stillwell | woodcuts

These images were created by Andrew Stillwell,

a Durham NC artist who uses a Photoshop process of "cutting" out of a black background

to create a woodcut effect.

He works from scratch, not from photographs.

music philosophy

music philosophy

zachary kanin | noah's ark

selected panels from 

Amazing Tales Of The Bible: Noah's Ark

by Zachary Kanin

The New Yorker, November 1, 2010

beckett, blake | literary tattoos

Waiting For Godot | Samuel Beckett

Auguries of Innocence | William Blake

Two of fifteen literary tattoos

offered by The Huffington Post

jeanne murray walker | staying power

STAYING POWER
In appreciation of Maxim Gorky at the International
Convention of Atheists. 1929

Like Gorky, I sometimes follow my doubts
outside and question the metal sky,
longing to have the fight settled, thinking
I can't go on like this, and finally I say

all right, it is improbable, all right, there
is no God. And then as if I'm focusing
a magnifying glass on dry leaves, God blazes up.
It's the attention, maybe, to what isn't

there that makes the notion flare like
a forest fire until I have to spend the afternoon
dragging the hose to put it out. Even
on an ordinary day when a friend calls,

tells me they've found melanoma,
complains that the hospital is cold, I say God.
God, I say as my heart turns inside out.
Pick up any language by the scruff of its neck,

wipe its face, set it down on the lawn,
and I bet it will toddle right into the godfire
again, which - though they say it doesn't
exist - can send you straight to the burn unit.

Oh, we have only so many words to think with.
Say God's not fire, say anything, say God's
a phone, maybe. You know you didn't order a phone,
but there it is. It rings. You don't know who it could be.

You don't want to talk, so you pull out
the plug. It rings. You smash it with a hammer
till it bleeds springs and coils and clobbered up
metal bits. It rings again. You pick it up

and a voice you love whispers hello.


by Jeanne Murray Walker
Originally published in Poetry