Category Archives: Commentary

Opinion or analysis concerning whatever’s on my mind.

‘No path to heaven / except through this dirt’

Posted on September 16, 2021 by JMN

My title is from the poem by Philip Metres, “Never Describe the Sky as Azure,” in Poetry, September 2021. A Reservation Over the Fist Resisting the repressive Texas governocracy is of the essence. Are fisting poses ginned up for camera … Continue reading →

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

‘A Way of Understanding Who You Are’

Posted on September 2, 2021 by JMN

“Human beings have always been storytellers and you use that as a way of understanding who you are, and who the people around you are, and what’s going on,” he says. “If I look back, which I don’t very often, … Continue reading →

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

Sancho Panza Appreciates a Nip of Good Wine

Posted on July 30, 2021 by JMN

Sancho Panza takes a memorable pull from a companion’s proffered wineskin (“bota”) in this scene from part 2 of “Don Quijote.” Y diciendo esto, se la puso en las manos a Sancho, el cual, empinándola, puesta a la boca, estuvo … Continue reading →

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

‘Hotch-Potch of the Pure and the Impure’

Posted on July 29, 2021 by JMN

Some of my most compelling reading is that which others do for me. Here is a quotation shared with me today by a blogger who consumes more good literature than I can shake a stick at. “…that there is no … Continue reading →

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

Praise Be!

Posted on July 17, 2021 by JMN

“Jesus Is My Air Plane”: When a great title meets its maker. A big, juicy exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts turns an embracing eye on Black artists in the American South. (Holland Cotter, “Art Meets Its Soundtrack … Continue reading →

Posted in Commentary | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Jane Kaufman

Posted on July 16, 2021 by JMN

The savory quotation that leaps from this obituary of artist Jane Kaufman (1938 – 2021) is from Holland Cotter’s review of a 2008 retrospective at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, N.Y. “It’s funky, funny, fussy, perverse, obsessive, riotous, accumulative, … Continue reading →

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

Pausing to Remark

Posted on July 16, 2021 by JMN

A former associate stumbled upon this blog recently and wrote to me. She had read some older posts in which I challenged certain language practice encountered in published articles. It’s true I experimented for a time with adopting the persona … Continue reading →

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

‘Art Has Many Mansions’

Posted on July 12, 2021 by JMN

The NYTimes, as well, has sumptuous reportage on this exhibit of Medici-sponsored artworks. The portraits have a preternatural technical brilliance that’s otherworldly. “Laura Battiferri,” fingering her legible volume of Petrarch, is a creature contrived from mannerist lunacy. An interesting wrinkle … Continue reading →

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

The Moncrieff Proust

Posted on July 11, 2021 by JMN

C. K. Scott Moncrieff (1889 – 1930) published the early-twentieth-century English version of Marcel Proust’s “A la Recherche du Temps Perdu.” Adam Gopnik reviews the first full-length biography of Moncrieff by Jean Findlay, “Chasing Lost Time: The Life of C. … Continue reading →

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

UK Sculptor: Hard Row to Hoe

Posted on July 3, 2021 by JMN

It will be [a shrine], but not for art lovers. Or for anyone who is easily embarrassed. Perhaps not even for Diana’s sincerest believers, for the statue group’s emotive symbolism is undermined by its aesthetic awfulness. In style it breathes … Continue reading →

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