Author Archives: JMN

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About JMN

I live in Texas and devote much of my time to easel painting on an amateur basis. I stream a lot of music, mostly jazz, throughout the day. I like to read and memorize poetry.

“Something Like America”

Posted on December 10, 2018 by JMN

http://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/books/review/political-poetry.html Wordsworth’s description of “emotion recollected in tranquillity” is sometimes cited as shorthand for what poets refer to as the lyric “I,” the poet’s vehicle for private, meditative reflection. So what becomes of the lyric “I” if poems are not … Continue reading →

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Truth in Fiction

Posted on December 8, 2018 by JMN

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/dec/08/nicola-sturgeon-rachel-kushner-in-conversation-fiction-politics-prison My job, fundamentally, is all about people and it’s the individual stories that give me a sense of the issues I need to use my position to influence or change. That’s why I see reading fiction as an indispensable … Continue reading →

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Profound Word Funk Unlocked

Posted on December 7, 2018 by JMN

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/dec/07/earl-sweatshirt-some-rap-songs-review Beats-wise, it’s a little like one of Madlib’s Medicine Show mixes, where grainy, sample-driven productions blurt like a haunted radio searching for a frequency in the past. Soul, funk and disco samples are cut up with blunt safety scissors, … Continue reading →

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Hello, Non-America

Posted on December 6, 2018 by JMN

nyti.ms/2DZufmq The WASP virtues … included a cosmopolitanism that was often more authentic than our own performative variety — a cosmopolitanism that coexisted with white man’s burden racism but also sometimes transcended it, because for every Brahmin bigot there was … Continue reading →

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Slumber

Posted on December 6, 2018 by JMN

http://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/opinion/shirin-neshat-political-art.html The art world seems to have closely adopted and followed the ideological footprints of the larger global economy of the past three decades, increasingly participating in the orgy of the creation of wealth and its narrow distribution. But now … Continue reading →

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Lineman’s Whine (audio)

Posted on December 5, 2018 by JMN
Posted in Anthology | Tagged | 3 Comments

The Dry Heaves

Posted on December 5, 2018 by JMN

I picked up a colored marker, a sketchpad, and sat down. I looked around the room for a shape, a blade of light, a shadow, an assonance, a blur, something to trigger a spasm in my drawing hand and stain … Continue reading →

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Lexicomania at the Table

Posted on December 4, 2018 by JMN

ABOVE: My first vocab list for Helena (age 10) made at her mother Eva’s request. I’m on pins and needles to show it. Each time I expose Helena to my fetish for coloring the enclosed spaces of letters, I detect … Continue reading →

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The Twombly Effect

Posted on December 3, 2018 by JMN

hereelsewhere.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/0aTwombgal-500×333.jpg Poetic ardor can be exhausting. (As the many quotes from art critics that pepper [Joshua] Rivkin’s book demonstrate, Twombly tends to send writers into lyric overdrive.) (Holland Carter, “A Life of Cy Twombly Brings a Poet’s Eye to the … Continue reading →

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Accents

Posted on December 3, 2018 by JMN

. Nuria spent three weeks in Bristol, UK, to further her study of English. She told me one of her teachers had an especially clear manner of speaking. Asked by a student if his accent was American, he replied vigorously … Continue reading →

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