Category Archives: Commentary

Opinion or analysis concerning whatever’s on my mind.

The Camera Has Spoken. It’s My Turn

Posted on January 5, 2022 by JMN

This gallery contains 1 photo.

And out comes a tenderly belabored prospect of dilapidation. Looking at a photograph I didn’t take, I painted a quaint tranche of unleveled-up Britain from the plein air of the shed I inhabit. Painting my two-bit canvases from photos lets … Continue reading →

More Galleries | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

‘The Past Stretched Before Us’

Posted on January 2, 2022 by JMN

I encountered the following expression in my Arabic reference grammar: May you be ransomed by my soul! Arabic can be sublimely terse and florid in the same breath. Blachere’s example shows optative use of the perfect tense instancing how the … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthology, Commentary | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Struggle to Lose Control

Posted on January 1, 2022 by JMN

To All a Good New Year! Audrey Petty describes her first one-on-one conference with her poetry teacher Agha Shahid Ali at the University of Massachusetts. After she read her draft to him, he reviewed it and said, “What if you … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthology, Commentary | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

‘Confound, Torment, Swallow Us Whole’

Posted on December 26, 2021 by JMN

To write, first and foremost, is to choose the words to tell a story, whereas to translate is to evaluate, acutely, each word an author chooses. Thus starts Jhumpa Lahiri’s essay drawn from the afterword of her translation of “Trust” … Continue reading →

Posted in Commentary, Quotations | Tagged , | Leave a comment

The Moons of Poesis

Posted on December 25, 2021 by JMN

When reading poetry I try to think like astronomers. They are a doughty lot, trucking with the unexpected, stalking questions that defy asking. “What I really hope for is something we don’t expect” [John Mather, Goddard Space Flight Center, on … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthology, Commentary | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Paula Rego Likes to Work

Posted on December 22, 2021 by JMN

Portuguese-born artist Paula Rego (b. 1935) studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London. She lives in the UK. Quotable saying: “Doing work, that is to say, drawing, is an erotic activity.” Anna Russell writes that the urgency of … Continue reading →

Posted in Commentary | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Kafka’s Drawing Isn’t Kafkaesque!

Posted on December 19, 2021 by JMN

A trove of drawings by Franz Kafka was brought to light in 2019. They share, says Philip Oltermann, features with paintings Kafka describes in his fiction: “… men riding flying buckets, singing mice and creatures made of household detritus… dream-like … Continue reading →

Posted in Commentary, Quotations | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Mean or Not, It’s a Feat

Posted on December 12, 2021 by JMN

Can a poem hurt the reader into glimpsing its cargo? The poem discussed is ‘From “Banana [ ],”’ Poetry, December 2021, by Paul Hlava Ceballos. I encounter poetry I perceive to be all kinds of icky: cryptic, elliptic, hierophantic, delphic, … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthology, Commentary, Quotations | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

‘Except for Perhaps Poetry…’

Posted on December 5, 2021 by JMN

In 1970, David Godine started a small publishing company in an abandoned cow barn in Brookline, Massachusetts. After a distinguished history of publishing select titles in well crafted editions, he has sold the company. I enjoyed reading what he did … Continue reading →

Posted in Commentary, Quotations | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Carmen Mola’ Is Three Men

Posted on November 21, 2021 by JMN

¡Me cachis en diez! Nadie está en su sitio. “Hell and damn! No one is in his place”; that was my father-in-law’s take on the hanky panky of a popular soap opera in late-Franco Spain. In post-Franco Spain what’s to … Continue reading →

Posted in Commentary | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment