Scattered Light

We'll Be Back

2012-01-30T13:04:00.000-05:00

Mozart- birthday series

2012-01-27T17:14:00.000-05:00

Uchida on Mozart

Jacqueline du Pre & Daniel Barenboim - Chopin cello sonata in g op.65

2012-01-26T18:16:00.000-05:00

Etta Sings Prince

2012-01-22T17:20:00.000-05:00

12-etta_james-purple_rain_(prince)

Julian Schnabel at his studio in New York

2012-01-22T08:36:00.000-05:00

Etta James--RIP

2012-01-20T11:43:00.000-05:00

Janis Joplin -- birthday series

2012-01-19T07:53:00.000-05:00

Repin & Lugansky Play Schubert Fantasy part.1

2012-01-17T19:05:00.000-05:00

recommended by Tim Buck

Sergei Rachmaninoff plays Schumann "Carnaval" Op. 9

2012-01-14T06:33:00.000-05:00

Feldman: "Rothko Chapel"

2012-01-13T15:41:00.000-05:00

Birthday Series-- Eva Hesse

2012-01-11T20:00:00.000-05:00

Morton Feldman, 1/3 For Samuel Beckett, Franz Kline

2012-01-08T20:28:00.000-05:00

Coming Soon...

2012-01-04T14:50:00.000-05:00

Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness

Poetry by and for the 99%!

March 22-25, 2012
Washington, DC

Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness invites poets, writers, activists, and dreamers to Washington, DC for four days of poetry, community building, and creative transformation. The festival features readings, workshops, panel discussions, youth programming, parties, activism—opportunities to speak out for justice, build connection and community, and celebrate the many ways poetry can act as an agent for social change.
As people’s movements ignite here at home and throughout the world in response to economic inequality, political repression, and environmental degradation, the festival will consider the relationship of poets and poetry to power and to the challenges to power. We will also celebrate the life and work of poet-essayist-teacher-activist June Jordan on the 10th anniversary of her death.
Split This Rock calls poets to a greater role in public life and fosters a national network of socially engaged poets. Building the audience for poetry of provocation & witness from our home in the nation’s capital, we celebrate poetic diversity and the transformative power of the imagination. Please join us in March!

I can't make it

Early-bird rate: $75 (after February 22: $100)
Student rate: $40
Day rate: $40 ($20 for students) except Sunday ($25/$10)
Scholarships are available
For the first time, pre-order Split This Rock T-shirts when you register!

If it's easier, you can register by mail. The early bird rate is yours until February 22, 2012. Register here for the full festival or a single day. Scholarships are available; see our festival scholarship page for more information.

We are the ones we have been waiting for. —June Jordan

Featured Poets

Split This Rock is excited to announce a spectacular lineup of featured poets for 2012. The festival will once again feature some of the most visionary and powerful voices of our time: environmental activists, youth organizers, Pulitzer Prize winners, slam champions, poets of all ethnicities, DC-area poets, an opera librettist, translators, editors and publishers, emerging poets and mentors to emerging poets. Split This Rock 2012 has it all.

Get Involved

See our Volunteer page and join our list to stay up-to-date on our ongoing programs and to find out how to help out with the 2012 Poetry Festival!

Happy New Year!

2011-12-31T16:42:00.000-05:00

Diana Krall-New Years Eve

2011-12-30T17:15:00.000-05:00

Helen Frankenthaler - Requiem in pace et amore

2011-12-28T08:00:00.000-05:00

Tom Waits sings Christmas classics

2011-12-21T09:27:00.000-05:00

Birthday Series:Edvard Munch

2011-12-12T09:02:00.000-05:00

Our Sunday Jam

2011-12-11T09:15:00.000-05:00

Pssst...FREE Books!

2011-12-07T08:22:00.000-05:00

Until December 20, Writer's Lair Books is offering Shiva's Arms and other books absolutely FREE. You pay S&H, that's all. Season's Greetings!

Poulenc : Melancholie

2011-12-05T17:43:00.000-05:00

...or this?

