Wisława Szymborska and Horst Beckmann’s Hat

—for Friko 

In yet another alarming gap in my cultural education, I’d not heard of Wisława Szymborska until Friko’s Poetry and Pictures introduced a poem of hers to me. The poem was The Joy of Writing, and its first line, as translated from the Polish by Czesław Miłosz, is this:  “Where is a written deer running through a written forest?”

Country Sojourn

At Buttercup Farm, the woods are a tangle of brown and gray.

Subway to Estonia

And then Estonia was conquered . . . .
It seemed that all the dreams were broken.

—Taimi Lepasaar

In her poem Public Transportation, Elaine Sexton reminds us that what we see on the surface may not be what is:

. . . The driver does not have
a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in his metal
lunchbox.  He has caviar left over from New Year's
and a love note from his mistress, whom he just left
on the corner of Sixth Avenue and 14th Street.

On public transportation, anything is possible—the whole gamut from disturbance to delight.

Cello on a Wire

Really, I’m creating a world, and it’s really hard to say what it is, but it is a world of feeling and emotion and color and light.

—Zoë Keating 

When I was looking for music to accompany my Halo of Sound post, I realized with horror that I knew of no 21st century compositions for the cello.  I went on a frantic search and, with a lot of help, both cyber- and human, came up with some possibilities, including a cellist by the name of Zoë Keating.