Poetry

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Dragonfly Out in the Sun

Tracey Dean Widelitz

Hold On To Me,
Sunlit Beauty,
and Rose Petals and Golden Wings

Refugees DRC

Despair Paintings

Owen Brown

The world seems to carry on as if there aren’t a million reasons to be shocked. But because I don’t want to go numb, I try to paint them, at least a few. For these, I paint figuratively, as I was trained, even though now, often, my desires, and my output, is abstract. Still, how can we ignore the drought in Afghanistan, the strife in Sudan, the war in Gaza, the invasion of Ukraine? Or even what goes on in our own lives?

Finding a Pathway

Finding a Pathway

Mark Rosalbo

As an emerging artist, the art form I work with is primarily abstract painting and large-scale installations. My artistic process involves using various mediums and techniques to create physical manifestations of internal dialogues and personal judgments. In my abstract paintings, I use house paint, various tools, and textured canvases. The technique involves creating overconfident brushstrokes that mask my imposter syndrome, with multiple layers of paint partially hidden under the surface. The inner turmoil arising from self-doubt is expressed as geometric shapes woven together with texture.

In Between

Wholeness Through Fracture: Sculpting the Human Condition

Aleksandra Scepanovic

Three works in clay by Aleksandra Scepanovic.
Each of these works tells a story of the complexity and beauty found in life’s fractures, embracing the wholeness that emerges through resilience.

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Coastal Grey

Miki Simic

This series of photographs, titled “Coastal Grey,” depicts elements of summer themes. My goal was to capture a vibrant setting and allow the viewer to realize it remains vibrant even though color is lacking.

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Symphony in Green

Patrice Sullivan

I paint landscapes, interiors, exteriors, still life’s with figures interacting and posing for the camera displaying memorable moments with families, friends, and neighbors.

friends

Friends, Triplets, and Family Narrative

Tianyagenv Yan

Tianyagenv uses light clay to make miniature figures and wishes to capture the characteristics of femininity, vulnerability, and resilience in potential.

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Green Canyon Bridge 1993, Thrive, and Tarot Deck: The Moon

Robb Kunz

My paintings explore the abstract simplicity of ordinary life and the deductive impulse to see ourselves reflected back in art.

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Metamorphosis

Marianne Dalton

The photographs are from the series, Metamorphosis. Each painterly creation constructed from dozens of layered photographs is driven by my reaction to nature’s extreme seasonal change.

La Huasteca

La Huasteca, Roots in Nuevo Leon, and Frames

Tee Pace

La Huasteca, Roots in Nuevo Leon, and Frames

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Cherry Blossoms

Annika Connor

Cherry Blossom Forest

Les Femmes Mondiales Black and White

Les Femmes Mondiales Black and White

Janet Brugos

Les Femmes Mondiales Black and White
Hurricane
Chicago Ice

Sunset over the Pacific

Three Photographs

Lawrence Bridges

UNDER THE PIER, MALIBU CA
SUNSET OVER THE PACIFIC
and POOL, POST RANCH INN, BIG SUR

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Joshua Tree Project

Holly Willis

The images are part of a larger series created in the Mojave Desert around Joshua Tree in the fall of 2023 that explore the shifting state of the desert.

October Still Life

Chasing Paradise

Marianne Dalton

This series, Chasing Paradise, draws upon my work as a fine artist in painting, as I create stylized photographs of flowers and plants found in my rural environment.

Turtle Light

Ocean Sleep and Turtle Light

Maite Russell

Turtle Light and Ocean Sleep are works of multimedia and sculpture mediums, respectively, depicting the natural world with fantastical elements.

Poetry

Featured image for ““Tiger Swallowtail”, “Bulbpulse” and “Flamingo””
Henry Stanton

“Tiger Swallowtail”, “Bulbpulse” and “Flamingo”

Stanton’s poetry pulls beyond the words on the page. Is it a search for the “suchness” of things, the true self, the true reality? The poet refuses to be trapped in his corporeality to divine the “whatness” of self: “Tathāgata will be my next child.”

October 2017
Featured image for ““We Are, We Were”, “Think Tragedy, Feel Comedy” and “Are we equal yet?””
Samuel Griffin

“We Are, We Were”, “Think Tragedy, Feel Comedy” and “Are we equal yet?”

Metaphysics pervades Griffin’s poetry, as the references to Newton, Heraclitus, Isaac, and Spinoza’s famous Deus sive Natura are instructive. Pay attention to the titles: “We Are, We Were,” “Think Tragedy, Feel Comedy,” and “Are We Equal Yet?”

October 2017
Featured image for ““Dark Sun”, “confessing” and “nag, stone””
Frank Heather

“Dark Sun”, “confessing” and “nag, stone”

An existential fear of unknowing in Heather’s poems is made most explicit in “Dark Sun,” but it is also present in “nag, stone” and “confessing,” irrespective of the irony. Named: “this terror towards time” and “the swirling chaotic mystery of my past.”

October 2017
Featured image for ““Drowning”, “Forms” and “Odysseus””
Theresa Ryder

“Drowning”, “Forms” and “Odysseus”

The transient nature of life is nowhere more keenly perceived as in Ryder’s poem “Forms.” The irony is obvious: “When I die the world will stop spinning,” and then this: “I will be a form, a shape, a number, a colour, a sound.” A transitory traveller.

October 2017
Featured image for ““All Things Scarlet”, “From Primrose Hill” and “Untold Miles””
Carter Vance

“All Things Scarlet”, “From Primrose Hill” and “Untold Miles”

Vance drapes “All Things Scarlet” in allusions—colloquial or personal—and metaphors intersect what is linear. In “From Primrose Hill,” the poet concretizes the poem in landscape imagery: “post-war tenement/brick ways, ” “many-wandered fields.” Metaphor reigns in “Untold Miles” in the first three stanzas but focuses on the “not-quite-lovers in the last.

September 2017
Featured image for ““The New Adventures Of”, “Opa” and “When””
Chaya Bhuvaneswar

“The New Adventures Of”, “Opa” and “When”

Like a page from a memoir in “The New Adventures of,” the poet rejects her father’s rants and repulses an arranged marriage. A similar feat is fulfilled line by poetic line in “Opa,” the poet having found a fire-opal, “no opal omen of/ruin.” And in “When,” the poet pleas for racial justice and names the names, “Book of remembrance, book of tears.”

September 2017
Featured image for “Songs for Trying: “Losing Interest,” “Winter Blues” and “The Impermanence of Sinking””
Lacey Beamer

Songs for Trying: “Losing Interest,” “Winter Blues” and “The Impermanence of Sinking”

The metaphors of water and sun run through Beamer’s poetry, as if pool water and the smell of chlorine can “block the rest of the world,” and the sun’s sinking in the sea at night isn’t the same as drowning. So too “sunlight becomes a hard, palpable thing,” a corrective to her “winter blues.”

September 2017
Featured image for ““You Ungrateful Girl”, “Wrong Side Out” and “Best Left Buried””
M. Stone

“You Ungrateful Girl”, “Wrong Side Out” and “Best Left Buried”

Read the titles first and enter Stone’s undiluted poetry with eyes wide open. Significance lies in the poet’s voice and imbalance of power in “You Ungrateful Girl”; in the descriptive tone and revealed irony in “Wrong Side Out”; and in the dare to unbury a rotting corpse like a metaphor of “rages” and “barbed words.”

September 2017
Featured image for ““The Dead Wall of Silence”, “Pieces” and “Scratching Out Earth””
Mark McCreary

“The Dead Wall of Silence”, “Pieces” and “Scratching Out Earth”

In “The Dead Wall of Silence” the poet alludes to a partition against the backdrop of “sheep/and suckled cattle” in atypical dimeter and trimeter feet. In “Pieces,” he is not done with the fracturing: “Actual actions of schisms,” “splintered spectators,” “absolute absence”—just pieces. And in “Scratching Out Earth,” the poet faithfully renders the title in imagistic verse.

September 2017
Featured image for ““Don’t Hang Your Soul on That”, “Slant” and “Sugar Sandwiches””
Robert Hilles

“Don’t Hang Your Soul on That”, “Slant” and “Sugar Sandwiches”

When you read a Hilles poem, you are inside a lyricism that doesn’t stop at the length of the poem but continues to move as if the poet has shown you how to be with love and life and soul, even if you have to eat sugar sandwiches. Read these poems and you will see.

September 2017
Featured image for ““An Old Song”, “The Incident” and “Acceptable””
Will Reger

“An Old Song”, “The Incident” and “Acceptable”

Reger’s poetry wraps you in narratives of love and pain, sadness and longing. There is no escape from the sadness in the ballad “An Old Song.” Neither is there from the death of two lovers whispering lullabies on the banks of the Tigris in “The Incident.” Nor from the longing in the lyrical poem “Acceptable.”

September 2017
Featured image for ““Purpose (Predestined Love)”, “Love” and “Frozen Dream””
Ann Huang

“Purpose (Predestined Love)”, “Love” and “Frozen Dream”

Huang knows her way around personification—the transference of human feelings and attributes to abstract concepts—and she crafts the poems “Purpose” and “Love” using this figurative device. The poet switches to a witty-metered play on words in the onomatopoetic poem “Frozen Dream” —gifted with alliteration and assonance.

September 2017
Featured image for ““To Pain”, “Bosom Story” and “I Hear You’ve Settled In””
Anastasia Cojocaru

“To Pain”, “Bosom Story” and “I Hear You’ve Settled In”

In the prose poem “To Pain,” the poet addresses her pain directly and forces it to the surface, giving it an immediate presence. Employing the same rhetorical device—the apostrophe— in “I hear you’ve settled in,” the poet addresses her absent lover, inviting the reader to listen too. “Bosom Story” is a narrative and as reachable.

