The artist here, Ben Benn was a pioneering modernist. Born in 1884 in what is now known as Ukraine, he migrated to America with his family and settled in New York, where he first exhibited in the early 1900s with…
poem
Apple Haiku
I was particularly struck, not just by the concentration in this young woman’s face and demeanour, but by the notes on The Met website (see link in Source in the caption below). The painter Nicolaes Maes deliberately veered away from…
Merrymakers in an Inn – A Poem
This poem is an apostrophe, and by that I don’t mean a punctuation mark! Excuse me if you already know this!😃 In grammar, apostrophes either indicate possession, or they stand in for missing letters . As literary devices, apostrophes also…
Merchant’s Wife and Chocolate – A Poem
In The Merchant’s Wife poem, I continue my poeticised response to “food-related” art, specifically in this painting as to what they may be having for breakfast or morning tea. If you’d like a close-up of the painting, click on “source”…
Ode – A Poem
This painting is so full of life, and yet we will never know who painted it! Even so, I thought that person should be celebrated. More of my ekphrastic poetry here. More on the ode, here. Ode To An Unknown…
After Chekhov – A Poem
This poem in my ekphrastic series is inspired not by one art source, but by two. Both works of art — a painting, and a short story — were completed within a decade of each other. More on the short…
Visiting Renoir – A Poem
How could you look at this stunning Renoir and not want to reach out and eat those fruit? This work was painted at the country house of Renoir’s patron, Paul Berard, and is one of two that feature the same…
The Philosophers’ Meal – A Poem
Can you imagine the conversation at this dinner table? Well, I tried to. Another in my ekphrastic poetry series. My of my ekphrastic poetry here. More on free verse here. The Enlightenment At the Thursday night dinner of philosophers,it was…
An Easter Haiku
I don’t know what it was about this boy’s face that caught my eye. Or maybe it was the apple on the floor? The half-eaten cake? That gesture which seems to declare, “Mine!”. I just tried to have fun with…
The Pedigree of Honey
Finding value where you least expect it is always wonderful. Finding value and beauty in the small things, or the overlooked everyday things, is something I try to remember to do when I can, especially when life’s throwing a few…
Snaps for Salad!
I love stumbling upon excellent salads. Personally, I always prefer hot foods, even in warm weather (the European in me), but an excellent salad is enough to make me … Neither too lean, nor too complicated; tasty but not drowning…
My Mother’s Garden – A Poem
The movies would have us believe that childhood is a series of adorable and wacky Home Alone moments. That’s why it’s the movies. It’s fantasy. The reality is usually simpler, and less spectacularly Christmasy. Looking back now, I never realised…
