Author: admin

Based on what I saw today on the reflection of tall trees on the river, there’s an Armageddon of swirling things trying to drink the water, their spreading tension the surface of claw-prints and misty roars in silver. I tried to identity them in their uniform art of consciousness—namely: feathery desks, unread papers, dried leaves, money bills, memos, pills and pillows, a falling tear, the image

Poetry, for me, is a passionate expression of things we sense, see, know (even if not consciously), in a concentrated form that sounds like a passage of never before heard music. Beauty is fashioned from the melodies and harmonies all around us that we don’t usually listen to or hear, condensed and crystallized into something potent and also elemental.

Back when my new bride and I were dating, she would respond to the mention of certain fellows by saying, “He’s such a beautiful man.” At first I thought she was uncommonly comfortable praising other men’s appearances. That was incorrect. Sometimes she’d mention a woman, similarly labeling her “A beautiful human being.”

Having studied other cultures and other times, it is apparent that beauty is a matter of culture, context and states of mind, even of economics and politics. Merely consider the 20th Century in which works by Picasso, Stravinsky and Balanchine were seen as ugly, tasteless and vulgar, and Soviet architecture was preferred by many.

Where verse is concerned, music is key. What a poet hears, the vernacular of the street or any other, is crafted with echoing sounds, stresses, pauses, strange words and familiar, which create an opportunity for expectation satisfied and surprise—the delight of language.

Beauty is a quality of anything, really, that provokes in us, for whatever reason, an awestruck double-take, the prolonged or re-look, re-read, re-listen, re-touch, re-think. The “live” one ends, of course—the sunset, the concert, the intimate moment—and we often strive and contrive to experience another like it

To every story,
            bliss or torment,
Beauty cries, “Brief!”
            but brings providence’ salve –
even love in grief –
            offers sacred relief.

Though I cannot say for certain what beauty is, I know that it arrives as a recognition from within, a presence, an awe or quiet joy.  Beauty can only make us better humans, especially when we remain actively receptive to it

Beauty is relative—however, it is also abundant and perennial. One type of beauty may diminish and morph into a deeper philosophical truth. Beauty can take the guise of morality and define the outer reaches of what it means to be fully human—to grow into that.

Beauty is heavy stuff. Beauty is light.
I feel something tidal, a delicious pull
where feeling and thinking circle one another.
Beauty strikes a chord. Something resonates.
The light catches its own glancing.

I never stop being astonished by the ways we’re separated from every other human being, despite our intentions and desires, despite all our good efforts. Life seems to be a somewhat random sequence of approaches and separations, each of which is deeply compelling. Many people call this Beauty.

Beauty is an inner and outer experience, but the two were truly written by the same hand. The outer world recreates the inner world, “making this thing other,” recalling the inner world to its original beauty, despite great brokenness.

Give the world something beautiful to connect with and the meaning and value of it changes with every angle it’s perceived from, not to mention subject to the influences of the person evaluating it and the context it is being experienced in.

Beauty is in stopping to matter whether anyone believes your stories because you discover the universe has long been writing for them to happen and in all the meandering, you have somehow seen the route.

Beauty evokes humility, the sense of belonging to the thing observed, the ego’s compassion for the oneness of it all.

Beauty is the flower hanging from the chandelier above the bed of the mortally ill, reminding them that eating, drinking, and being merry is not always a requirement.

The particular realm of beauty I seek in my poetry is internal, is a series of linguistic references, even configurations about human tenderness. As a poet (and even as a scholar) I work from my subconscious, one full of an array of images, events, places, faces, and relationships.

Beauty is in design….the curve, the spiral, the spider’s web, the dive of an owl for its prey, the ten thousand symphonies of the stars. It is in poetry, in art, in the creative force that rules the universe.

The mind may define something as beautiful, but it is the body that recognizes it and provides us with the sudden intake of breath, the moment when we look up and see what we’ve always seen in a new way. And if, in that moment, I am granted a perception that I can put into words, then maybe I will be lucky enough to pass it on as a beautiful poem.

In a world rendered inchoate by divisiveness and the limitations of human faculties, the words and images the poet employs connect the reader’s mind and emotions to an experience or object in the flux of the swirling events of life. Poetry grants access and focus for a mind to experience resolution and catharsis of all that besets it on individual and macro levels.

We don’t need to look for beauty in only the obvious places: mountains, vast landscapes, fireworks. One finds beauty in even the smallest of places, in the nuances of a voice, in the wings of insects, in the blue sparks of forget-me-nots. Who would want to leave such a world?

When I write, I try to not only gaze up in wonder at the waterfalls and meteor showers but also peek beneath a few rocks to see what oddly shaped forms of beauty might be lurking under there.

For me, beauty is situated in a dancing flower on a lonely highway… in the prancing steps of a child from a deprived background, and, the tired eyes of a terminal patient that light up, after seeing a lost kinsman, at the bedside.

Throughout the nearly fourteen years that I have lived on the fringe of the Arabian Desert, I have tried to carefully investigate and cultivate a connection to it. The desert’s ascetic beauty and wonder have humbled me in a way I never could have imagined.

After leaving the world of “Pastoral,” it seems plausible that we’re supposed to understand vanity is not a game we can win; however, it’s “of vast import to the nation” that we are vigilant about checking in with ourselves to avoid pitfalls in our concept of what is beautiful.

In poetry, the effective image–even if it’s piercing, even if it describes something eerie or ugly—can be a beautiful image. And when I think about it, this is the type of image I strive for in my poetry. The exacting image. The specific image. The ringing image. The stinging image, sometimes “cooked” and sometimes “raw.” Let’s call it beautiful.

