Category Archives: Commentary

Opinion or analysis concerning whatever’s on my mind.

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 →

Posted in Commentary | Tagged art, drawing, language, painting | 5 Comments

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 →

Posted in Commentary, Quotations | Tagged art, painting | 8 Comments

‘Machismo’ Cuts the Cheese Over Yonder

Posted on May 13, 2025 by JMN

Posted in Commentary | Tagged language | 2 Comments

You Shall Not Crucify Mankind on a Cross of… Crypto

Posted on May 11, 2025 by JMN

With apologies to William Jennings Bryan, it’s called a “rug pull”: A celebrity touts a new digital coin, prices soar and then insiders who own most of the coins pull the rug: They sell their stakes for a big profit … Continue reading →

Posted in Commentary, Quotations | Tagged art, language, painting | 2 Comments

Which of These Dialogs Features a So-and-So?

Posted on May 3, 2025 by JMN

Dramatis Personae: Niamh, a lass. Oisín, a lad. Niamh: Have you had supper?Oisín: So I ate before leaving the house. Oisín: What was Waterloo?Niamh: So Wellington defeated Napoleon there. Niamh: How many capitals has Mongolia?Oisín: So I’m aware of only … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthology, Commentary | Tagged language | 2 Comments

The Dervish Is in the Detail

Posted on April 30, 2025 by JMN

Bret Stephens, conservative columnist for the New York Times, Jew raised in Mexico, fluent Spanish speaker, quotes (from memory) a poem called “God’s Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins at the end of The Conversation with Gail Collins. In my reading … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthology, Commentary | Tagged language, poetry, reading | 13 Comments

The Few. The Proud. The Marooned

Posted on April 27, 2025 by JMN

I do solitary battle with poetry. Yes, battle. I challenge the poem, it challenges me. Me and the poem, the two of us in mental combat. From the former Gulf of MexicoTo the shores of Zuiderzee,I have pondered verses bad … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthology, Commentary, Quotations | Tagged language, poetry, reading | 2 Comments

Descending to the Heights!

Posted on April 16, 2025 by JMN

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

An Unbosoming: On Cohesion

Posted on April 6, 2025 by JMN

Wehr lists anatomical English equivalents for Arabic noun ṣadr, plural ṣudūr, as: chest, bust, breast, bosom. (Heart is an outlier, clearly metaphorical.) At a tender age I heard my grandmother refer to ladies’ “bosoms.” Context nudged me to associate “bosom” … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthology, Commentary | Tagged language, poetry, reading, style | 4 Comments

‘the living can / be silenced the dead cannot’

Posted on April 3, 2025 by JMN

The writer who wrote the line in my title is ire’ne lara silva. Here it is in context: … they will make us all into virginmadonnas protecting mexicanidadbut our redred blood spilt on the ground does not knowhow to be … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthology, Commentary | Tagged language, poetry, reading, style | 2 Comments