“Donne’s flea, Keats’s cricket, Dickinson’s buzzing fly,/and Neruda’s lust-filled generic crawler/ making its way across a lover’s hip, to name a few.”—By Rick Mulkey Speculative Friction By Claire Bateman GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—January…

“Even now, as I play with the emulsion, a subject comes alive in my hands. Throughout the process, I am able to revisit elements I long for. I am able to feel the…

“I, myself, doubt that many people reading these words have three years to live. Habitat for humans on Earth will disappear shortly after the Arctic ice is gone, which is likely to occur…

“In Italy, Gaetano Donizetti scored the mad scene in his opera Lucia di Lammermoor for a glass harmonica, but a flutist had to be hired when no ‘ghost fiddler’ could be found.”—Skip Eisiminger…

“Iyengar Yoga master-teacher, Kofi Busia, writes: ‘Health is not, and cannot be, an individual affair. It is a community—indeed, a cosmic—affair. Individuation is the root cause of all suffering. A community, even a…

“There is no ‘too fat,’ ‘too wrinkled,’ ‘too old,’ or ‘too’ anything in Life Drawing. I gathered from her explanation that, to the student, bodies are nothing more than still lifes, like flowers,…

“The children keep asking where/the other children are. Their mothers won’t say/phony life-vests pulled them toward the bottom/while breakers drove them into jagged cliffs./Tourists on their morning walk won’t see/the skins of boats…

“On arrival, we finally struggled through Security, collected our goody bags (Kyrgyz flag, orange baseball cap, four glowing sticks to wave, programme of events), and took our seats in the stadium. We had…

“Like my grandfather’s dairy cows, sheep are the shepherd’s livelihood. But they are also extended family. Sheep belong to the shepherd and there is intimacy created by that kind of ownership. Many of us…

“I know that, for many, this season brings deep melancholy or worse. Being mindful of that fact, may I suggest that if you know someone who is alone at this time of year,…