Art Np2

http://www.learner.org/interactives/literature/story/fulltext.html

Recognize the young man in the video?

 http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai3/community/text7/arkofbones.pdf http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-2874300030.html

Basket of Wild Strawberries, Chardin, 1761 "Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin (1699-1779) was one of greatest masters of Still Life in the history of art. The painting style of the establishment in his day was Rococo: a pretentious style crammed with allegorical images from classical mythology swirling with ornate decoration. To Chardin this theatrical approach reduced art to some kind of intellectual conversation piece. It was totally alien to the world that he constructed - a simple world of truth, humility and calm played out in a few square inches on the wall. The items he portrayed from his own home were selected for their shapes, textures and colours, rather than for any symbolic meaning they may have had. They were simply painted to convey the visual pleasure he experienced in looking at them. As his friend, the critic Diderot put it, “To look at pictures by other artists it seems that I need to borrow a different pair of eyes. To look at those of Chardin, I only have to keep t

Reading the Letter, Howard Hodgkin "Howard Hodgkin is a British printmaker and painter, born in London. He studied at the Camberwell School of Art and the Bath Academy of Art. He began exhibiting seriously at the age of 30. Hodgkin works in generally a small scale, often painting in a gestural style with flat colors. He often refers to memories and private experiences, but deliberately avoids the illustrational. Though his works are small and appear spontaneous, they are the result of a constant process of over-painting, sometimes extending over many years. Hodgkin has also produced many prints, with a preference for screen-printing and lithography in his earlier works of the 60's and 70's. However, for his more recent work, Hodgkin has favored etchings and aquatint, as these provide a greater emphasis on texture. To further create a layering effect in his prints, Hodgkin sometimes hand-colors the image after printing. In 1985, Hodgkin won the Turner Prize and took part in

According to Wikipedia, "Recitatif" is the only short story published by Toni Morrison.  The title word recitatif is defined as the rhythm and tones present in the speaking of language. This story was originally published in the anthology Confirmation: An Anthology of African American Women. tp://linksprogram.gmu.edu/tutorcorner/NCLC495Readings/Morrison_recitatifessay.doc.pdf http://aseibert.wordpress.com/2010/10/14/racial-dynamics-toni-morrison%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%9crecitatif%e2%80%9d/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recitatif

 It is difficult to describe the darkness that creeped into my mind and body after this lovely young girl/woman was found dead and naked not far from where I live.  I could not block the horror of what happened to her or my feelings of powerlessness. Phylicia Barnes was sixteen years old, about to turn seventeen.  Girls at that age are energetic and intelligent, emotional and intutitive, idealistic and stubborn, irritable, sometimes surly, yet they are much more thoughtful than they are given credit for.  Many of them continually question the world around them, but nevertheless want to fit into it, and they like to giggle.  Teenaged girls have a kind of  loveliness to them; a sweet and fresh quality.  This poem by Gil Scott-Heron says it much better than I can: A VERY PRECIOUS TIME Was there a touch of spring? Did she have a pink dress on? And when she smiled, her shyest smile Could you almost touch the warmth? And was it your first love, a very precious time? Was there the faintest b

"Vitamins" By Raymond Carver http://www.nbu.bg/webs/amb/american/6/carver/vitamins.htm http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jun/10/raymondcarver http://www.carversite.com/index.html

: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/june-jordan For Alice Walker (a summertime tanka) Redwood grove and war You and me talking Congo gender grief and ash I say, "God! It's all so huge" You say, "These sweet trees: This tree" Written by June Jordan (1936 - 2002)

  "The Vitruvian Man - you may not know his name, but you've seen him plenty of times before. You know, that multi-limbed man in the square and the circle. You may even know that Leonardo da Vinci drew him. But do you know anything else? Who is this guy, who has somehow become so famous?" "This site seeks to explain the Vitruvian Man, both as an historical entity and as an image in the modern world. Enjoy!" - source: http://leonardodavinci.stanford.edu/submissions/clabaugh/welcome.html

http://www.public.asu.edu/~aarios/ Refugio's Hair by Alberto Ríos In the old days of our family, My grandmother was a young woman Whose hair was as long as the river. She lived with her sisters on the ranch La Calera--The Land of the Lime-- And her days were happy. But her uncle Carlos lived there too, Carlos whose soul had the edge of a knife. One day, to teach her to ride a horse, He made her climb on the fastest one, Bareback, and sit there As he held its long face in his arms. And then he did the unspeakable deed For which he would always be remembered: He called for the handsome baby Pirrín And he placed the child in her arms. With that picture of a Madonna on horseback He slapped the shank of the horse's rear leg. The horse did what a horse must, Racing full toward the bright horizon. But first he ran under the álamo trees To rid his back of this unfair weight: This woman full of tears And this baby full of love. When they reached the trees and went under, Her hair, which