Poulenc　Melancolie　Alexandre Tharaud

2011-12-05T17:41:00.000-05:00

This?

Gift Book

2011-12-05T11:42:00.000-05:00

Still shopping? Here's our contribution to the holiday coffee table in hardcover and paperback

Seurat - Birthday Series

2011-12-02T09:00:00.000-05:00

Marina Abramović:--Birthday Series

2011-11-30T12:07:00.000-05:00

Mother Forgets "Church"

2011-11-28T11:56:00.010-05:00

mother forgets “church”
and a hush smothers us

in her brain’s atrium
a processional of tangles
son brother husband father

where’s the church and where’s the steeple

she wanders through the basilica
to the transept of a cross
all dressed up since 2 AM

Jimi Hendrix - Birthday Series

2011-11-27T16:37:00.000-05:00

Portfolio of Recent Paintings

2011-11-24T12:51:00.000-05:00

PAINTINGS by Janet Snell | Make Your Own Book

2012 Calendar

2011-11-22T10:08:00.000-05:00

Mother's Poinsettia

2011-11-17T11:29:00.001-05:00

This season, we're offering our mother's lovely holiday card at what it cost Cafe Press to print it. You're welcome.

Hot

2011-11-14T12:25:00.000-05:00

Little Green Monster and Friends

2011-11-07T01:25:00.000-05:00

The Centrifugal Eye

2011-11-02T18:36:00.000-04:00

We're pleased to have a collaboration in the new issue. Thank you, Eve!

Nosferatu (1922) - Full Movie

2011-10-31T16:55:00.000-04:00

Birthday Series: Vermeer:

2011-10-30T23:06:00.000-04:00

Saturday Jam: Franz Shubert Valse-caprice

2011-10-29T08:41:00.001-04:00

Birthday Series:Picasso

2011-10-25T19:44:00.000-04:00

Scriabin, Prelude, Opus 67 #2, Presto (piano solo)

2011-10-24T18:59:00.000-04:00

This Side Up - A Short Animation by Liron Topaz

2011-10-23T11:56:00.000-04:00

Gimme Ten!

2011-10-17T19:26:00.001-04:00

ten more 20x24, a photo by shivasarms43 on Flickr.

Double Portrait with Held Breath

2011-10-17T19:25:00.001-04:00

Double Portrait with Held Breath, a photo by shivasarms43 on Flickr.

first published in BloodLotus

Desire

2011-10-17T19:24:00.001-04:00

Desire, a photo by shivasarms43 on Flickr.

There’s the daylight in ruins,
and you here willing to be ruined too,
willing night to crawl across a city
full of men wanting to ruin you.
Here comes one now, ripe
with appetite and impulse,
without a clue of what it will take
to pull you out
of these details drowning
in orange and blue,
and into his own picture --
but you’re clear on that too,
transparent with buttercup hope
that this time will be different,
that this one will know how to see you.

(Blood Lotus)

jealous

2011-10-17T19:22:00.001-04:00

jealous, a photo by shivasarms43 on Flickr.

artist with worried sister

2011-10-17T19:19:00.001-04:00

artist with worried sister, a photo by shivasarms43 on Flickr.

she stands up
among her broken people

counting time on fingers
bent with it

her plane was a bed
contrived of shadows

full of salt wound in sheeting
now in shreds

like all ends of things
orange energy lifting her

into urgencies clanging yellow
hurrying her forward

away from the sister
who's always one step behind

(Bloodlotus magazine)

Examining Ophelia

2011-10-17T19:17:00.001-04:00

Examining Ophelia, a photo by shivasarms43 on Flickr.

On hands and knees I’d crawl into his mind at the wrong time, just as he was drifting off (perchance) to dream. He’d slap his forehead, and shake his fists as if he was the only one enslaved, but he'd rise and light the candle for me. Circles of light paled the pen, signal and symbol, and the velvet curtain rose like some bird above the stage in his brain. He'd push me down between folds of parchment again, creasing me with his ravaged nib, filling me in, molding me into something I was not. In the morning, I'd feel grateful for the ink stains smearing reality revised to cast me in his image. A soliloquy in a pocket, the dance of another un-smooth course would have driven any muse mad.
There are ghosts afoot tonight, and under glass the old story looms large, as tangled as the weeds in my waterlogged hair.

