AG2026_1222184a or seduced her wits and left her to wander


Some say thronging cavalry, some say foot soldiers,
others call a fleet the most beautiful of
sights the dark earth offers, but I say it’s what-
ever you love best.
And it’s easy to make this understood by
everyone, for she who surpassed all human
kind in beauty, Helen, abandoning her
husband—that best of
men—went sailing off to the shores of Troy and
never spent a thought on her child or loving
parents: when the goddess seduced her wits and
left her to wander,
she forgot them all, she could not remember
anything but longing, and lightly straying
aside, lost her way. But that reminds me
now: Anactória,
she’s not here, and I’d rather see her lovely
step, her sparkling glance and her face than gaze on
all the troops in Lydia in their chariots and
glittering armor.


The Anactoria Poem, Sappho. Translated By Jim Powell

AG2026_1170792a or strands of illusion


How a tropical bean could help treat Parkinson’s tremors, Meredith Bauer-Mitchell and Eva Sailly (ifas.ufl.edu)


Eleven o’clock, and the curtain falls. 
The cold wind tears the strands of illusion; 
The delicate music is lost 
In the blare of home-going crowds 
And a midnight paper.

The night has grown martial; 
It meets us with blows and disaster.
 
Even the stars have turned shrapnel, 
Fixed in silent explosions. 
And here at our door 
The moonlight is laid 
Like a drawn sword. 

End of Comedy, Louis Untermeyer

Contemplate simple pretexts for happiness


Derek Guy on pantalones chinos.


« Quand une personne a vraiment atteint la capacité de créer, son unique devoir est de manifester cette puissance à l’écart des attentes et des jugements. » (Forough Farrokhzâd (1935-1967))
via Librarie Petite Egypte

Perhaps life is a choked moment where my gaze
annihilates itself inside in the pupils of your eyes—
?????I will mingle that sensation with my grasp
?????of the moon and comprehension of darkness.

In a room the size of loneliness,
my heart’s the size of love.
It contemplates its simple pretexts for happiness:
the beauty of the flowers’ wilting in a vase,

the sapling you planted in our garden,
and the canaries’ song—the size of a window.

Reborn, Forugh Farrokhzad. Translated By Sholeh Wolpé

Behind his project lay the understanding that social life is “a seamless web, a single inconceivable and transindividual process, in which there is no need to invent ways of linking language events and social upheavals or economic contradictions because on that level they were never separate from one another” Benjamin Kunkel on Fredric Jameson.

AG2026_1120705a or live our myth in the recurrence


Lee Friedlander, Life Still. (Aperture)

Six Photographers on Lee Friedlander’s Timeless Influence.


No one really dies in the myths.
No world is lost in the stories.
Everything is lost in the retelling,
in being wondered at. We grow up
and grow old in our land of grass
and blood moons, births and goneness.
We live our myth in the recurrence,
pretending we will return another day
.
Like the morning coming every morning.
The truth is we come back as a choir.
Otherwise Eurydice would be forever
in the dark. Our singing brings her
back.
Our dying keeps her alive.

The Singers Change, the Music Goes On, Linda Gregg

AG2026_1120538a or in their brevity to reach one another


What things are steadfast? Not the birds.
Not the bride and groom who hurry
in their brevity to reach one another.
The stars do not blow away as we do.
The heavenly things ignite and freeze.
But not as my hair falls before you.
Fragile and momentary, we continue.
Fearing madness in all things huge
and their requiring.
Managing as thin light
on water. Managing only greetings
and farewells. We love a little, as the mice
huddle, as the goat leans against my hand.
As the lovers quickening, riding time.
Making safety in the moment. This touching
home goes far. This fishing in the air.

We Manage Most When We Manage Small, Linda Gregg


What am I if not what happens
when I try to run away?

Water falls out of me like
an opinion. I’m like a screen
door banging between two rivers.

Dear air, what’s inside me
you’re so desperate to take?

I put on the Atlantic like a sweater.
My head bobs on the surface
of a lake I’m named after.

Where do I belong?
My head asks. My body,
exasperated, answers.

Ode on Humidity, P. Scott Cunningham (Poetry, April 2026)

Melvin Edwards

Tomorrow’s Wind, 1991. Public Art Fund — Doris C. Freedman Plaza, February 17 – May 31, 1991.
Thomas Jefferson Park. Materialism.nyc.


Before Words,” 1990. Public Art Fund — Brighter Days at DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, June 1, 2022 – April 30, 2023.

Melvin Edwards, Before Words
Public Art Fund at City Hall Park, New York City, May 4 to November 28, 2021.
Photo: Nicholas Knight, Courtesy of Public Art Fund, NY.

Melvin Edwards, Ausstellungsansicht Kunsthalle Bern, 2025. Foto: Cedric Mussano

dexterous and fugitive


Through the young and awkward hours
my lady perfectly moving,
through the new world scarce astir
my fragile lady wandering
in whose perishable poise
is the mystery of Spring
(with her beauty more than snow
dexterous and fugitive

my very frail lady drifting
distinctly, moving like a myth
in the uncertain morning
, with
April feet like sudden flowers

From “Puella Mea” [Through the young and awkward hours], E. E. Cummings