A Light Exists in Spring ~Emily Dickinson A Light exists in Spring Not present on the Year At any other period -- When March is scarcely here A Color stands abroad On Solitary Fields That Science cannot overtake But Human Nature feels. It waits upon the Lawn, It shows the furthest Tree Upon the furthest Slope you know It almost speaks to you. Then as Horizons step Or Noons report away Without the Formula of sound It passes and we stay -- A quality of loss Affecting our Content As Trade had suddenly encroached Upon a Sacrament.

http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/14808/

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/lisel-mueller The End of Science Fiction By Lisel Mueller b. 1924 Lisel Mueller This is not fantasy, this is our life. We are the characters who have invaded the moon, who cannot stop their computers. We are the gods who can unmake the world in seven days. Both hands are stopped at noon. We are beginning to live forever, in lightweight, aluminum bodies with numbers stamped on our backs. We dial our words like Muzak. We hear each other through water. The genre is dead. Invent something new. Invent a man and a woman naked in a garden, invent a child that will save the world, a man who carries his father out of a burning city. Invent a spool of thread that leads a hero to safety, invent an island on which he abandons the woman who saved his life with no loss of sleep over his betrayal. Invent us as we were before our bodies glittered and we stopped bleeding: invent a shepherd who kills a giant, a girl who grows into a tree, a woman who refuses to turn h

Bob Hicok Reflects on Economic Hardships in Michigan : NewsHour Poetry Series : Video : The Poetry Foundation

Oh Yeah, Young People!

Mothers by Nikki Giovanni the last time i was home to see my mother we kissed exchanged pleasantries and unpleasantries pulled a warm comforting silence around us and read separate books i remember the first time i consciously saw her we were living in a three room apartment on burns avenue mommy always sat in the dark i don’t know how i knew that but she did that night i stumbled into the kitchen maybe because i’ve always been a night person or perhaps because i had wet the bed she was sitting on a chair the room was bathed in moonlight diffused through those thousands of panes landlords who rented to people with children were prone to put in windows she may have been smoking but maybe not her hair was three-quarters her height which made me a strong believer in the samson myth and very black i’m sure i just hung there by the door i remember thinking: what a beautiful lady she was very deliberately waiting perhaps for my father to come home from his night job or maybe for a dream that

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/moore/moore.htm Poetry by Marianne Moore I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle. Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it after all, a place for the genuine. Hands that can grasp, eyes that can dilate, hair that can rise if it must, these things are important not because a high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because they are useful. When they become so derivative as to become unintelligible, the same thing may be said for all of us, that we do not admire what we cannot understand: the bat holding on upside down or in quest of something to eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf under a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that feels a flea, the base- ball fan, the statistician-- nor is it valid to discriminate against "business documents and school-books"; all these phenomena are important. O

http://sarojinisahoo.com/behind_scene.htm

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/mohja-kahf My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears By Mohja Kahf b. 1967 Mohja Kahf My grandmother puts her feet in the sink of the bathroom at Sears to wash them in the ritual washing for prayer, wudu, because she has to pray in the store or miss the mandatory prayer time for Muslims She does it with great poise, balancing herself with one plump matronly arm against the automated hot-air hand dryer, after having removed her support knee-highs and laid them aside, folded in thirds, and given me her purse and her packages to hold so she can accomplish this august ritual and get back to the ritual of shopping for housewares Respectable Sears matrons shake their heads and frown as they notice what my grandmother is doing, an affront to American porcelain, a contamination of American Standards by something foreign and unhygienic requiring civic action and possible use of disinfectant spray They fluster about and flutter their

http://www.seaox.com/thich.html PEACE by Thich Nhat Hanh They woke me this morning to tell me my brother had been killed in battle. Yet in the garden, uncurling moist petals, a new rose blooms on the bush. And I am alive, can still breathe the fragrance of roses and dung, eat, pray, and sleep. But when can I break my long silence? When can I speak the unuttered words that are choking me?