Inspiration

2011-10-16T09:34:00.000-04:00

New! Janet's Pocket Portfolio

2011-10-13T14:57:00.000-04:00

Theo Jansen's Kinetic Sculptures

2011-10-13T12:39:00.000-04:00

In Lieu of Opium

2011-10-10T18:38:00.000-04:00

Have you read Tim Buck's new collection of poems? It's called In Lieu of Opium and it's got all the breadth and depth and musicality and melancholy you could ask for in forty pages. Recommended.

Fresh at Red Booth Review

2011-10-06T15:21:00.002-04:00

We've got another poem & painting up at Red Booth Review Like?

Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-06T13:03:00.000-04:00

Stan Getz-Autumn Leaves

2011-10-04T18:18:00.000-04:00

Review of Sheila Deeth's FLOWER CHILD

2011-10-02T21:20:00.002-04:00

The Metaphysics of Connection

What is the nature of reality? How do emotions distort it? The liminal state between what’s known and what’s not is a threshold rife with the unfathomable. Begging readers’ willing suspension of disbelief, Sheila Deeth allows us to enter, through colloquial but poetic language and vivid descriptions, into the porous consciousness of her characters.

Flower Child explores the grief of Megan, who miscarries the daughter she names Angela for the angel she hopes she has become. But the child is in limbo, tethered to a place that recalls the Garden of Eden, a plane inhabited by angel-guardians who watch over babies until they are born. The babies who aren’t, (i.e. Ms. Deeth introduces a pair of siblings aborted in favor of a third baby) stay enveloped in flower pods, swaddled in greenery. “I was safe and secure, wrapped in my nest of leaves ‘til it was time to wake again” Angela says, just after being miscarried.
The story is alternately narrated by Angela and her mother, so intimately and intricately connected, but each is unsure of the other. Angela worries that her mother doesn’t want or love her, while Megan believes the glimpses of her little girl are dreams or hallucinations. To connect over such chasms of space and time seems impossible, but somehow they do—Angela, growing faster than a human child, goes through the usual stages of development on Megan’s watch. Like any mother, she becomes suspicious, judgmental, then panicked when Angela eats the proverbial apple.

Moving from temptation to temptation, Angela falls in love with Elisha, one of the triplets sacrificed for the health of his sibling. With his love, Angela “feels real”, but her mother is still in emotional limbo. In the climactic scene echoing the Passion of Christ, Angela struggles with her choice: self preservation or altruistic sacrifice; with the skillful tying together of theme and allusion across genres, Ms. Deeth has her act on her decision.

The metaphysical complexity of the conclusion, the conflation of the mortal and immortal, recalls Freud’s theory about the nature of reality -- the idea that though reality is intersubjective, this “collective hallucination” is experienced by people in both congruent and divergent ways. The shifting perspectives of Deeth’s characters underscore the dynamic nature of reality, and Ms. Deeth makes us believe in a character not of this earth as easily as her all too human mother.

Flower Child is catalogued as speculative Christian fiction; but like most labels, that falls short in describing a novella combining the lyrical and the literary with the quotidian and the extraordinary to make a unique and touching story that will be hard for any reader to forget.

Amazon

Itzhak Perlman plays Beethoven

2011-09-30T19:02:00.001-04:00

New Cards

2011-09-28T18:24:00.000-04:00

Janet's drawing "Second Sight" is on the cover of our new notecards, and they turned out so well we thought we'd offer them to y'all. They're available from our CafePress store

Head over Heels at Red Booth Review

2011-09-27T09:11:00.001-04:00

Check us out!

Gershwin 3 Preludes

2011-09-26T07:37:00.000-04:00

Waterfall

2011-09-25T16:16:00.000-04:00

Gorky had a better color sense than just about anyone, don't you think?

