Explosive art: something new under the sun
Ever since Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel invented dynamite 150 years ago, people have been trying to make lemonade out of his lemons. The most famous example is Nobel himself, who created the Nobel Prizes, rewarding peacemaking and sundry civilized achievements in literature and science, to atone for the murderous violence he unleashed on the world.
The effort to find useful, even pleasant employment for explosives continues today in New Mexico, home of the biggest explosive of them all, the atomic bomb.
A new book published by the University of New Mexico Press, Detonography: The Explosive Art of Evelyn Rosenberg, parses and celebrates this current effort...
Weekly Poem: Taken by Storm
Up near the northern border of North Dakota
the third day of an arctic blizzard, a social worker
loads her hatchback with jackets and coats
and drives the frontage road beside a frozen river.
She comes to a man wrapped in a hospital blanket
seated on cardboard on top of a bed of snow.
He doesn’t want the jacket she offers.
“Then I can take you to shelter,” she says...
Rebranding Enchantment
Some months ago, I was lucky enough to attend a reading by Scott Momaday. He spoke like a man in the middle of a great love affair with the New Mexican landscape. The land was tied to his life; together their narrative extended thousands of years into the past. After the reading, I longed for a walk in the mortally beautiful mountains.
I live in the Scott Momaday New Mexico. The Rudolfo Anaya New Mexico. The Georgia O’Keeffe New Mexico. The Fred Harvey Company New Mexico. I do not live in newly rebranded “New Mexico True” setting that our tourism department has begun selling...
“Nebraska:” The Changed Face of the Land
The movie “Nebraska” is described as a character-driven road movie. It strikes me as that and something more, a meditation on the decline of the part of America alternatively dismissed as “flyover country” or valorized as “the heartland.” In 50 years, the film may be a favorite of college professors, to be screened alongside Orson Welles’ adaptation of Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Ambersons. Both films explore the transformation of America as fueled by the gasoline-powered engine...
Weekly Poem: Sea In My Palm
Sitting on the train,
clickidy-clack, clickidy-clack, clickidy-clack,
hour after hour, after hour,
towns slip further and further away
as the ocean rises to greet us.
I watch the waves grasp the coastline,
spew white fingers of foam over tops of stone,
and I am pulled from my green coach chair...
Acequia Booksellers Closing After Ten Years
Books define my life. As a writer I read copiously and love to shop for books to read or add to my research library. As a book artist some of my works focus on castoff books I alter into art. That is, I take a worthless textbook and transform it into a book sculpture. Altered Books is a popular new art genre. This year a few of my artist books have been exhibited at the University of South Dakota, University of Puget Sound and in a Book Arts Show at the New Mexico State Capitol rotunda gallery in Santa Fe...
One Year ago—jots what?
One Year ago—jots what?
God—spell the word! I—can't—
Was't Grace? Not that—
Was't Glory? That—will do—
Spell slower—Glory—
Such Anniversary shall be—
Sometimes—not often—in Eternity—
When farther Parted, than the Common Woe—
Look—feed upon each other's faces—so—
In doubtful meal, if it be possible
Their Banquet's true—
Disney’s Façade in Saving Mr. Banks
Having grown up in Orlando, Florida, I had the sort of close relationship with Disney that allows the perfectly executed fantasy to be slowly chipped away. The Victorian houses on Main Street, USA, reveal themselves as empty, one-sided plaster. The waving characters of your childhood eventually become your fellow college students, sweating off last night’s binge drinking under a costume in Florida’s 100% humidity. The happy families are desperate, like ours, to make the Disney experience worth the savings and idealism spent on it...
Weekly Poem: Peace on Earth
He took a frayed hat from his head,
And “Peace on Earth” was what he said.
“A morsel out of what you’re worth,
And there we have it: Peace on Earth.
Not much, although a little more
Than what there was on earth before
I’m as you see, I’m Ichabod,—
But never mind the ways I’ve trod;
I’m sober now, so help me God”...
Weekly Poem: I am the faceless man
I am the faceless man
The empty hand
You passed
And left to stand
A stranger on the corner
The friend in the mirror
That you didn’t find
A reflection of your hidden mind...