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.

Pride Goeth Before a Parade

Posted on June 13, 2025 by JMN

They say: A man who can’t tell shoe polish from shinola is fit to be tied by time and the tide. It’s one of those old sayings they say is never insufficient to the day thereof.  They say: A stitch … Continue reading →

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Manifest MAEGAN

Posted on June 11, 2025 by JMN

Make American English Great Again Now  — MAEGAN — is a sweet hotrod of a movement, a screaming dragster with four-barrel carburetor smoking the shithole competition wherever jalopies duke it out. The Nineteen-Fifties burn rubber in the Twenty-Twenties like there’s … Continue reading →

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Nice Day. Be a Shame You Didn’t Have One.

Posted on June 7, 2025 by JMN

Where the living language is concerned, which let’s face it. So.  Can you spot the tuber posing as a goober? What about a dangled thought left to? Hip to messaging that carries false report? Words happening metaphorically, knot in real … Continue reading →

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‘His Technique Can Be Potently Slapdash’

Posted on May 31, 2025 by JMN

If the images in the survey feel more like news than comment, that’s partly because we can sense the press photos Shahn used as his sources. Though his paintings themselves aren’t close to photorealistic — his technique can be potently … Continue reading →

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‘That Falls Well’: Cartoon Paean Times Three

Posted on May 26, 2025 by JMN

As a kid studying high school French, I read with delight Mark Twain’s depiction of an American’s attempt to converse with a Frenchman. Twain wickedly renders the Frenchman’s remarks in literal English, alongside his own fractured French, to comic effect. … Continue reading →

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Toyin Ojih Odutola Draws Loud

Posted on May 25, 2025 by JMN

I like how Toyin Ojih Odutola assembles faces from facets, a treatment I strive increasingly, if feebly, to approximate. I describe it to myself in personal shorthand as “envisaging”: implementing visage as a sort of ‘scape rather than anatomical likeness … Continue reading →

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‘O Brute May I Come In, O Brute You May’

Posted on May 23, 2025 by JMN

My treatment of Mitchell Glazier’s “The Gazing Ball” (Poetry, May 2025) wasn’t fit for purpose because it came across as testy and dismissive. I’m not equipped nor disposed to be a poetry critic, only a consumer with thoughts. And my … Continue reading →

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Queenly Swans Are Nudging Eternity Figs

Posted on May 22, 2025 by JMN

What the hell is going on in “The Gazing Ball”?  I had to lock horns with Mitchell Glazier’s poem (Poetry, May 2025) and break it down robustly in order to reach a fragile accommodation. I’ve come to expect having to … Continue reading →

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Purloining With Pizzazz: Wayne Thiebaud

Posted on May 18, 2025 by JMN

This copying work helped Thiebaud figure out his own solutions to artistic problems. I blush to own it, but I was never keen on pointillism. For all that it purported to be scintillating, it has a diffuseness that feels static. … Continue reading →

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The Future Walks on Baby Feet

Posted on May 16, 2025 by JMN

Here’s my English reading of “Contar Cuentos” (Telling Stories), a poem written in Spanish by Azurea20 published at LA BANCARROTA DEL CIRCO on April 27, 2025. TELLING STORIESMy memory invents you,strips you nakedtells itself stories,closes your eyes,obliterates your mouth,discovers verbs … Continue reading →

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