Variations with harmonica

2011-09-23T18:04:00.001-04:00

Satin Doll, from this collection, is now up at Scissors and Spackle

Jackson Pollock by Hans Namuth

2011-09-22T13:31:00.000-04:00

Brochure

2011-09-18T20:02:00.001-04:00

We made these brochures to display with Janet's two oil paintings, "The Space Around Her" and "Green Head" at the university where they now hang. Recognize the border? Scattered Light!

Painting & Poem

2011-09-17T18:00:00.004-04:00

the last word
and you inch toward your edge
as my hips roll away
under the green blanket.
i hug myself
with bramble arms
and know that
everything is changed, except
the moment when the earth,
the fertile soil we so thickly planted,
cracked with drought
and swallowed hard.

Aguirre - the Wrath of God

2011-09-17T15:38:00.000-04:00

JEAN RENOIR - DANSE MACABRE (La Règle du Jeu - 1939)

2011-09-14T19:59:00.000-04:00

Found Objects

2011-09-13T16:42:00.000-04:00

Gwen Waight
Check out her site! I took Mom to hear her talk at the Artists of Rubber City meeting last night, and we both came away enthused & charmed. It's interesting to hear about how artists find their ways to a particular form of expression early, often as kids, and hang onto it no matter what the response. Gwen's father mistook her collected dolls' heads for garbage, for instance, and burned them. Didn't slow her down.

Dylan Thomas - And Death Shall Have No Dominion

2011-09-11T11:45:00.000-04:00

Esperanza Spalding - Overjoyed

2011-09-10T19:32:00.000-04:00

Grady Harp Reviews THAT FEEL

2011-09-09T16:51:00.001-04:00

The Blend of Visual and Written Art

THAT FEEL is one of the finest collaborative books published by the sisters Snell. Cheryl Snell is a fine poet and her sister Janet Snell is a fine expressionist artist. In their previous books there was often the question of whether Janet was illustrating Cheryl's poetry or if perhaps each artist made her art and then combined it in the most suitable manner.

Now it is obvious that the art that spreads across both sides of an open book is unified and equally involved in the nidus of expression. The poems and art of THAT FEEL seem to be more visceral than those that came before them - these are poems from the gut, art about alienation and longing and rapturous moments that fade too quickly (or were they even there?). For example in the combined expression of the following, the painting accompanying the poem is that of two faces distorted by reflection in glass or mirror or memory:

REFLECTIONS IN CRACKED GLASS
Each brush stroke had been its own allegory
and could not reconcile the break. I felt for
connection in blind corridors, whispering
Who's there? from within the room's glass
eye.
Maybe I was dreaming. The facts were hard
to parse and sometimes lied. I did, too,
confused by what my reflection showed. The
glass distorted it and the fissure widened from
a thin red line. It splintered our embrace and
again I was alone.

The book may be brief but it is a powerful one. The only criticism about this latest opus is the somewhat disjointed feeling of the varying fonts or typefaces the artists used. Those wide variations of print diminish the tone of the poetry/art like unwanted audience distracters. But that is a minor complaint in a book that further substantiates the excellent collaborative efforts of the sisters Snell. -Grady Harp

Fauré plays Fauré Pavane, op 50

2011-09-08T18:41:00.000-04:00

Bill Evans - Pavane (Gabriel Faure)

2011-09-08T18:40:00.000-04:00

Bill Evans - "Here's that rainy day"

2011-09-08T18:38:00.000-04:00

Science and Art

2011-09-05T21:28:00.000-04:00

What is the effect of art on the brain? Read the article for one answer. The work of Quentin Massys, who painted this portrait, decreased blood flow in the test subjects. Bad rap, if you ask us.

Entertaining Mother

2011-09-04T18:43:00.000-04:00

Janet took Mom to the Arts in the Square festival yesterday. There was a big crowd despite the high heat and humidity, and a good time was had by all. Dan Opalenik took this photo. Mom & Janet do not look amused, but only because of the bright sun. Put your shades on, girls!

Artist of the Month

2011-09-02T21:50:00.000-04:00

Janet's got work over at Writing Raw Check it out, it's a rich issue!

