HEARSAY

The mailman sent piecemeal a rare donkey
to the city of waters; to the city of waters
a rare donkey was sent, swaddled
in blueprint.

And it came to pass that the waters
were troubled. Woe
in the great city.

Nothing is more beautiful than to admit
the truth, or more difficult.

The head & tail & all that is in between.

When piecemeal the beast was sent,
the engineers knew their place.

For if disassembled like a boat
the rare donkey could be
put together.

But to separate the members of a living
thing, to cast dispersions on it,
this is to create a question
unanswerable.

FIRST FROST ON WINDSHIELD

Perfect stitches suture the glass, & if patient enough
watch them disappear.

Like the dead dog in the middle of the road, the invisible
dog that an ice cream truck hit & the rest of us
skirted. Was the last thing tasted
the last thing?
…

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Christina Pettersson got a taste of art school from a summer program when she was in high school. (Photo courtesy of Petterson)

By Daniel Grant

For many high-school students, college is a given and the main question is what kind to attend—large, small, public, private, near, far. Teens with an aptitude for art, however, must first decide between liberal-arts college and art school. They have to figure out how committed they are to developing their skills, how ready they are to make a life decision at such a young age, and how good at art they really are in the first place.

To help them sort that out, some art schools, and a few liberal-arts colleges with strong fine-art programs, offer teens a summer taste of intensive classes, sometimes for college credit.

“It was my first time being a…

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BRUISES

In age, the world grows clumsy.

A heavy jar
leaps from a cupboard.
A suitcase has corners.

Others have no explanation.

Old love, old body,
do you remember—
carpet burns down the spine,
gravel bedding
the knees, hardness to hardness.

You who knew yourself
kissed by the bit of the ant,
you who were kissed by the bite of the spider.

Now kissed by this.

THE PROMISE

Stay, I said
to the cut flowers.
They bowed
their heads lower.

Stay, I said to the spider,
who fled.

Stay, leaf.
It reddened,
embarrassed for me and itself.

Stay, I said to my body.
It sat as a dog does,
obedient for a moment,
soon starting to tremble.

Stay, to the earth
of riverine valley meadows,
of fossiled escarpments,
of limestone and sandstone.
It looked back
with a changing expression, in silence.

Stay, I said to my loves.
Each answer…

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By Elise Blackwell

This summer I was on the faculty of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. Years ago, I had a terrific experience there as a participant. It was founded by a beloved professor (Oakley Hall), and the conference continues to be run by the noble Hall family together with other people I greatly like and admire. I should have been looking forward to the trip, but realized I was instead dreading it.

Trying to discern why, I recalled conference complaints I’d heard from others, ranging from mild gripes to tales of full-blown misery. I’d once chatted with a writer who resented having to serve food at Breadloaf. Another pal reported that a conference he attended housed writers based on their publishing credits, with one-book writers getting lousy accommodations. A friend who attended another conference was so emotionally bruised by her workshop experience that she…

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Vanished Harvest

They call it a lazy breeze.
Under its slow grope,
trees drop their favorite work.

And pigeons, their pigeon
droppings, and the bleach
that I drop on the porch

because my son might lick one
and die. Because autumn
is sweet on war

and winter is bitter peace,
because the river chased Achilles
for butchering too much—

breeze like a laid-back doctor,
the soul is dense
when you come so late.

Bludgeon-Man

Would that he caressed us
On the road made of feathers
of our loved ones.

Would that we could lose
all semblance of pheasant,
become Mecca in his palms

and overwhelm his senses.
Would that this were dreamy
instead of dull,

this inevitable severing
of daylight into insects
who pad the coming night

with excrement and wings—
would that it were not our life
to augur sleeveless errands.

© by Larissa …

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Laszlo Z. Bito (photograph from Wikimedia)

The Bard College Conservatory of Music has received a $9.2-million gift from Bard alumnus László Z. Bitó, class of 1960, for the construction of The László Z. Bitó ’60 Conservatory Building.

This building will help satisfy the growing needs of the conservatory, which has grown fivefold growth since its founding in 2005. With an anticipated completion date of January 2013, The project is scheduled to begin construction in next month and to be completed by January 2013.

As designed by Deborah Berke & Partners Architects in New York City, the performance space will include a 145-seat hall that can be variously configured. It will also features one-touch audio and video recording, as well as live-streaming capability. There will be 15 teaching studios …

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The Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida has announced that it will open its new Asian art wing on March 31, 2012. The Cofrin Asian Art Wing, designed by UF alumnus Kha Le-Huu, is  a 26,000-square-foot addition dedicated to the art of China, Japan, Korea, India, and the Himalayas from the Neolithic period to the present.  The adaptable gallery spaces in the new wing will allow for a frequently rotating permanent collection, allowing the museum to highlight many more of the 2,000 works in the Harn’s permanent collection of Asian art.  As part of the opening, the Harn will also debut two, new Asian-themed gardens, designed by Hoichi Kurisu of Kurisu International, which will blend Asian garden design principles with contemporary sensibilities.

Kris Bowers bows to the audience after performing in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition. He took home first prize. (Brendan Hoffman/WireImage--Photo at NPR.org)

Juilliard pianist Kris Bowers, a second-year master of music degree student in the Juilliard Jazz program, has won the $25,000 first prize in the 2011 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition, presented by the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. Bowers has won a recording contract from Concord Music Group.

At the September 12 event in Washington, he performed with jazz greats Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Terence Blanchard, Dianne Reeves, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Kurt Elling, John Patitucci, Jimmy Heath, Joe Lovano, Kevin Eubanks, and Juilliard Jazz Artistic Director Carl Allen.

A native of Los Angeles, Bowers received his…

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Don’t desert me
just because I stayed up last night
watching The Lost Weekend.

I know I’ve spent too much time
praising your naked body to strangers
and gossiping about lovers you betrayed.

I’ve stalked you in foreign cities
and followed your far-flung movements,
pretending I could describe you.

Forgive me for getting jacked on coffee
and obsessing over your features
year after jittery year.

I’m sorry for handing you a line
and typing you on a screen,
but don’t let me suffer in silence.

Does anyone still invoke the Muse,
string a wooden lyre for Apollo,
or try to saddle up Pegasus?

Winged horse, heavenly god or goddess,
indifferent entity, secret code, stored magic,
pleasance and half wonder, hell,

I have loved you my entire life
without even knowing what you are
or how—please help me—to find you.

© by Edward Hirsch.  Printed…

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By Charles O’Connor

“So what’s your major?”

Ask that question on an average campus, and less than 1  in 10 students will answer  something like music, art, theater, dance, film, design, or creative writing. And if they do, the usual reply is,  “Hmm … that’s nice,” or “That sounds, um, fun.”

Let’s face it,  the ranking of the academic species according to the most popular undergraduate majors goes something like this: business management, business marketing, education, the social sciences, the humanities, and, for math heads, math and then science and engineering. Throw in a few pre-professional tracks like pre-med or nursing. And the arts usually fall somewhere toward the end of the list.

OK, I get it, the business of America is business, and there are many who would like it if  universities were more like businesses themselves. A career in the arts is about …

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