By: Mary Oliver“Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.”― Mary OliverIf Romeo and Juliet had made appointments to meet, in the moonlight-swept orchard, in
By: Erik RittenberryPhoto: Erik Rittenberry“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”— Alan WattsWell, folks, I had a birthday this week. I t
By: Henry BestonArt: Winslow Homer“It is only when we are aware of the earth and of the earth as poetry that we truly live.”― Henry BestonOur fantastic civilization has fallen out of touch with many aspects of nature, and with none more completely than with night. Primitive folk, gathered at a cave
By: Erik Rittenberry“You should always be trying to write a poem you are unable to write, a poem you lack the technique, the language, the courage to achieve. Otherwise you're merely imitating yourself, going nowhere, because that's always easiest.” ― John BerrymanThe great American poet, John Berry
By: Francois Jacob“What man seeks, to the point of anguish, in his gods, in his art, in his science, is meaning. He cannot bear the void. He pours meaning on events like salt on his food.”― Francois JacobMy obsession: a life that shrivels up, slowly rots, goes soft as a pulp. This worry about declin
By: Erik Rittenberry“I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.”― Jack LondonThere’s a passage from one of my literary heroes, Jack London, that lives rent-free in my head. It goes:“Have you lived? What have you got to show for it? St
By: Henry Beston“Nature is part of our humanity, and without some awareness and experience of that divine mystery, man ceases to be man. —Henry BestonText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThe world today is sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things, for fi
“Artists are here to disturb the peace.” — James Baldwin“Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent—which attitude certainly has a great deal to support it. On the other hand, it is only because the world
By: Mary OliverDairy Farm At Christmas by Bob FairText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedSays a country legend told every year: Go to the barn on Christmas Eve and see what the creatures do as that long night tips over. Down on their knees they will go, the fire of a
Henry David Thoreau is a painting by John LautermilchAs you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness. —Henry David ThoreauHenry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817– May 6, 1862) is one of America’s fines
The great affair is to move."Wandering," by Pawel Kosior“We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us. Even while the earth sleeps we travel. We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness
By: Erik Rittenberry“The point is to wake up, not to earn a Ph.D. in waking up.”― Jed McKennaWho the hell is Jed McKenna? No one really knows. He’s an author who writes under a pseudonym. There is still a lively debate about his true identity. Speculation aside, no one truly knows. McKenna is known
“Most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities.”― G.K. ChestertonTake the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages.
“When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.”― Robert FrankRobert Frank (1924–2019) was a Swiss-American photographer and filmmaker, widely regarded as one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century.Between 1955 an
Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.—W. Somerset MaughamYou can find the following passage in W. Somerset Maugham’s brilliant Autobiographical and confessional work— The Summing Up.The writer can only be fertile if he renews himself and he can only rene
“Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.”― Edward HopperSubscribe nowIn the early 90s, the poet Mark Strand wrote a beautiful little book called “Hopper,” where he attempts to clarify his own thinking ab
By: Mary OliverIn creative work—creative work of all kinds—those who are the world’s working artists are not trying to help the world go around, but forward. Which is something altogether different from the ordinary. Such work does not refute the ordinary. It is, simply, something else. Its labor re
By: Erik RittenberryArt: Victor Lacomte“I seemed to see that this life that we live in half-darkness can be illumined, this life that at every moment we distort can be restored to its true pristine shape, that a life, in short, can be realised within the confines of a book!”— Marcel ProustAs winter
Walden Pond Revisited by N C WyethIt's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see… — ThoreauSubscribe nowText within this block will maintain its original spacing when published I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be
By: Sergei YeseninArt: Ivan ShishkinText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedLife is a lie with enchanting anguish, And that's what makes it so powerful: With its crude hand it writes Lethal letters. Every time I close my eyes, I say, "As soon as the heart is disturb