Relax Relate Read Book Bundle Giveaway

2011-09-01T08:40:00.000-04:00

Shiva's Arms: Relax Relate Read Book Bundle Giveaway: Enter WLB's Book Bundle Giveaway on the Back to the Books Giveaway Hop and win a hardcover copy of Shiva's Arms amomg other goodies. Good ...

New at Scattered Light Library

2011-08-29T15:37:00.005-04:00

That Feel: paintings and poems
also, free to read at Issuu

Claustrophobic with Orange Hat

2011-08-28T19:23:00.001-04:00

Claustrophobic with Orange Hat, a photo by shivasarms43 on Flickr.

Feel like this after the earthquake-hurricane combo this week? Me too.

Ten More

2011-08-26T16:50:00.001-04:00

ten more 20x24, a photo by shivasarms43 on Flickr.

What a week for weather! Batten down the hatches, East coasters, and good luck!

She Writers Blogger Ball

2011-08-21T13:10:00.000-04:00

Welcome to Scattered Light, She Writers. We are two sisters, painter & poet, who collaborate on books, this blog, and life. Saunter through our offerings -- we have art, we have music, we have words. Lots & lots of words! Enjoy yourselves and please sign our guestbook, AKA the Comments box, and we will return the visit.

Red Fez

2011-08-21T08:39:00.000-04:00

One of Cheryl's videos can be seen at Red Fez now. There are others at her You Tube channel as well. Just so you know...

Treasure

2011-08-18T13:24:00.002-04:00

a wonderful poem by Tim Buck about Janet's art:

openings (for Janet)

Her selection of pigments glistens on a palette,

pigments vibrating in rhythms of probability --

stochastic atoms of colors matching synapses.

The canvas seems infinite, a white ground bass.

And music will complement her morning brushes --

Scriabin or Miles? Chopin or Tom's 3/4 cadence?

Ah...Debussy will spread his elusive prismatics!

What will emerge?

It's not for me to know how she opens the portals of dream and vision.

But phantoms come, and forms of feeling

become masses hanging in strange balance.

Deep fall the eyes into that opening rendered.

Wild is the way that spirits clothe themselves

in chromatic meaning, then aesthetically whisper

into the pensive Moment haunting brushed fabric --

melancholia and suspense, death and wan Eros.

It's not for me to call this magic or miracle of color between now and numinous.

Or...a muted drama of black ink and charcoal

performing metamorphosis in titanium white.

Objects without name are apparitions

made of what this painters is feeling,

in hues wrought from mineral silence

to uncover modes of arcane space.

A slow grinding of intuitions into image opiums.

A grinding of elements into immanent powders,

releasing powers of shaman, seer, oracle.

Sienna, umber, ocher, madder.

Cobalt, chrome, cadmium, copper.

And the blues! -- brilliant or nocturnal.

All for alchemy transmuting incantations

that sigh in violet or simmer in alizarin.

A spellbound mixing of slow ecstatic oils

into inspiration, dark-gleaned discovery,

bringing affective texture to presence.

But sometimes I do wonder...

just what is happening underneath

this paint and these ghostly forms?

If I stared too long, if eyes fell too deeply,

I might see too much, go mad inside layers.

Sleep

2011-08-18T08:50:00.001-04:00

Poem Made of Sleep

Lower your limbs into it
like a bath, your spine repeating
the blue wave of your lashes.
A tear made of the day
escapes onto your cheek
like the slow start of rain
and your fingers curl slightly.
Around what? The street sounds
outside your window fade away,
also refusing to be held.
This is the moment
you are most alone, listening to
the systems inside you, your thudding
blood, chest rising and falling,

each breath stretching like a yawn.
There's no fear of the numbness
that creeps through you now,
let it come,
loosening muscle, thinning thought.
Let it tell you what you already know,
in symbols and signs and implausibles.
At this hour, your mind talks in riddles
and the language is a mystery
you cannot hold past the moment
you tunnel up through the very dreams
that traveled so far to touch you.

