 Female Figure of the Late Spedos Type, the Schuster Master, (Greece), about 2400 B.C. Cycladic Female Figure at the Getty Villa And even with the fires raging I still hold myself close Here in this dark room I am mystery Tattooed goddess Ornament Burial prize Stolen from a grave Laid with my master Made him my slave The child in my belly Never born, always just Beneath these arms Round like my breasts My smooth face painted Origins in azurite and cinnabar This wind reminds me of home Isle where I was laid to rest The pieces of me kept whole For centuries I have wished To be shattered on the pyramid at Keros One shoulder here one leg there Oh, the ruin of that place No strangers leering through glass They wonder at my former use I was what I am: Reminder Elizabeth Spenst Elizabeth Spenst is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and critic with work appearing in Rattle, On the Seawall, the Tuskegee Review, Paste Magazine, ARTS.BLACK, and forthcoming in the Inquisitive Eater. She's received institutional support for her research and writing from Yale University, the New School, Cave Canem, and Brooklyn Poets. You can find her work at elizabethspenst.com.
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 Watermelons, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico) 1954 Long Live Life Joy, an old man playing harmonica, eyes closed, hands caressing instrument, lips kissing it with passion and song. A starling’s murmurations in December. A vinaceous mulberry, hidden in leaves come mid-summer. It’s the cowardly, collywobbling lion skipping with Dorothy despite his overwhelming fear. A mother decorating sugar cookies though she has overworked the dough. Joy is loneliness walking into sunshine. Bees preparing for their queen. Maestro turned mad in late autumn, directing with abandon the last tune. Joy is Kahlo’s final painting, Viva La Vida carved on the green striped-skin fruit, its seeds a promise of new life. It’s the hope in the writings of her last days that life’s departure will finally bring joy. Jo Taylor Jo Taylor is a retired, 35-year English teacher from Georgia. In 2021 she published her first collection of poems, Strange Fire, and in 2024, she published her second book of poems, Come before Winter (Kelsay Books). Jo has been nominated for the Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes. She enjoys morning walks, playing with her two grandsons, and collecting and reading cookbooks. You can connect with her at https://www.jotaylorwrites.com/  Andy Warhol might be the most ubiquitous, identifiable artist of all time, with literally hundreds of thousands of artworks. He liked to make several thousand works a year. "I want to be a machine," he said. He wasn't terribly concerned whether or not his art was really art. "Art is anything you can get away with," he famously said. He copied objects, images, and faces from any source he could plunder, then repeated them over and over, mass producing his own work personally and plastering every inch of the world with it. But what was behind it? Warhol himself said, "nothing." He claimed there was nothing there at all, saying "I'm a deeply superficial person." How did a shy, plain lad who could barely draw deliver a signature style of commercial art that became coveted by brands like Tiffany's and Vogue Magazine, and the celebrity guest of the world's most glamorous celebrities? Some of his circle said he was cruel and ruthless. Others lauded him as the person they could most be themselves around. What was he thinking? What was his voracious, compulsive need to create all about? Was it a statement about consumer society? Was it his own emptiness? Or was it genius we are barely beginning to understand? Join us on Tuesday as we talk about all this and more. We will take a look at the life and art of Andy Warhol, and use his works to inspire a few poems or story ideas of our own. Andy Warhol
CA$35.00