September 2017
Featured image for ““Money Buys You Freedom”, “Visible to the Eye” and “Searchlight””
Amanda Tumminaro

“Money Buys You Freedom”, “Visible to the Eye” and “Searchlight”

The poet’s voice in “Money Buys Your Freedom” and “Visible to the Eye” is direct, audacious, empowered. No beating around the bush; the poet points out that money can buy the law and a woman can become someone’s “wind-up doll.” Not so in “Searchlight.” The poet is an “Electra of sorts” and open to “accepting any substitution.”

September 2017
Featured image for ““Surgical Intervention”, “The Plastic Faberge” and “Three Fates At Night””
Laura Hoffman

“Surgical Intervention”, “The Plastic Faberge” and “Three Fates At Night”

Poetry can be abstract or concrete, but there is nothing abstract about Hoffman’s poetry. How about surgical intervention as poetic inspiration? Or, the sound of a motorcycle in the dark as a rude awakening? Or “Three Fates at Night” by the side of the car window one midnight . . . and the poet shudders.

September 2017
Featured image for ““My Seventh Christmas”, “The Wind Gibbers with Their Voices” and “Jaco Pastorius (1951-1987)””
Christian Keth

“My Seventh Christmas”, “The Wind Gibbers with Their Voices” and “Jaco Pastorius (1951-1987)”

As different in mood and voice as they are in thought and theme, these poems reveal the poet’s structural versatility, whether it is explicit narrative in “My Seventh Christmas”; poetic ambiguity in “The Wind Gibbers With Their Voices”; or jazzed- up meter in “Jaco Pastorius,” in honor of the great bass player.

September 2017
Featured image for “Tomnahurich Poems:  “The City of the Sleepers”, “Plaza of the Dead” and “‘Devoted Wife'””
David McVey

Tomnahurich Poems: “The City of the Sleepers”, “Plaza of the Dead” and “‘Devoted Wife'”

In this cemetery down the road from Inverness in Scotland, David McVey meditates on the dead in Tomnahurich poems: minor gentry, Indian Army subalterns, Anne MacKenzie, and others whose stories are untold, forgotten, lost.

August 2017
Featured image for “Bronx Poems: “Untitled 5”, “We are Loners (for my brother)” and “For Kalief””
Kay Bell

Bronx Poems: “Untitled 5”, “We are Loners (for my brother)” and “For Kalief”

Kay Bell’s Bronx Poems wrestle with hurt and loneliness, anger and love as only poetry can do to reach the inner core of empathy and understanding. Her poem “We are Loners (for my brother)” touches at the heart of love.

August 2017
Featured image for ““Woe of Women”, “Farmhouse” and “A Semester at Chicago Arts College””
Shelby Curran

“Woe of Women”, “Farmhouse” and “A Semester at Chicago Arts College”

You know the voice of the poet is strong when you feel like you and she are in the same room; such is the case with Shelby Curran’s narrative poem “Farmhouse.”

August 2017
Featured image for ““Nana’s Tears”, “Birth of Shaman’s Dream” and “Ghost Voice””
Mary Leoson

“Nana’s Tears”, “Birth of Shaman’s Dream” and “Ghost Voice”

Mary Leoson describes the relationship between the poet and her “Nana” in a pontoum, a poetic form in which content and form intertwine. See also “Shaman’s Dream,” a prose poem.

August 2017
Featured image for ““Elegy”, “How To Make It In Business” and “Child Saint””
Lynn Lipinski

“Elegy”, “How To Make It In Business” and “Child Saint”

When you read Lynn Lipinski’s poetry, you sense the command she brings to her poetry, especially in the poetic line. She does not miss an elegiac beat in “Elegy” to her father.

August 2017
Featured image for ““Entreaty”, “The Tangled Skein” and “On the Wings of the Wind””
Brandon Marlon

“Entreaty”, “The Tangled Skein” and “On the Wings of the Wind”

In Brandon Marlon’s poetry a “gnawing angst” permeates his poems about existence. There is not a poem richer than “On the Wings of the Wind” to explore these “depths unfathomed.”

August 2017
Featured image for ““Hitchhiking”, “Sailing the Ship” and “Blush””
Vern Fein

“Hitchhiking”, “Sailing the Ship” and “Blush”

The poet blends narration and metaphor in a morality tale when the roads were supposedly safe but not for “Renee” who was raped by a driver in the woods. The Revolution didn’t happen and they “fled to the suburbs.”

August 2017
Featured image for ““Wonder Woman’s Journey: Parts I, II, and III””
Jacquelyn L.M. Scott

“Wonder Woman’s Journey: Parts I, II, and III”

Jacquelyn L.M. Scott bears witness to a woman’s experience being treated for cancer. There is no place to hide from these poems.

August 2017