You Tube --- Time lapsed wall drawing

Grab a cup of joe and watch this-- it's pretty coolio
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtzdxseO-gs

Dorianne Laux

For the Sake of Strangers
By Dorianne Laux

No matter what the grief, its weight,
we are obliged to carry it.
We rise and gather moments, the dull strength
that pushes us through crowds.
And then the young boy gives me directions
so avidly. A woman holds the glass door open,
waits patiently for my empty body to pass through.
All day it continues, each kindness
reaching toward another- a stranger
singing to no one as I pass on the path, trees
offering their blossoms, a retarded child
who lifts his almond eyes and smiles.
Somehow they always find me, seem even
to be waiting, determined to keep me
from myself, from the thing that calls to me
as it must have once called to them –
this temptation to step off the edge
and fall weightless, away from the world.

Derek Walcott

Just ran across this poem yesterday, it's beautiful. I'm getting to know my "mid-life self", these words describe perfectly the process. Digging deeper...........

Love After Love
(by Derek Walcott)

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Frank Gehry

A few years ago I saw "Sketches of Frank Gehry" by Sydney Pollack on PBS. Mr. Gehry is frankly, (no pun intended ;~D) a genius. Constantly pushing the boundaries of his designs and materials. His house is a laboratory, literally, he has done amazing things to his home.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Gehry ......this will get you started!

T.S. Eliot

This is one of my favorites.....

Music heard so deeply
that it is not heard at all,
but you are the music
while the music lasts.

(by T.S. Eliot)

Lisa Fittipaldi

I saw Lisa on-I think it was Oprah a number of years ago. She lost her sight, fell into a deep depression (who wouldn't) after a period of time, her husband bought her a set of children's watercolors and told her to paint something. It seemed a cruel joke. She did and look what she does now. Incredible! Truly inspiring. http://www.lisafittipaldi.com/

Karle Wilson Baker

Days
(by Karle Wilson Baker)

Some days my thoughts are just cocoons- all cold, and dull and blind,
They hang from dripping branches in the grey woods of my mind;
And other days they drift and shine - such free and flying things!
I find the gold-dust in my hair, left by their brushing wings.

"Take a line for a walk"--Paul Klee

http://www.mcs.csuhayward.edu/~malek/Klee.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Klee

Karlyn Holman

Karlyn paints gorgeous watercolors--landscapes, florals, semi-abstract and abstract. I had the opportunity to take a workshop with her a few years ago, wonderful teacher! http://www.karlynholman.com/

May Sarton

Now I Become Myself
(by May Sarton)

Now I become myself. It's taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"Hurry, you will be dead before—"
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!

William Stafford

When I Met My Muse
(by William Stafford)

I glanced at her and took my glasses
off--they were still singing. They buzzed
like a locust on the coffee table and then
ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the
sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and
knew that nails up there took a new grip
on whatever they touched. "I am your own
way of looking at things," she said. "When
you allow me to live with you, every
glance at the world around you will be
a sort of salvation." And I took her hand.

Cristina Acosta

Cristina is the author of "Paint Happy", her paintings are colorful and energetic! http://www.cristinaacosta.com/

Real Beauty

I love what Dove is doing for women of every size and shape. I am switching over to Dove products. Help support the effort!! YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL......believe it. http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/

Maya Angelou

Phenomenal Woman (by Maya Angelou)

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Allen Montague

These are finger paintings! Beautiful! http://allenmontague.com/

You tube ---- Otters

This is very sweet!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epUk3T2Kfno

Naomi Shihab Nye

Kindness
by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Graceful Envelope

A call for entries, and archives to look at past years entries. Coolio!http://calligraphersguild.org/envelope.html

Dylan Thomas

In My Craft Or Sullen Art
(by Dylan Thomas)

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

To read more about Dylan Thomas:
http://www.dylanthomas.com/

Haiku

Probably more that you ever wanted to know about haiku. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku

This is one of my favorites:

In this world
Love has no color --
Yet how deeply
My body
Is stained by yours.
(zumi shikibu)

e.e. cummings

A favorite quote by e.e. cummings......

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.

At age six Cummings wrote this to his father:
FATHER DEAR. BE, YOUR FATHER-GOOD AND GOOD,
HE IS GOOD NOW, IT IS NOT GOOD TO SEE IT RAIN,
FATHER DEAR IS, IT, DEAR, NO FATHER DEAR,
LOVE, YOU DEAR,
ESTLIN.

Wendell Berry

A Purification
by Wendell Berry

At start of spring I open a trench
in the ground. I put into it
the winter's accumulation of paper,
pages I do not want to read
again, useless words, fragments,
errors. And I put into it
the contents of the outhouse:
light of the sun, growth of the ground,
finished with one of their journeys.
To the sky, to the wind, then,
and to the faithful trees, I confess
my sins: that I have not been happy
enough, considering my good luck,
have listened to too much noise,
have been inattentive to wonders,
have lusted after praise.
And then upon the gathered refuse
of mind and body, I close the trench,
folding shut again the dark,
the deathless earth. Beneath that seal
the old escapes into the new.