Andy Warhol is everywhere, but remains an enigma. How did the shy, plain boy from the underclass of Pittsburgh become the biggest sensation in art history? We will explore the life, work, and legend of Andy Warhol, looking at a variety of familiar and less viewed artworks alike. We will use Andy's story and artworks as a springboard for our own creative writing with several generative exercises for poetry or fiction ideas and drafts. Our workshops are about community, conversation, creativity, and connection! Tuesday March 25, 2025. On zoom. 2 to 4 pm EST. $35CAD or approximately $24USD.  The Noon Recess, by Winslow Homer (USA) 1873 Kindred Spirits A barefoot brat pretends to read a book. While trapped indoors, outside his schoolmates play. His teacher, deep in thought, seems miles away, brow furrowed, bearing a determined look. She understands she chose the path she took but wishes now to leave though still must stay, at least until school's through, the end of May, then weave new courses like a restless brook. She hungers for a taste of city life, unwilling to settle down and marry. She'd clerk or find work as a secretary, rejecting the lot of a farmer's wife. So desperate to escape this one-room school, same as her pupil, she'll defy the rules. Carl D. Kinsky Carl Kinsky is a sonneteer masquerading as a criminal defense lawyer in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, a quirky old town on the west bank of the Mississippi River. He fancies himself a modern-day Pudd'nhead Wilson.  Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist, by Andrea Solario (Italy) 1509 Result of Criticism A head is presented to Herodias on a silver platter. His skin is pale and lifeless like paper, cold to the touch. His face appears to be at peace, calm and relaxed. His curls of hair, still neat and orderly. His life is something no more. Herodias looks at the severed head with satisfaction. She delicately holds the silver platter. That collects the red droplets of blood. Falling from his open cavity. The background of the room in shadows. Further illuminating the skin of those in the foreground. Some may see this fate as cruel, But others see it as justified for his criticism. A stark reminder of the cost of one’s actions. And the unwavering determination of one to punish others. Brandon Moon Brandon Moon is a high-school student in the USA.  The Willow Tree, photograph by James N Hoffman (USA) 2024 Where the Willow Wills back in the yard where the wind blows blue and the grass is green is a willow tree majestically tall drooping in delight its branches weave in a ballet of dance worthy of kings and queens ___ gone by sit and contemplate the pure air meditate to true grace for the willow wills you live in peace the sapling can teach of your place in the natural order of things breathe in the scent become enlightened for the willow wills you to be for the willow wills you enchanted life! James N Hoffman James N. Hoffman: "I received an MA in Applied Psychology from The Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg, PA and a BA in Philosophy at Edinboro University at Edinboro, PA. I started writing poetry roughly 50 years ago as a reaction to the scholarly limitations of technical philosophy. It turned into writing what I called colour poems only to find out much later that it was called ekphrastic poetry. I would have liked to be a painter but am not that talented so I began to paint with words. It truly is a challenge that that my spirit feels at home with."  Ioánnina, by Edward Lear (England) 1857 Ungovernable Forces Edward Lear, Ioánnina, 6th November 1848 A letter’s wilful invitation to chase fresh adventures -- Cairo, Sinai, Palestine with my friend John Cross -- and the spoilsport later season so unreasonable here in Epirus, where the climate is too bitter to host outdoor sketching, nudge me on a different path: I will defer completion of this tour until the spring sun warms my painting hand, and these surly rains skulk into hiding with their coldness. What’s more — Charles Church, my wandering companion, whom cholera and quarantine kept from me three months ago, is now nearby, our fellowship rekindled. But there are further convoluted logics for diversion: the published whims and quirks of steamboat timetables. And worse: insatiable caprices within my feet, fidgeting so much for daily novelty they seem not even to be part of me. To the interior of my darling ankles I must forward some strange new verses of complaint. Michael Loveday Author's note: "In 1848, the poet and landscape painter Edward Lear sailed from Constantinople to Saloníki (now Thessaloniki) in Northeast Greece, in order to embark upon a tour of southeastern Europe with a friend. A cholera outbreak blocked his onward route. Despite having only recently recovered from malaria, Lear decided to travel alone into Ottoman-ruled Albania, at that time a territory ravaged by conflict. His journals and landscape paintings were later published as one of the most celebrated travel books of the 19th century: Journals of a Landscape Painter in Albania, &c. (1851)." Michael Loveday lives in Bath, England, and is the author of two books and two pamphlets/chapbooks. His debut poetry pamphlet He Said/She Said was published by HappenStance Press in 2011. His most recent book is the writing craft guide Unlocking the Novella-in-Flash: from Blank Page to Finished Manuscript (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2022), which won an Arts Council England Award and three international book awards. More information is available at: www.michaelloveday.com
