Monthly Archives: July 2024

‘Plastic Is This Zombie Medium’

Posted on July 30, 2024 by JMN

Verse can have visual ramifications as well as verbal ones. Text commandeers white space on the page in one-off patterns reflecting a close collaboration between author and typographer. The ensemble is larger than the words which are its literal medium. … Continue reading →

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‘You Have to Work Through Bad Work to Get to Good Work’

Posted on July 27, 2024 by JMN

Artist Sarah Sze was interviewed in the New York Times’s feature titled “Artist’s Questionnaire.” This was my favorite question and answer. Which work of your own do you regret or would [you] do differently now? I guess I would say … Continue reading →

Posted in Quotations | Tagged | 2 Comments

Ammo and a Candy Bar

Posted on July 23, 2024 by JMN

Ask yourself how often you’ve found yourself in this familiar pickle: It’s late Saturday night and you’ve run out of ammunition. The stores are closed until Monday. It’s beg, borrow or steal some rounds, or else fiddle away the rest … Continue reading →

Posted in Commentary | Tagged | 6 Comments

‘Tested in the Wrack Wrack of the Parlance’

Posted on July 20, 2024 by JMN

… I want to say / this is how it started: / there was a mystery / it begged / to be stroked(Alexis De Veaux, “For my love at the time of our ceremony,” Poetry, July-August 2024) “YxzY” by Ronaldo … Continue reading →

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patience

Posted on July 17, 2024 by JMN

FURTHER AWAY– Don’t care ! I’ve got plenty of time ! patience The pen and wit of Gilles Labruyère are a daily marvel. This one in particular connects me with a favorite topic: signs that point somewhere. The quintessential sign … Continue reading →

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The Mythopoeic Potency of Realization

Posted on July 14, 2024 by JMN

Preface, Disclosure and Update, July 14, 2024I wrote most of the little essay that follows (see below) only two days ago. It’s a bit of nonsense penned tongue-in-cheek with a dollop of irony. Satirical humor is my way of having … Continue reading →

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Blast From the Past: My Favorite Correction in Journalism

Posted on July 12, 2024 by JMN

A link encountered recently in other reading led me to this obituary in The Times’s archive. You will discern from the excerpts what left me biting a grin. (Respect and love for the memory of Jerry Garcia. He would’ve grinned … Continue reading →

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Raise Your Hand If You’re Up for a ‘Variety of Irreconcilable Points of View’

Posted on July 10, 2024 by JMN

Rooky move: I responded to the first page of Meghan O’Rourke’s essay “On Ambivalence: To Be, but to Be How?” (Poetry, June 2024) before I had finished reading it. I caught the wave generated for me by her allusions to … Continue reading →

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The Ire of Texas Is Upon You, Rude Words

Posted on July 8, 2024 by JMN

“Appeals court tells Texas it cannot ban books for mentioning ‘butt’ and ‘fart’” (Maya Yang, The Guardian, 6-9-24) In a report released last October [2023], the American Library Association found that Texas made the most attempts in the US to … Continue reading →

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‘You Can Make Something and You See It. But Then You Have to Spend Your Life to Get the World to See It’ (June Leaf)

Posted on July 2, 2024 by JMN

Painter and sculptor June Leaf died on July 1, 2024, aged 94. “She is that rare thing in painting today: a poet with a taste and a talent for complex images.” (Hilton Kramer, 1968) In Paris, Ms. Leaf told Hyperallergic, … Continue reading →

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