Defining beauty is an impossible task, doomed from the start. This is because the very moment of its apprehension defies comprehension. In the same instant when I perceive, with my senses, the rustle of a red leaf, notes from a cello, or a body’s cello-like perfection, the possibility of any complete understanding disappears.

Beauty is always fresh and fantastical, even when the subject is ordinary and familiar. We discover beauty if what is known becomes strange—as phantasmagorical as if we had never seen it before. The unwonted is wanted. Beauty may be ordered and symmetrical or it may be angular, jagged, and asymmetrical.

I work in an organic garden where I work closely with small beneficial insects like ladybugs, lacewings, praying mantis, and worms, companion plants such as marigolds, and composting. Since I work with seed and save generations of seeds, I try to work with the balance of nature.

As I have gotten older my notions of beauty have drifted away from aesthetic universals.  Beauty for me now is simple ravishment.  A sudden unexpected gasp of surrender to a sense-based awareness, often visual but also tactile, aural and even olfactory.

The world of nature is abundantly giving and beautiful. It is also pure and liberating. I believe that beauty lies in the ability to transact with our natural world as kindly and peacefully as possible. It is also about being grateful for all it offers us, treating it with dignity and respect. 

Miss you poet Ali, homeless, exile.
Never met you the person, but met the poet
of Kashmir, pain, and loss.
Yearning for a time and a place that never could be;
never yours again.

…but each simple, commonplace moment / transformed, miraculously new, / never truly seen before, / now shouting glory to ears / that had been deaf, / beauty to eyes / that had been blind.

My poems are tributes to that beauty, archives to hold on to it as long as I can. Sometimes those moments hit me in the chest like heart punches; sometimes they whisper in my ear with sounds just like my mother’s voice during bedtime stories. It’s my responsibility as a writer to get them all down as often and as accurately as possible so they share well, and for lifetimes.

I don’t always know what beauty looks like, but I do know what it feels like.  It’s the swelling in my chest, the unexpected holding of my breath, the attention I hold in my eyes and my spine, the whisper and shimmer of the divine on my skin.  It inspires, challenges, disrupts.  It holds you hostage and then sets you free.  

For me, depth of thought is an essential component of any creative art that is beautiful. I also love the beauty of mathematics and science, especially physics (insects and insides I find less attractive but I am glad that others study them). I love the depth of thought in great books and meaningful visual art. Why do I want depth of thought? Because I think.

When my son was in his first year of college, on the weekends he cooked for his roommates. Two of them are vegetarian. Besides going to classes, doing his homework, playing Final Fantasy 15 whenever he could, he researched vegetarian meals, cooked for them and baked bread. His heart was so full when he made them happy. I am so proud. My arms are around all of them. That is beauty to me.

Poetry is the activity of making the medium and the membrane resound harmoniously. The best way to do that is to talk about what words really mean, so we can watch them meaning, in a way we don’t care to do when we use them casually.

Beauty, like poetry, is the whisper of gold through trees; buildings dipped in golden-orange, burnt sienna, and facing west; the underwater blue of after-day air, and the physics of light God has lent to us in order to describe it. Beauty lies in the integrity of the poor, in the sustaining conversation of a wounded healer.

Beauty is of life in every corner, wet cells sucking nourishment, giving birth, teeming through every grain of earth. We drink water once swallowed by Jesus, breathe atoms once blown by Buddha, share the light of stars with unknown beings on undiscovered planets. Of this light, this water and air, this story without begin, without end, of this universe of countless souls is beauty.

Beauty is the bringing together of perfect shape, color, texture, sound, thought and feeling, all meeting in the same spot at the same time in such a way as to make us forget everything ugly, evil and sad for at least a few moments. It is God’s antidote to tragedy and heartbreak, a hedge against life’s bad bets.

it seems to me that harmony of mind is the necessary aspect for the creation of beauty. Perhaps harmony is in fact the underlying element that defines what is beautiful. Perhaps, beauty is when the elements that make up the whole are in balance with each other. 

I’m not sure what I think big-B Beauty is. Doubt there’s a vault outside of the universe with all the Ideals sitting around sipping ideal beverages. Beautiful, though, is a lot like funny. It knocks you off what you always assumed was balance, and–for you if not for the rest of the world–it never gets old.

I have always been fascinated by the juxtaposition of beauty and danger—aspects of life which often collide or intertwine. When I was a practicing artist my work often explored this subject. For several years I devoted much of my time to a series of still lifes mingling the beauty of such things as flowers, fish, or pearls with the beauty of broken glass which reflects light and threatens anyone who touches it.

Beyond what we see and hear and feel and what we know is something greater than human formulas can account for. This, for me, is the true subject of poetry, as close to us as a blade of grass, yet essentially unknowable.

“Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.” This is an instant, a unity of my mind and my heart, when only the power of beauty is able to merge the two into one. Only beauty is able to open my own heart and make me see my own self without the mirror.  

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As long as we are at least partly receptive, when we encounter genuine beauty, in any of its forms, its power temporarily overrides our default consciousness (which is often only a rote semi-consciousness) and, for a period of time that feels halted, it reconfigures our perceptions, our emotions, our points of view, our intellect. It is as if some of the atoms of a beautiful form enter us and some of ours enter it in a transaction that creates a most personal, intimate experience.  

When I think of beauty, I think of music.  Mozart, Beethoven, Bach.  That kind of music.  Well, it’s been my day job for a long time.  If I could write a poem that does what the opening measures of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande do, I would pay myself a million bucks.  I spent fifteen years writing a poem called Goldberg-Variations that comes from the pov of a piece of music.