It's spring, you have just dug a trench, what will you put in it? Failures, regrets, excess weight from the winter, fears, clutter...........?

Roz Chast

Roz Chast is a cartoonist, she's been published in the New Yorker since the late 70's. What a fabulous sense of humor. The link below is a video of Steve Martin interviewing Roz Chast....hilarious! http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/2006/10/09/comicturn

Your turn

A Cinquain (cinq is the french word for five) is a 5 line poem that uses the following guidelines.

line 1 - one word (noun) a title or name of the subject
line 2 - two words (adjectives) describing the title
line 3 - three words (verbs) describing an action related to the title (-ing)
line 4 - four words describing a feeling about the title
line 5 - one word referring back to the title of the poem

Here's an example:

snow

white blossoms

blowing, drifting, freezing

oooh, my aching back

storm

Have fun!

Pablo Neruda

Poetry by Pablo Neruda

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.

You Tube--Baby duck

This is really cute. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPxDw7ajfGE

Richard Salley

Lots of fabulous art on his site. Pinhole photography, jewelry, photos of how he made a locket (very coolio), digital art and collages. I especially like the jewelry. http://www.rsalley.com/

Robert Frost

We are in the midst of a spring snow storm...;-p Thought this would be appropriate.

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

William Carlos Williams

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

A Host of Golden Daffodils

A project involving an artist , 150 volunteers and 10,000 bulbs. This is beautiful! http://www.imagine-align.org/

Antonio Machado

The Wind, One Brilliant Day

The wind, one brilliant day, called
to my soul with an odor of jasmine.

"In return for the odor of my jasmine,
I'd like all the odor of your roses."

"I have no roses; all the flowers
in my garden are dead."

"Well then, I'll take the withered petals
and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain."

the wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself:"
What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?"

Lisa Engelbrecht

Lisa is a mixed media artist, combining calligraphy with fabric and collage. Lovely wall hangings and fabric books!http://www.lisaengelbrecht.com/home.html

Bembos Zoo

If you like the alphabet, you'll love this! http://www.bemboszoo.com/Bembo.swf

Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches?

This is one of my favorite poems by Mary Oliver


Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches
of other lives
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey,
hanging
from the branches of the young locust trees, in early summer
feel like?

Do you think this world is only an entertainment for you?

Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy to let you in!
Never to lie down with grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over
the dark acorn of your heart!

No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life

.Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?

Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself
continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?

Well, there is time left-
fields everywhere invite you into them.

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?

Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!

To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is
the mystery, which is death as well as life, and
not be afraid!
To set one's foot in the door of death, and be overcome
with amazement!

To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,

nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the
present hour,

to the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth,

to the tiplets of the honeysuckle, that have opened
in the night.

To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!

Listen, are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?

While the soul, after all, is only a window,
and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.

Only last week I went out among the thorns and said
to the wild roses:
deny me not
but suffer my devotion.
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe

I even heard a curl or two of music, damp and rouge-red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.

For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?

Fall in! Fall in!

A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next
is coming with its own heave and grace.

Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,
upon the immutable
.What more could one ask?

And I would touch the faces of the daisies,
and I would bow down
to think about it.

That was then, which hasn't ended yet.

Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean's edge.

I climb. I backtrack.
I float.
I ramble my way home.

and another!

The Road Not Taken.....claymation! http://www.vimeo.com/clip:40392

Animated Poetry!

An animated Billy Collins poem. Very cool! http://www.vimeo.com/clip:38358

Margie Darrow Stretz

Cubist paintings, very coolio, love her palette! http://www.margiemargie.com/paintings.html

Poetry on You Tube

Oh man, is this funny! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVOXxDV5BdI

April is National Poetry Month

Hey, little bird with your beak pressed up against the pet shop window, there is no bird seed for you today....only rain. {snap-snap-snappity-snapsnap} (bongo) http://www.poets.org/

Lynne Taetzsch

Lynne has lots of cool stuff on her blog. Abstract paintings, a film about the art process, how to's (paintings photographed in stages), art business etc. Rich colors! http://artbylt.blogs.com also visit her website. http://www.artbylt.com

Martin Ramirez

Last week or so I saw a NewsHour piece on the artist Martin Ramirez, and have just turned up this current gallery show of his work. The examples are well worth clicking on to see the images whole. Without formal training, he created a sizeable body of work while living most of his life in a mental hospital. His drawings made with stubs of pencil, on scraps of paper, sometimes colored or collaged, large and small, I find quite beautiful. What is known of him is a poignant story.