Guggenheim

Some of Sam's Favorites at the Guggenheim,
plus the staircase, of course!

The Palazzo Ducale, Seen from San Giorgio Maggiore
Claude Monet

Woman Ironing
Pablo Picasso

Pitcher and Bowl of Fruit
Pablo Picasso

*************************
Museum Guard

My condolences to the man dressed
for a funeral, sitting bored
on a gray folding chair, the zero

of his mouth widening in a yawn.
No doubt he’s pictured himself inside
a painting or two around his station,

stealing a plump green grape
from the cluster hanging above
the corkscrew locks of Dionysus,

or shooting arrows at rosy-cheeked cherubs
hiding behind a woolly cloud.
With time limping along

like a Bruegel beggar, no doubt
he’s even seen himself taking the place
of the one crucified: the black spike

of the minute hand piercing his left palm,
the hour hand penetrating the right,
nailed forever to one spot.

David Hernandez, b. 1971
American poet and novelist

After reading so many poems describing the experience of museum visiting, I chose "Museum Guard" because it reminded me of one Ben and Sam's favorite childhood movies, Don't Eat the Pictures:

featuring Paul Dooley as the Museum Security Guard

The Magpie Waiting for his Beautiful Partner

December is here! Time for thoughts of snow . . .
The Magpie by Claude Monet
Monet's The Magpie

Has the magpie just landed or is it
about to fly off? Is it morning or late afternoon?
Monet doesn't say, so I have decided
it is a male bird of the most intense devotion.
He has been waiting since noon for his
beautiful partner, waiting for her
to land there beside him on the skewed fence,
attuned to the sound of her soft feathers.
Snow upon snow, he searches
for the familiar, nimble Ys of her small feet.
He found some treasures he saved to give her,
a sweet wedge of tangerine, a quarter
of a whole wheat bagel, that was hard to carry,
even though he is large for a magpie. He looks
north, the sun behind him, trying to give
the best appearance for when she flies up.
While he waited he made up a new tune
he wants to sing to her, hoping his love will be
obvious and will heat her beneath her fine plumage.

by Leonard Orr,
artist, poet, professor of post - modernism and literary criticism
from his book Why We Have Evening


Snow upon snow . . .
Click to see more . . .
Paintings by Leonard Orr

End of Summer Sounds
Golden Paintings by Leonard Orr
Excellent Images
Happy Birthday Dylan Thomas
The same war continues . . .
The Magpie Waiting for his Beautiful Partner
Bursting Into Light
Sun ~ Flower ~ Moon
Capturing the Ginkgo Light
Like An Ant
I Will Show You Modernism In A Handful of Dust
Evening ~ Timing ~ Floating: Poetry by Leonard Orr

To Soften and Blur

~ Space Center, Orlando, 2006 ~
Some have called Sam's photo "blurry"
but I call it "impressionism" (that's a mom for you)!

Claude Monet
in his garden
in Giverny
with an unidentified visitor.
New York Times, 1922.















Monet Refuses The Operation
Doctor, you say there are no halos
around the streetlights of Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don’t see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.












Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?











I will not return to a universe
of objects that don’t know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

Lisel Mueller (b. 1924)
German born American poet
Pultizer Prize for Poetry, 1997

When I sent my brother Dave a copy of this poem, he wrote back: "I suppose the same could be said for the strange and often comical and interesting things that I hear when people speak to me. They assure me that I am missing the point and have not heard them correctly. I in turn assure them that whatever their intent, my perception is much more entertaining. Then accursed technology is plugged into my head and all returns to its cold and logical correctness with no whimsy."

A few additional points to ponder:

Check out this interesting poetry blog for commentary on
"Monet Refuses the Operation"

"Monet Refuses the Operation" appears as the prologue to
Anne Lamott's book, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

To read Lisel Mueller's poem, "Moon Fishing," see my post:
"Many Many Moons"

Contemporary Watercolor of Monet's Garden
See more at maboysen.com:


My friends Victoria & Steven
Standing on the bridge at Monet's Garden, 2012