Water pistols. Animal crackers. Twinkies. Paper airplanes. Dollar bills, paddle ball toys and boxes of popcorn. Fun and games, but maybe not the stuff of fine art. Unless you’re Virginia artist Michael Fitts. Fitts’s art not only elevates the unexpected, he does so using untraditional materials – scraps of sheet tin, copper and aluminum. Old metal—with all its worn and surprising surfaces—began to interest Fitts in 1989 after he’d graduated in graphic design from Virginia Commonwealth University. “I was in Richmond, and it was my first time living in the city. I began collecting things … Continue reading Elevating the Unexpected: Paintings by Michael Fitts→
Off to my left the dark current of the Hudson River rushed downstream at 65 mph, a magnificent sight, but at the moment my mind was concentrating on the tail lights bobbing and weaving in and out of traffic in front of me. I was somewhere in the middle of the pack, an anonymous group of motorcycle enthusiasts who met on summer evenings on Eighth Street in Greenwich Village to ride out together. Being, more or less, one of the regulars, but never the leader, I would hang around, chatting and ogling the passing chicks, … Continue reading Between Lanes by Stephen Poleskie→
The first thing you need to do is case the neighborhood, check out all of the streets in the area, walk around between the buildings—imagine yourself passing by these same sights every day. You have to be lucky too. You have to imagine yourself coming home to the apartment, wanting to go back, night after night, yours for better or worse. You don’t want to be driven out sooner than you feel like going. You have to be prepared for what it might do to you, how it might make you feel. You have to … Continue reading House Hunting by Lee Foust→
I used to think the school at which I taught should have been named Rodney Dangerfield High because nobody got any respect. Oppressive rules treated students like babies. Weapons checks regarded them as criminals. Teachers faced overcrowded classrooms with shamefully inadequate resources and endured blatant—and often profane—rudeness from students and endless interruptions from everyone. We—the teachers—disregarded administrative rules as a matter of course. Other high schools and the district as a whole disdained us because we were small and had no football team, because our basketball team had a reputation for fighting and mayhem (because … Continue reading Lunchero by Larry Strauss→
When I recently encountered STREETLIGHT for the first time, I found myself wondering about the name, why it was chosen, what associations it is meant to evoke. Then as I explored the magazine I ran across Susan Shafarzek’s blog of February 10 in which she addressed the question of “why the name Streetlight” and invited “further comment.” I decided to accept the invitation. Of course I am in no position to say what the editors may hope to communicate, only to offer my own idiosyncratic response to the name. It led me to recall a … Continue reading Boundaries→
“If we can’t educate you, we’ll make a pet of you, or sacrifice you.” This from Jean Sampson in her class Gutsy Abstract Oil Painting at The McGuffy Art Center where Jean is a resident studio artist. This is a joke at the expense of the lone man in the classroom and because I often find myself the lone man, I hadda laugh. Ladies, you do know we LIKE these kind of jokes, right? “The painting just sits there, asking, demanding, what are you gonna do to me?” Jean and I look at a canvas … Continue reading Allowing To Be Led→
The recent New York Times news article asking the question: “Where Are the People of Color in Children’s Books?” was painful for me. Because I know where one of them is – on my desktop, unpublished. It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. Soon after I finished writing The Boy Who Moved a Mountain, it was accepted by a literary agent and then sold rather quickly to a major publishing house. It advanced through various stages of the editing process. Julian Bond wrote a blurb for it. It was assigned ISBN and Library of … Continue reading Still Waiting to Move a Mountain→
Another April means another month of celebrating poetry across the country. Admittedly, this surprises me every year. That many people care about poetry? Walt Whitman would slap me in the face, and he’d be right to. But then I remember what Rainer Maria Rilke said: “For poems are not, as people think, simply emotions (one has emotions early enough)—they are experiences.” And what Wallace Stevens said: “The poet is the priest of the invisible.” In light of NPM, here are a few local and national going-ons. If nothing else, reach out your hand and take one of … Continue reading National Poetry Month→
I had just finished reading the estimable Jeremy Dean’s noteworthy PSYBLOG today, titled. “10 Foolproof Tips for Overcoming Procrastination,” when I noticed that my next email was from Trudy Hale, the Editor in Chief of this magazine. And what it was about was that I had not done my blog for this week. We don’t each do a blog every week, but take it in turns, as you may have noticed. I had no excuse. I forgot it was my turn. I take forgetting to be a form of procrastination and I have good reason … Continue reading Oh Yes, You “Forgot?”→
Spring for me means the Virginia Festival of the Book. To say this writer gets jazzed is an understatement. At last year’s Festival, I volunteered at an event called Poets In Prose and learned a lot. The first thing I learned, what a damn ugly crowd it was. Writers and poets and those who love them are not eye candy. I was the hottest guy around! Just kidding (maybe). The event took place in an old time bookstore — up the open staircase to the second floor—kinda like a movie set and with the characters … Continue reading Feeling Prosy→
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