Patience by Kay Ryan Patience is wider than one once envisioned, with ribbons of rivers and distant ranges and tasks undertaken and finished with modest relish by natives in their native dress. Who would have guessed it possible that waiting is sustainable— a place with its own harvests. Or that in time's fullness the diamonds of patience couldn't be distinguished from the genuine in brilliance or hardness.

http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/ripvanwinkle.html

http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/Forrest-Hamer Erection I wanted them bad: the mail-order x-ray glasses that looked straight through clothes to bodies– of those in my class, of the old-lady teacher who wore miniskirts and an opened blouse, of grownups whose eyes stopped meeting mine. I wanted to see a privacy clothes know: the geography of the possible. I waited. And when the glasses hadn't come, and each day's disappointment stung like slaps, I worried that other people could see hard-ons hidden by long-tailed shirts worn outside the pants, by a walk-become-a-race, or by the distraction of stubborness and anger. And arrogance. Wondered if they could see how timid the penis otherwise seemed, how fat still my chest was, making improbable breasts. Wondered if they could see the tenseness of no-more-but-not-yet, of sleep-erupting dreams having nothing to do with the body and everything, desire becoming specific. And when the glasses still hadn't come and there was cause to d

http://www.americanliterature.com/Jackson/SS/TheLottery.html

A song I haven't heard in years by my favorite vocalist.  I think this album is buried in my shed somewhere.

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/33 EGO  I just didn’t get it— even with the teacher holding an orange (the earth) in one hand and a lemon (the moon) in the other, her favorite student (the sun) standing behind her with a flashlight. I just couldn’t grasp it— this whole citrus universe, these bumpy planets revolving so slowly no one could even see themselves moving. I used to think if I could only concentrate hard enough I could be the one person to feel what no one else could, sense a small tug from the ground, a sky shift, the earth changing gears. Even though I was only one mini-speck on a speck, even though I was merely a pinprick in one goosebump on the orange, I was sure then I was the most specially perceptive, perceptively sensitive. I was sure then my mother was the only mother to snap, “The world doesn’t revolve around you!” The earth was fragile and mostly water, just the way the orange was mostly water if you peeled it, just the way I was mostly water if you peeled me.

 Posting poetry is my response to the murder of Phylicia Barnes.  Phylicia disappeared a few days after Christmas last year from a neighborhood in Northwest Baltimore.  Her body was found April 21, 2011 in Port Deposit, MD, where it washed up from the Susquehannna River.   I cannot put into words the horror I feel.  I did not know her, but she must have a beautiful spirit because she has inspired me to read more poetry than I ever have in my life. http://www.theroot.com/buzz/funeral-services-held-phylicia-barnes

http://poetrynet.org/month/archive/tufariello/intro.html Useful Advice You're 37? Don't you think that maybe It's time you settled down and had a baby? No wine? Does this mean happy news? I knew it! Hey, are you sure you two know how to do it? All Dennis has to do is look at me And I'm knocked up.                                   Some things aren't meant to be. It's sad, but try to see this as God's will. I've heard that sometimes when you take the Pill... Does he wear boxers? Briefs are bad for sperm. A former partner at my husband's firm Who tried for years got pregnant when she stopped Working so hard.                                  Why don't you two adopt? You'll have one of your own then, like my niece. At work I heard about this herb from Greece— My sister swears by doing quai. Want to try it? Forget the high-tech stuff. Just change your diet. Yoga is good for that.  My cousin Carol— It's true! Too much caffeine can make you ster

Anne Sexton, "Cinderella" You always read about it: the plumber with the twelve children who wins the Irish Sweepstakes. From toilets to riches. That story. Or the nursemaid, some luscious sweet from Denmark who captures the oldest son's heart. from diapers to Dior. That story. Or a milkman who serves the wealthy, eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk, the white truck like an ambulance who goes into real estate and makes a pile. From homogenized to martinis at lunch. Or the charwoman who is on the bus when it cracks up and collects enough from the insurance. From mops to Bonwit Teller. That story. Once the wife of a rich man was on her deathbed and she said to her daughter Cinderella: Be devout. Be good. Then I will smile down from heaven in the seam of a cloud. The man took another wife who had two daughters, pretty enough but with hearts like blackjacks. Cinderella was their maid. She slept on the sooty hearth each night and walked around looking like Al Jolson. Her father

A Story about the Body The young composer, working that summer at an artist’s colony, had watched her for a week. She was Japanese, a painter, almost sixty, and he thought he was in love with her. He loved her work, and her work was like the way she moved her body, used her hands, looked at him directly when she mused and considered answers to his questions. One night, walking back from a concert, they came to her door and she turned to him and said, “I think you would like to have me. I would like that too, but I must tell you that I have had a double mastectomy,” and when he didn’t understand, “I’ve lost both my breasts.” The radiance that he had carried around in his belly and chest cavity-like music-withered quickly, and he made himself look at her when he said, “I’m sorry I don’t think I could.” He walked back to his own cabin through the pines, and in the morning he found a small blue bowl on the porch outside his door. It looked to be full of rose petals, but he found when he pi

Turtle by Kay Ryan : The Poetry Foundation [poem]