Rachmaninoff Plays his Elegie, Op 3 No 1

2011-08-16T18:40:00.000-04:00

New!

2011-08-14T12:52:00.000-04:00

Cheryl has a poem in Up the Staircase Quarterly today. She used Janet's drawing "Porthole", above, for inspiration.

Goodie Bag

2011-08-12T16:19:00.000-04:00

For a limited time, we're offering free downloads of the complete Scattered Light Library here
Not samples, mind you, but all eight chapbooks, in their entirety.

You're welcome.

Groundworks Dance Theater

2011-08-11T22:42:00.000-04:00

For the Life of Me from Amy Miller on Vimeo.

Richter plays Scriabin: Sonata no. 2, Op 19 (movement 1)

2011-08-09T19:18:00.000-04:00

Blood Lotus: An Online Literary Journal: BL #21

2011-08-05T14:09:00.000-04:00

Check us out!

Blood Lotus: An Online Literary Journal: BL #21: "In This Issue… Isaac James Baker Jason Bradford Rachel Bunting Thomas Michael Duncan C.B. Forrest Jennifer Givhan Scott Horn Monica Koeni..."

Grilled Cheese

2011-08-04T11:55:00.000-04:00

She always liked grilled cheese sandwiches, the gooey melt of them, the buttery crustiness. Today, when she bites into the one I just made for her, her mouth turns down. She purses her lips.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing."

"Not hungry?" She's never hungry these days.She's so thin she can't get warm.

"It's your favorite," I remind her, pushing the plate closer to the table's edge. She says the sandwich has no flavor. She says it as if she's afraid of being heard.

I take her to lunch at a new place. She's restless and needs to get out, but the unfamiliar surroundings unsettle her. I point out the pictures on the wall similar to the ones in her bedroom, the identical plastic ficus. She hugs herself and looks at the door. When the grilled cheese comes, there's that frown again. The pursing. "No flavor?" Nodding, this time she has tears in her eyes.

We come home to a pile of junk mail. The people who send it seem to know she is ninety, are betting she has Alzheimer's. Orphans, the terminally ill, soldiers, and politicians all scream for donations. Sweepstakes promise her big winnings for small fees. Even the causes she has always supported notice that she has lost track of time, and dun her monthly rather than once in a year. She can no longer write a check, but I find a five dollar bill in a return envelope on top of the stack to be mailed.

"Would you like to go out for lunch?" I ask her a few days later. We have been kept in by thunderstorms, which scare her although she cannot hear the actual thunder. She closes the photo album with the captions that shore up her landsliding memories."Let's go to that place..." she begins, and I hope I've guessed correctly when I open the door to the coffee shop, the one she always took us to after Sunday School and recitals, after shopping for new school clothes, a first car, a wedding dress.

When her grilled cheese comes, she tucks into it as if it's the most delicious food she's ever tasted

DEVO - Worried Man - from Neil Young's Human Highway

2011-08-02T12:03:00.000-04:00

we were just talking about power in painting...

2011-07-30T17:17:00.000-04:00

Inspired by Miles

2011-07-28T20:50:00.000-04:00

Miles Davis "Summertime" (1958)

2011-07-28T19:49:00.000-04:00

Marcel Duchamp (Birthday Series)

2011-07-27T22:00:00.000-04:00

Happy Birthday, Mick!

2011-07-26T20:05:00.000-04:00

Edward Hopper (Birthday Series)

2011-07-21T14:00:00.000-04:00

Prisoner's Dilemma.

2011-07-20T22:34:00.002-04:00

Our book of drawings and poems inspired by game theory -- the one that won the Lopside Press Chapbook Competition -- is #60 on the Amazon bestseller list in the category of Themes, and has been selected for their 4 for 3 promo, going on now.

Ravel plays Ravel

2011-07-19T19:46:00.000-04:00

Cave of Forgotten Dreams trailer

2011-07-17T20:36:00.000-04:00

Anyone seen it? What did you think?

Gustav Klimt (Birthday Series)

2011-07-13T22:09:00.000-04:00