I went with two friends yesterday to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA),, specifically to see its newly installed Modern Art collection. It took us at least two hours to gaze at the art, listen to the commentary, and soak in the works by mostly familiar artists from the 1900 to the 1960s. There were concentrations of work by Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, Kathe Kollwitz and other not so well known women artists, Diego Rivera, amongst wonderful examples of paintings, sculptures, assemblages, wood cuts, lithographs, and drawings. I urge you to go – even if you’re not in the neighborhood. It’s well worth the trip. And it’s well worth your aching feet and back when you leave the scene. I, for sure, am going back. There is so much there to revisit - over and over. Maybe someone out there wants to join me. … [Read more...]
Yes, you can write political poetry
Two op eds - one in the New York Times book review section and one in the Los Angeles Times editorial section - appeared yesterday. The gist in each is that we poets and other artists need to stop avoiding writing or producing other forms of art about politics. We must use our voices to provide the meaning for all that's happening in our world these days - as offensive as it might me. The last time I wrote a poem along these lines was after the buildings collapsed on September 11, 2001 - that is until I did the Robert Lee Brewer poem a day challenge this past November. I found myself writing one political poem after another. That became the most important subject for me in response to a lot of the prompts the Writer's Digest poetry editor put out, and now I feel validated. While Brewer kept admonishing us to "poem nicely," I even ignored this admonition. And I suspect I'll continue to do so. I've copied both articles verbatim here and hopefully acknowledged the authors and … [Read more...]
Photos from our October and November travels
My husband Bob and I just returned from a three-week vacation. We started out in Miami, then embarked on the Norwegian Pearl cruise ship that took us on an eleven-day excursion to: Cartagena, Columbia: We took a walking tour of the old beautiful city Panama Canal/Gatun Lake, Panama: We took a ferry through the five locks. It was a long scenic ride. Puerto Limon, Costa Rica: We rode an aerial tramway through and over the rainforest - breathtaking, walking through a butterfly preserve first. Roatan, Bay Islands, Honduras: Roatan is beautiful, but our excursion was a bit disappointing. We supposedly were to ride in a glass-bottomed boat; however the glass was on the sides. Also it was hot and stuffy down there. Note how murky the water is. Belize City, Belize: A noisy airboat in Belize took us through the Crocodile Trail. The water is covered with blooming water lilies and mangrove forests. We didn't see any crocodiles or … [Read more...]
