Daniel A. Rabuzzi's Blog, page 20
May 22, 2010
Sharon Dolin: Of Hours
[Ellen Wiener, "Moon & Lillies (Vespers)," painted 1999:]
The lobster, with canary riding on his carapace, is delighted to present a coda to the Sharon Dolin interview (March 13th, "Composing for the Eye"). Sharon very wonderfully sent us more thoughts on ekphrasis, and a generous preview of her as-yet-unpublished work, Of Hours.
From Sharon:
"My Book of Hours
I have been working on another ekphrastic sequence that came to me by chance when the contemporary artist Ellen Wiener showed me her serie...
May 16, 2010
Sunday Morning Coffee: "Touch"; Mills (The Blue Hour); Ponge
[Eberhard Weber, "Touch," from Yellow Fields:]
Deborah A. Mills, an artist walking along the promenade on the lower Hudson, captured l'heure bleue in all its cobalt beauty yesterday evening.
She sees the inner being of things, how they manifest themselves as fields of color, color we can almost (but not quite) touch.
See deeply, see the thing-in-itself, and then search for the words to be that thing.
Francis Ponge phrased it this way:
"...man will make marvelous strides if he returns to things (ju...
May 15, 2010
From Beyond Raging Seas, Comes The King-Herring
[DJ Krush & Shinichi Kinoshita, "Beyond Raging Waves"}
Last week a Giant Oarfish, also known as the King of the Herrings, washed up on a Swedish beach near the Norwegian border. The beast-- the first found in Sweden in 130 years-- was nearly 11 feet long.
The Giant Oarfish is the largest living bony fish, reaching 35 feet. Ten specimens washed up in Japan this spring. The Oarfish is usually found 650-3,200 feet below the surface.
Traditionally in Japan, sightings of the Oarfish were considere...
May 9, 2010
Sunday Morning Coffee: Mother's Day
[Heitor Villa-Lobos, Magnificat-Alleluia:]
Happy Mother's Day from the lobster and the canary.Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009."The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root, goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat. (www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry...
May 8, 2010
Picasso Record, and the Impact of the Volcano
[Picasso's Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, sold via Christies last week for an all-time record $106.5 million for an individual art piece.:]
[Last month's volcanic eruption in Iceland:]
Lobster lifts a quill from the ledger-book, pondering the price paid by an anonymous bidder for Picasso's 1932 painting...
Canary is glad not to fly through volcanic ash...the Icelandic eruption caused last month's Art Cologne, Art Brussels and London Book Fair to suffer many no-shows and delayed shipments...Daniel...
May 2, 2010
Sunday Morning Coffee: "Jackals & Vipers in Envy of Man"; "Pyracantha & Plum."
[Sixtoo, Jackals and Vipers in Envy of Man, Parts 2 & 4, released 2007:]
Spring, with muggy airs and green, sprang over us this week...from a hint of snow on Tuesday, to temperatures yesterday in the eighties (Fahrenheit)...
The vicissitudes, les ondes... lobster and canary this week celebrated their 101st birthday... a time for reflection on the season(s)...threads of winter woven into the verdant explosion...last fall's leaf mold wrapping the roots of the budding bush...
As Jane Hirshfield writ...
May 1, 2010
May Day Celebration: The Queen of Roses
May Day is here at last...the Queen and her court rouse themselves from sleep...hear the drums, the deep-lute strumming...with roses in her hair...
"A rose, but one, none other rose had I.
A rose, one rose, and this was wondrous fair,
One rose a rose that gladden'd earth and sky,
One rose, my rose, that sweeten'd all mine air--
I cared not for the thorns; the thorns were there."
(Tennyson, from Pelleas and Ettarre).Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from C...
April 27, 2010
Interstitial Arts Foundation: Interfictions Zero// Call for Papers
Lobster and canary are members of the Working Group for the Interstitial Arts Foundation. The IAF just issued a very interesting call for papers, which we reprint in full below (for more, click the IAF site here):
"Interfictions Zero, to be edited by Delia Sherman and Helen Pilinovsky, will be published online by the Interstitial Arts Foundations in late August of 2010.
Submission Guidelines for Interfictions Zero: The Virtual Anthology of Interstitial Writing and Original Essays
What Is Inter...
"Interfictions Zero, to be edited by Delia Sherman and Helen Pilinovsky, will be published online by the Interstitial Arts Foundations in late August of 2010.
Submission Guidelines for Interfictions Zero: The Virtual Anthology of Interstitial Writing and Original Essays
What Is Inter...
April 25, 2010
Sunday Morning Coffee: Bird Song, People Song
[European Song Thrush singing:]
[European Blackbird, i.e., also a thrush, singing:]
[American Robin, i.e., also a thrush, singing:]
[American Mockingbird, a close cousin to the thrush:]
Canary is very happy, thinking of Earth Day just passed and anticipating World Migratory Bird Day nearly upon us (May 8/9)...we in the Northern Hemisphere thank our friends in the Southern Hemisphere for sending us the thrushes, the warblers, the wrens, the chats, the finches, the flycatchers...
Already the Robins and ...
April 18, 2010
Sunday Morning Coffee: The Poetical Round (Dawes, Rich, Muldoon)
[Stanley Clarke and Steve Gadd conversing via bass and drum, c. 1980, riffing off "Lopsy Loo" from Clarke's first album, or maybe something from his School Days album.:]
Lots of chocolate in the coffee this morning, to stave off the cold outside...
Lobster and canary have been riffing all week about poetry, partly in honor of National Poetry Month.
We've been feeling out how poems emerge, their genesis in memory, as scattered home-words that live in the heart, words that coalesce when separation ...