Unlearning to Not Speak by Marge Piercy Blizzards of paper in slow motion sift through her. In nightmares she suddenly recalls a class she signed up for but forgot to attend. Now it is too late. Now it is time for finals: losers will be shot. Phrases of men who lectured her drift and rustle in piles: Why don't you speak up? Why are you shouting? You have the wrong answer, wrong line, wrong face. They tell her she is womb-man, babymachine, mirror image, toy, earth mother and penis-poor, a dish of synthetic strawberry icecream She grunts to a halt. She must learn again to speak starting with I starting with We starting as the infant does with her own true hunger and pleasure and rage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_Williams Let Me Tell You how to do it from the beginning. First notice everything: the stain on the wallpaper of the vacant house, the mothball smell of a Greyhound toilet. Miss nothing. Memorize it. You cannot twist the fact you do not know. Remember The blond girl you saw in the bar. Put a scar on her breast. Say she left home to get away from her father. Invent whatever will support your line. Leave out the rest. Use metaphors: The mayor is a pig is a metaphor which is not to suggest it is not a fact. Which is irrelevant. Nothing is less important than a fact. Be suspicious of any word you learned and were proud of learning. It will go bad. It will fall off the page. When your father lies in the last light and your mother cries for him, listen to the sound of her crying. When your father dies take notes somewhere inside. If there is a heaven he will forgive you if the line you found was a good one. It does not have to be worth the dying. by Miller

Leda and the Swan , a 16th century copy after a lost painting by Michelangelo Theme of Sex from Shmoop.com Leda and the Swan  by W. B. Yeats A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? And how can body, laid in that white rush, But feel the strange heart beating where it lies? A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemnon dead.                         Being so caught up, So mastered by the brute blood of the air, Did she put on his knowledge with his power Before the indifferent beak could let her drop? Leda, After the Swan by Carl Phillips http://www.sampsoniaway.org/literary-voices/2010/08/11/voices-from-cave-canem-carl-phillips/ Perhaps, in the exaggerated grace of his weight settling, the wings raised, he

More info on Robert Hayden: http://iwannalearntowrite.blogspot.com/2010/11/detroit-diaspora-writers-from-detroit.html Analysis by Kerry Michael Wood: http://www.helium.com/items/1145833-analysis-of-robert-haydens-those-winter-sundays Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden Sundays too my father got up early And put his clothes on in the blueback cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he'd call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house, Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love's austere and lonely offices?

http://www.patmora.com/ Fences By Pat Mora Pat Mora Mouths full of laughter, the turistas come to the tall hotel with suitcases full of dollars. Every morning my brother makes the cool beach new for them. With a wooden board he smooths away all footprints. I peek through the cactus fence and watch the women rub oil sweeter than honey into their arms and legs while their children jump waves or sip drinks from long straws, coconut white, mango yellow. Once my little sister ran barefoot across the hot sand for a taste. My mother roared like the ocean, “No. No. It’s their beach. It’s their beach.” Poem copyright ©1991 by Pat Mora,

Whenever I hear her sing I feel as if my sister is singing.  Love  the dress she's wearing in this video.

Terry Teachout Reads From Pops A Life of Louis Armstrong

Sherman Alexie Bio   How to Write the Great American Indian Novel by Sherman Alexie All of the Indians must have tragic features: tragic noses, eyes, and arms. Their hands and fingers must be tragic when they reach for tragic food. The hero must be a half-breed, half white and half Indian, preferably from a horse culture. He should often weep alone. That is mandatory. If the hero is an Indian woman, she is beautiful. She must be slender and in love with a white man. But if she loves an Indian man then he must be a half-breed, preferably from a horse culture. If the Indian woman loves a white man, then he has to be so white that we can see the blue veins running through his skin like rivers. When the Indian woman steps out of her dress, the white man gasps at the endless beauty of her brown skin. She should be compared to nature: brown hills, mountains, fertile valleys, dewy grass, wind, and clear water. If she is compared to murky water, however, then she must have a secret. Indians a

http://issuu.com/sampsoniaway/docs/coajan2011_linkaudio/33?mode=a_p Women Who Don't Bite Their Tongues: Writer's Workship Celebrates More Than Thirty Years.

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/rodgers/rodgers.htm Poem for Some Black Women ©1992 Carolyn M. Rodgers i am lonely, all the people i know i know too well there was comfort in that at first but now we know each others miseries               too well. we are          lonely women, who spend time waiting for          occasional flings we live with fear. we are lonely. we are talented, dedicated, well read          BLACK, COMMITTED, we are lonely, we understand the world problems Black women’s problems with Black men          but all we really understand is          lonely. when we laugh, we are so happy to laugh we cry when we laugh          we are lonely. we are busy people always doing things fearing getting trapped in rooms loud with empty…                       yet knowing the music of silence/hating it/hoarding it loving it/treasuring it,         it often birthing our creativity                        we are lonely being soft and being hard supporting our selves, earni