The miracle is that we have integrity at all. O, not fidelity to a moral code. That’s a pale shadow of the integrity I mean. Stable identity. Some semblance of unity. Or, to put it in the word that has h […]

 
    What is the difference between illustration and fine art? 
 

Streetlight’s featured artist Kate Samworth, and Nick Clark, former Chief Curator and Founding Director of the Eric Carle Museu […]

Growing up on a dairy farm in Northern New York, in Southern Jefferson County during the 1960’s meant, for my family, doing most of the work with our physical bodies. With a maximum of 25 dairy cows, one t […]

In His Own Right
A conversation with U.S. Poet Laureate and Charlottesville resident Charles Wright
What the city of Charlottesville, Virginia lacks in size it makes up for in culture. You won’t go ten minutes w […]

Imagine a world without bird song. A world without bird beaks, long, sharp and charmingly curved. A world without feathered wings red, gold and green.

Artist Kate Samworth did, in fact, imagine s […]

Later, when asked to speak about what happened for the second time, Harlen recalled that it was in fact a single object, faint and blurry one second, close and vibrant the next. It hovered overhead: two blazing […]

Phone Sex in Three Acts
 
Act I.

There is nothing noble about having phone sex
with your ex-girlfriend
in the bathroom of a friend’s apartment.

The shower curtain looks offended.
Tile ashamed to to […]

A Wild Thing And A Tended One
 
We can talk about these corduroy
pillows and how I want to shoot

marbles with the ball joint
of your right shoulder. Last time

I tried to tell you about the guy
who came […]

The premier poetry event of this year’s Festival of the Book in Charlottesville was “Shrines to Longing,” the March 20 reading by Charles Wright, America’s current (20th) poet laureate, and Mary Szybist, who was […]

The 21st annual Virginia Festival of the Book opens in Charlottesville this coming Wednesday, March 18. I do recommend it. An amazing assortment of programs will be offered. Find the whole wonderful schedule at […]

In 1995 Kay Redfield Jamison published her ground-breaking memoir, An Unquiet Mind, A Memoir of Moods and Madness.  For my husband who was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder in 1987, and myself living through his m […]

“Nothing stays long enough to know.
How long since we’ve been inside
anything together the way

these birds are inside
this tree together, shifting, making it into
a shivering thing”
 

—Mary Szyb […]

Imagine for a moment an American family collected in a cozy living room and gathered close for the evening’s entertainment. But instead of gazing expectantly at some oversized TV screen while battling the c […]

Well, it’s over, the most important day of winter, Groundhog Day. And it’s still winter. How come? The groundhog, after being widely noticed, has gone back to sleep, which seems like a really good idea.

Here in […]

“I have an attraction to Berlin, especially the 1920s, when it was an art and science haven for the best and the brightest. I am also fascinated with German Expressionism, and many of the ar […]

January is upon us and with it the start of several weeks of bone-rattling cold and snow-cancelled classes erroneously dubbed “Spring Semester.” For me, it heralds the beginning of a poetry class I teach at the […]

I’m creatively constipated. That’s right, all input and no output. Binging on poetry, nothing to show at writing group. Forget the fifth round of revisions on that damn poem that won’t cooperate. Not in […]

Photographer Sam Abell is a seeker, camera in hand. A National Geographic staff photographer for 33 years, Abell has traveled from Japan to Newfoundland, from Australia to Russia discovering and shooting […]

I don’t know why I believe that I’ll find the truth about America in Mississippi. It’s a dreamscape, really. So overlaid with lies, oppressions, and Faulknerian legend that to expect anything authentic about the p […]

The other day I was remarking to somebody that I’d been doing my Christmas shopping and found the stores seemed not to be playing so much Christmas music lately. I’d been to the mall and I hadn’t really noticed […]