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.

Travesía (10)

Posted on April 25, 2021 by JMN

Versión castellana del poema “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (1856) de Walt WhitmanEnglish text at http://www.poetryfoundation.orgSpanish Interpretation by JMN [Translator’s note: I’ve arbitrarily divided part 6 into 3 segments. The third of the three segments follows. The poem has 9 parts.] [6.3][I] … Continue reading →

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Travesía (9)

Posted on April 24, 2021 by JMN

Versión castellana del poema “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (1856) de Walt WhitmanEnglish text at http://www.poetryfoundation.orgSpanish Interpretation by JMN [Translator’s note: I’ve arbitrarily divided part 6 into 3 segments. The second of the three segments follows. The poem has 9 parts.] [6.2]I … Continue reading →

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Travesía (8)

Posted on April 23, 2021 by JMN

Versión castellana del poema “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (1856) de Walt Whitman English text at http://www.poetryfoundation.org Spanish Interpretation by JMN [Translator’s note: I’ve arbitrarily divided part 6 into 3 segments. The first of the three segments follows. The poem has 9 … Continue reading →

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‘Miner of Difficult Truths’

Posted on April 21, 2021 by JMN

I can study all day Alice Neel’s brushwork and modeling of flesh and features, how she gestures at her subjects’ surroundings with casual precision. Her “Carmen and Judy” has a frank, womanly exactness and searing intimacy that The New Yorker’s … Continue reading →

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A-Theology

Posted on April 20, 2021 by JMN

A poke at Ludwig’s nonsense adumbrates an a-theology that circumvents the mortiferous belch of cassock-and-biretta evangels. There’s an amount of life which abounds so abundantly it’s incommensurate with measurement. It amounts to the livelong life force of aliveness that explodes … Continue reading →

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Neruda LXXXIV

Posted on April 18, 2021 by JMN

[LXXXIV]Una vez más, amor, la red del día extingueOne more time, love, the net of day extinguishestrabajos, ruedas, fuegos, estertores, adioses,labors, wheels, fires, death rattles, goodbyes,y a la noche entregamos el trigo vacilanteand we deliver to the night the unsteady … Continue reading →

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‘Business in Great Waters’

Posted on April 17, 2021 by JMN

I jotted on the fly several snatches of phraseology that resonated with me today as I watched Prince Philip’s live-streamed funeral service on the BBC. May what power that is deal graciously with those who mourn, and those who go … Continue reading →

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Native ‘Son’

Posted on April 16, 2021 by JMN

A chance juxtaposition of readings* has suggested to me the perennial nature of America’s brutish policing streak. In 1941, Richard Wright’s manuscript novel “The Man Who Lived Underground” is rejected by publishers who are made queasy over scenes of violence: … Continue reading →

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‘Cry of Pain’

Posted on April 15, 2021 by JMN

Housman’s “To an Athlete Dying Young” ruefully ironizes over a lad clever enough to “slip betimes away / From fields where glory does not stay.” Novelists, though, get more mileage out of superannuated jocks — Updike’s Rabbit Angstrom, Malamud’s Roy … Continue reading →

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‘Inter faeces et urinam nascimur’

Posted on April 13, 2021 by JMN

“Between feces and urine we are born,” said Augustine in the 4th century. The bishop of Hippo’s take on parturition was that our mothers effectively defecate us from their feculent crannies. Doctrine on sex and love handed down by dour … Continue reading →

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