERIENCE OF A WORK OF ART I'm thinking that there is always something baffling about the experience of a work of art. If you see it...

CECI N’EST PAS UN POÈME The fish in the Swift River will not miss you when you die. Few people will actually see who you are in your...

Boston MFA Walter Benjamin talked about art losing its "aura" in the age of mechanical reproduction: photographs and other reproductions...

We are not better than dogs barking at one another. Back in the sixties, when I was angry, returned to college after Vietnam and neck...

HERMAN MELVILLE'S HOUSE AT ARROWHEAD Notes on writing: We do not write entirely for ourselves. “The seat of the soul is where the inside...

Nancy Grossman What if I don't feel like a victim? I've had my traumas--a couple of them substantial--but they are not the impetus of my...

"It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene...

TIME AND SPACE IN NEW ENGLAND Driving in Vermont looking for old barns to photograph, stop to talk to a farmer who finally says he has to...

SEMANTICS: when I say art, I mean art in all its forms, from poetry to visual art to music. I find Keats' term still useful -- more...

(Right center and tallest, the 9/11 Monument in Lower Manhattan) Yesterday I applied to renew my driver’s license with the requisite...

March 23, 2021 Some mornings it takes me an hour or two to remember a good thing, or remember with pleasure a project, some writing, or...

Eagle Coffin, by Paa Joe The BBC recently posted an essay about the possibility that religion is an essential human need, like food and...