Another New Painting

I have posted another Carnival painting called Snake Charmer. Have a peek!

Rick Bursky Interview

Fabulous interview of poet Rick Bursky.
Click here.

New Painting

I have posted a new painting called Carnival Tiger. Have a peek!

Charles Simic

Even my dog as we walk in the woods gives me the impression that he is familiar with the writings of Henry David Thoreau and is curious to know how I feel about certain of his ideas.
-Charles Simic, Paris Review

Charles Simic

A Cornell box is like a poem, a place where unlikely things come together to give the viewer a new aesthetic experience. Beauty for Cornell is something one finds. I never met him, but knew people who did, and he’d say things like, On the Twenty-eighth Street IRT station, there’s a great gum machine with a broken mirror that’s really beautiful. That way of seeing New York City made a lot of sense to me.
-Charles Simic, Paris Review

Charles Simic

It’s mind-boggling to discover that a word, a phrase, or an entire poem perfectly understandable in one language cannot be translated into another. Whatever the answer to this puzzle, it has something to do with the relationship of experience to language and the way each language encompasses a particular worldview. In fact, it’s not only a question for poetry to concern itself with, but for philosophy, too, to ponder.
-Charles Simic, Paris Review

Charles Simic

One of the distinct advantages of growing up in a place where one is apt to find men hung from lampposts as one walks to school is that it cuts down on grumbling about life as one grows older.
-Charles Simic, Paris Review

Charles Simic

. . . I’m like a monk in a whorehouse, gnawing on a chunk of dry bread while watching the ladies drink champagne and parade in their lacy undergarments.
-Charles Simic, Paris Review

Charles Simic

Is it true one grows nostalgic even about the horrors as one grows old? Probably. I'm nostalgic about an August afternoon after the war. My mother, brother, and I were being escorted at gunpoint and on foot from one prison to another. At some point we walked past an apple orchard, and our guard let us stop and pick apples. Not a care in the world. Munching the apples and chatting with our guard.
-Charles Simic, A Fly in the Soup

Charles Simic

Here's another early memory: a baby carriage pushed by a hump-backed old woman, her son sitting in it, both legs amputated.

She was haggling with the greengrocer when the carriage got away from her. The street was steep, so it rolled downhill with the cripple waving his crutch as if urging it on faster and faster; his mother screaming for help, and everybody else was laughing as if they were watching a funny movie . . . Keystone cops about to go over a cliff . . .

They laughed because they knew it would end well in the movies. They were surprised when it didn't in life.

-Charles Simic, A Fly in the Soup

Charles Simic

I shared the solitude of my childhood with a black cat. I sat by the window for hours on end watching the empty street, while she sat on the bed washing herself. When night fell, I stretched on the bed, and she watched the street.

On rainy days I played chess with the cat, which pretended to doze. Once when my mother turned on the table lamp, the silhouettes of the few remaining chess figures could be seen clearly on the wall grown very large. I was afraid to move. I didn't even dare to take a breath.

When I finally did, the cat had vanished, taking the chess set with it and leaving me as I was in the same mean little room with its one window and its view of the empty street.

-Charles Simic, A Fly in the Soup

Inner Dialog

I knew the day was going to be a challenge. I had a slamming headache before dawn, while dreaming my cat Sammy was lost. In the dream my studio was overtaken by two or three black and white kittens and another painter had an easel set up making it impossible for me to enter my studio door.

In real life my cat was not lost. This morning I went to clean his litter box and noticed it was empty of solid waste for the second day. As I suspected, he had taken up a squat spot behind Bill's desk. Keep your humor, I told myself as I shimmied to get between the wall and behind the desk. Somebody please make me laugh! Isn't there a number you can call? Think of all the people without power and their homes have slid off mountains into the river and middle eastern government takeovers, and wars and you are taken down by having to clean up a little bit of cat poop? Shame on you!

When I stepped outside I saw my neighbor walking with his toddler son who was pointing fascinated by his kitten who was following him. Lily and I stopped to say hello to the father and son. When we crossed the street two men were sitting on benches in the shade of the trees. Beautiful day, I said. Beautiful day the man I know shouted back in his deep voice. As I rounded the corner I saw sleeping bags draped over the railing in the baseball field bleachers. I think late at night when the park goes dark it becomes a bedroom for a few homeless guys.