Missing Artist Found in the Railyard This poem was inspired by the artist, her story, and by Transmission Session, 2022: (scroll down to last painting) https://2022.rca.ac.uk/students/sarah-cunningham/ Between the first and third vertebrae, where the tracks switch, allowing passage to another direction. Loud drone like someone pressing a piano pedal, sostenuto silencing her pale flesh. A transmission to once gold fields now brown, where catkins catch reeds from river channels, where cows had given up a future pasture. Her youth convinced us to imagine knifepricks, a righteousness, though her website lacquered best practices, hundreds interviewed on meaningful connections. Her paintbrush demanded smoothness, yet she rough- brushed, captive to the linen canvas. Perhaps a lilac beard of the past spring snuck into the final landscape, with steps of green and ivy walls-- a southerly climate? Italy with swollen afternoon windows shuttered, seeping through the cracks, streaks of carmen. Laurel Benjamin Laurel Benjamin's new collection, Flowers on a Train, is forthcoming from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. She is a San Francisco Bay Area poet, active with the Women’s Poetry Salon. She curates Ekphrastic Writers and is a reader for Common Ground Review. Current publications: Pirene's Fountain, Lily Poetry Review, Cider Press Review, Taos Journal of Poetry, Mom Egg Review, Gone Lawn, Nixes Mate. She received an Honorable Mention for the Ruben Rose Memorial Poetry Competition. Laurel holds an MFA from Mills College. She invented a secret language with her brother. Find her at: https://www.laurelbenjamin.com  Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. IV, by Georgia O'Keeffe (USA) 1930 Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. 1V At first glance it’s a stark and shocking face: Green hood (or hair) like large leaves. Black. No eyes. A giant nostril (or is that a mouth?) That rises to a blade with a sharp point. One feels one’s being stared at. Such a stare Is disconcerting! What of one is seen? And can that be evaded? Held and probed, The viewer may be daunted, and recoil. Or may continue gazing. If a flower, Its mystery’s intact. It’s deep and dark, Yet may not be the hostile force one feared. It may indeed be friendly, even known, If one can just gaze long enough, and give Oneself to what, perhaps, is gazing back. Bruce Bennett Bruce Bennett is author of ten books of poetry and more than thirty chapbooks. His most recent chapbook is Images Into Words (The Dove Block Project, 2022), a collection of ekphrastic poems co-authored with poet Jim Crenner. Bennett was a founder and editor of the journals Field and Ploughshares, and from 1973-2014 taught Literature and Creative Writing and directed the Visiting Writers Series at Wells College. In 2012 he was awarded a Pushcart Prize. He lives in Aurora, New York. His poetry website is https://justanotherdayinjustourtown.com.  The Face of War, by Salvador Dali (Spain) 1940 The Face of War still dreaming of more efficient ways to maim and murder ourselves. what to say to poison gas, mass radiation and napalm. to this Hundred Years’ War. to the snap and crack of broken bones. missing limbs. the smell of burnt and rotted flesh. millions of disappeared, disabled, distended. so many dead. my guts wrench. despair and disgust choke my throat. these hell-stones in my stomach will not pass. I can say humankind is an oxymoron. civilization, a misnomer. doublespeak. how to explain all this hate, this mass hysteria? I say hatred doesn’t simply wheedle its way into us, metastasize, and then find a place as insuppressible as breathing, eating or sleeping. it’s a bloodlust pumped through our veins by that evil engine in our chest, with us from very beginning, prenatal, delivered. compassion and tolerance only mop up the afterbirth. John M. Davis John M. Davis currently lives in Visalia, California. His poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals, includingDescant (Canada), The Comstock Review, Gyroscope Review, Bloodroot Literary Magazine, Constellations and Reunion: The Dallas Review. The Mojave, a chapbook, was published by the Dallas Community Poets. |
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March 2025
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