A. Anupama
Waiting for my car at the dealership's service department this morning, I gaze at the flat-screen television in front of me, admiring a beautiful, crackling fire that should be framed by a magnificent fireplace. Yes, a little strange, but not in an unwelcome way. The Fireplace 4K experience erases some of the cold, alienating, new-car-smell,…
When it is cold and windy at night, the morning often reveals many deer lying in the garden, sheltering in the downslope under dogwood and forsythia. Here, they find a break from the breath of December on their not-quite-winter coats. The rest of the yellow leaves from the maple fell last night, making golden beds.…
The curve of each line of each branch in each tree smiles at us. Clear, dark skies keep pouring heaps of stars into the lines. Silhouetted in the shrubs next to the road, several deer watch us pass by. Gratitude moves in all directions. I wish all poems were like this. It might take me…
Landscapes fade to gold around here. Gold is their resting state, revealed only just before the dark. Whole hillsides melt into caramel. Sunrise seems to last all day long, but the light dissolves a little more week by week. Light a candle before you read a poem at night. To make anything with this landscape,…
Perfect for a Diwali mood, I’m listening to the live broadcast of the Ragas Live Festival, a 24-hour cycle of ragas and raga-inspired world music at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, 8pm 10/22 until 8pm 10/23. Listening in on WKCR is an annual tradition for me. A transcendent night, just begun. Already at 9pm, a pair…
At least it’s an affordable luxury, this craft of poetry. Catch a phrase loitering around the alley of your mind, and find a place to keep it. Pretty phrases are as plentiful as the red-gold leaves turning the road into a bed of glowing embers. I'm pretty sure I spend more on my poetry practice…
When a leaf falls on your painting, you can keep on painting. And, you can write a poem to go with it. At the New York City Poetry Festival yesterday, one of the family-friendly activities hosted by the Poetry Society of New York did involve painting and writing poetry under the magnificent plane trees of…
How thirsty will we have to get? Drought looks terrible on the Hudson’s palisade, where trees have browned all along the crest. The brook in my neighborhood had dried up completely last week, but got back a trickle at least, which I noticed while walking Old Mountain Road this morning. The beech saplings alongside might…
I remember getting perfectly ticked off and putting down his novel for three months the first time I read Salman Rushdie’s work. It wasn’t because something had offended my ideas or beliefs, but that I felt as though he had played a trick on me. Designed as it was to twist expectations, I felt made…
My daughter and I were talking about the difference between “overwhelmed” and “whelmed” in the car while I merged onto a parkway. I think those words are close to each other but not freely interchangeable. Creative work thrives on “whelmed,” as a kind of outflow of real compassion. “Overwhelmed” seems like the crowded on-ramp, where…
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