Kenning Editions presents a bilingual reading with Urayoán Noel and Legna Rodríguez Iglesias, to launch TÍTULO / TITLE, a book of poems by the Cuban poet, prose writer, and playwright Legna Rodríguez Iglesias, published for the first time in Spanish, and in English translation by Katherine M. Hedeen.
…she doesn’t write poetry anymore, she does dishes…
Malcolm X directed by Spike Lee, released November 18, 1992.
Related (I think) —
Vaughn Spann, AlmineRech; David Castillo.
Marked man (Mitchell), 2019. Mixed media on wooden panel. 60 x 48 inches. Acquired by Pérez Art Museum Miami.
The X is a notable and instantly recognizable letter and symbol. Spann described his own experience being stop and frisked by the police—the way his body became an X as it occurred. The X is also a target, a place to aim, to focus your attention. The series provides plenty of room for the viewer to project their own interpretations as well, given the X’s broad historical implications and associations. The first time I encountered Marked Man (Mitchell) (2019), I related it all to Spann’s personal anecdote, noting the connection between his and where my own mind took me upon encountering this work. The two are separate but the link is clear—the broader experience, the commentary on contemporary life—it comes alive for anyone paying attention to the intricacies of modern Black life. The viewer is to come forward prepared to bring with them their own world and unique purview. Spann’s paintings are not merely a reflection of his own but instead an invitation to share yours. The works function as a catalyst, allowing the viewer imaginative freedom.
Smoke Signals, September 03 — October 10, 2020. AlmineRech, Brussels. Press Release, text by Maritza Lacayo.
I grew up here. This is a formative place, where I learned how to be, to imagine, and even how to cut a figure. I am grateful for all I was given, especially the encouragement to embrace the possible. I was placed in ideal conditions, in a bright and favorable position, that I shared with my siblings.
I blossomed. I became who I am, grounded and raised in a tended cultural plot. I was afforded a southeasterly view, of the world!? We could not help it–we have lived in other places, have known other conditions, have learned to participate in the ecosystem that we are in, and always remembered what dreams are for.
Here still works for me. It is a place of imaginings and comfort. It cultivates warm memories, and unfurled reflections. I prefer to thrive in full sun.
Related:
Paulette, la confiance est un habit difficile à porter.
LP back cover.
I weighed […],
actions,
[…],
on the scales I was given,
calibrated
in units of fear and amazement.
[…] everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
Essay by Jane Hirshfield from 2018 via poets.org.
At the etymological root of both healing and health is the idea of “wholeness.” To heal, then, is to take what has been broken, separated, fragmented, injured, exiled and restore it to wholeness.
[…]
Many things beyond physical illness and physical fracture need healing. Some are personal, some are collective, and these two realms are not disconnected. We don’t live in compartments; we live in our lives.
[…]
kintsugi, done well, offers damage made visible as part of the cup’s history, damage made beautiful because the cup was repaired without denial.
[…]
Poems are words that live in the fractures, […] they make new by rejoining parts into a visibly changed whole.
[…]
a person who can ask words to do things words have not done before is not powerless. To make phrases that increase what is possible to think and feel is both exhilaration and liberation. To expand reality is to counter despair, depression, and impotence.
[..]
[Poems] loosen us from the loneliness of separation and the erasures of generality. The particularity and unexpectedness of poetry’s language shake us from sleepiness, complacency, habitual mind. Empathy breaks us from the hypnosis of ego’s grip on its own sense of purpose.
[…]
The rational mind, untempered by poetry, divides; […] fierce rational power, in isolation, is inhuman. Art dwells at the crossroads between what in us is body, what in us is emotion, what in us is history, and what in us is mind. To step into wholeness of seeing and feeling, under any conditions, is in itself restorative.
Jane Hirshfield
A Shining Wonder. Daylong, Clear, and Sunlit. Sun Pours [All] Daylong.
Related : Marjory Stoneman Douglas’s A River of Grass.
Mourning gives loss a creative form, restoring life to a shattered world.
Mourning could animate a new birth, but this doesn’t guarantee a future without vulnerability. Mourning might be a leap in the dark, but it is not a leap into darkness.
Alexander Hirsch, Psyche.
| Cos-Ber-Zam | Né Noya | 4:10 |
via Art Resources Transfer, a nonprofit organization committed to documenting and disseminating artists’ voices and work to the broadest possible public.
:format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-4650401-1581858500-2471.jpeg.jpg){kind=link}