James Prosek

Mutton Snapper

From Ocean Fishes

Kathleen Dean Moore

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From Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature

Unknown Artist

Snowy Owls

From Drawing Birds

Edvard Munch

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Landscape, Maridalen by Oslo

From Munch

Henri Matisse

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Pot of Geraniums

From Impressionism and Post-Impressionism: The Hermitage, Lenningrad, the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington

Claude Monet

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Bazille and Camille

From Impressionism and Post-Impressionism: The Hermitage, Lenningrad, the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington

Camille Pissarro

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The Artist's Garden at Eragny

From Impressionism and Post-Impressionism: The Hermitage, Lenningrad, the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington

Homer Winslow

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From How Artists See Play

Karl Shapiro

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From The Poets Laureate Anthology

Wild Comfort by Kathleen Dean Moore

Perhaps the best essay in Wild Comfort is the piece that launches the collection, The Solace of Snakes.  It’s possible that it’s my favorite essay because of her cunning implementation of snake tins (sheets of metal) to give snakes a proper home in a cleared field.  Kathleen Dean Moore further explains her recordings each day as she carefully lifts the snake tins and examines the life beneath: “A large vole. . . dropping blind babies from her teats like ripe plums,” garter snakes, rubber boas, an alligator lizard – treasures of the dark that are suddenly revealed in the light of Moore’s simple prose.

While The Solace of Snakes is my favorite essay you might find that you prefer her essay on happiness, Moore’s scavenger hunt for joy’s many complexities, both surprising and apparent and how she fills a basket with her discoveries, a basket overflowing with hastily written revelations with unyielding permanence.

Or you will weep when Moore is told that a portion of her parent’s remains will end up in a landfill, but rejoice as Moore realizes that a fragment of their remains will be “taken up into the body of a bird, their calcium crusting against the open spaces in the bones that lifts its wings.”

You may be enthralled by Moore’s notion of using the word human as a verb, and you might attempt to define what it means to human, which could be a very remote path into the fragrant salt of the earth’s womb, or it could be a sudden fork that you take as you human your way through the decision.

Whichever essay it is that you decide to love most; it will be a tough but joyous voyage as you sift through Moore’s words. You may choose to love them all.  You may pluck a gem from each to ponder over just as a magpie jay runs “each of its extravagant tail feathers through its black beak, one and then another.”

Emily Flake

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From The New Yorker, Oct 3 2011

Edvard Munch

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Fertility II

From Munch

Vincent van Gogh

Undergrowth with Two Figures

From The Common, Issue No. 06

Jacob Lawrence

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From Jacob Lawrence: American Scenes, American Struggles

Michael Maslin

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From The New Yorker, Oct 17 2011

Georgia O'Keeffe

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From Modern Nature

William Haefeli

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From The New Yorker, May 9 2011

Rex Barron

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From Showdown At The Food Pyramid

A Chunk of the Sun

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From The Sun, August 2013

Brian Doyle

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From The Sun, August 2013

Emily Flake

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From The New Yorker, Nov 28, 2011

Berthe Morisot

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Interior Of A Cottage, Child With Her Doll

From Come Look with Me: Women in Art

P.C. Vey

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From The New Yorker, May 9, 2011

Matthew Diffee

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From The New Yorker, Dec 12 2011

Farley Katz

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From The New Yorker, Oct 31 2011

Tom Cheney

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From The New Yorker, May 16 2011

Joe Dator

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From The New Yorker, May 16 2011

Dagobert D Runes

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From Handbook of Reason

Sunset Design Guides

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From Home Decor: A Sunset Design Guide 

Stacie O'Brien

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From Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl

Paul Gauguin

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From The Garden in Art

Eileen Spinelli

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From Song for the Whooping Crane 

Jane Yolen

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From An Egret's Day

Barbara A. Schmidt-French & Carol A. Butler

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From Do Bats Drink Blood?: Fascinating Answers to Questions about Bats 

Mary Sullivan

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From Ball

Wolfgang Stuppy/Rob Kesseler

Garden Strawberry

From The Bizarre and Incredible World of Plants

And for further wowing

Anne Tyler

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From The Beginner's Goodbye

Norman Rockwell

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From 102 Favorite Paintings by Norman Rockwell

Stacie O'Brien

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From Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl

Something Permanent By Cynthia Rylant and Walker Evans

Walker Evans and Cynthia Rylant form a simply magical rapport in Something Permanent.  Cynthia Rylant’s connection to the photographs is quite eerie given that the book came to fruition after the passing of Walker Evans.  It’s as if she has studied the photographs for hours, interviewed Evans, painstakingly plucked the hidden words from the pictures, and shaped them into poems.  As I read the poems it became apparent that they were sharing a conversation with the photographs, and I, an outsider separated by experience, time and distance, was suddenly invited to walk within the worlds created by Evans and Rylant.  It was a struggle to come back, but I had to so I could tell you to come with me next time. 

Evans’ photography is stark but dense.  It isn’t tidy, and sometimes the disregard is a sharp punch – the tongue of a worn out shoe, a crude grave, signs shredded with weather’s indifference.  Oh but Evans knew his lines; he was an instrument of light, and his photographs tell you this.  His rocking chair isn’t an object.  It still contains the person who sat there, but not the humanness of the person, but the presence, the light.  The light could even be me or you leaving the room, the century, but only as our physical selves. 

Cynthia Rylant’s poetry reflects Evans’ photography, yes, but it also tells us a story, a thread that reaches spectacularly for the truth.  Her words, like Evans’ photography, are simple but saturated and sprinkled with grit – a barbershop masquerading as heaven, the tight clutch of grief that materializes in a pair of shoes and later, a hat.  While Rylant did not experience the depression, her poems say otherwise.  Clearly, Walker Evans’ light is still reaching.  It is reaching through Cynthia Rylant.  

Gerald Stern

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From The New Yorker, Aug 5, 2013

Barbara A. Schmidt-French & Carol A. Butler

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From Do Bats Drink Blood?: Fascinating Answers to Questions about Bats 

BT Schwartz

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From The New Yorker, July 29, 2013

Sandra Markle

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From Bats: Biggest! Littlest! 

John James Audubon

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Roseate Spoonbill

From John James Audubon: American Birds

David Chethlahe Paladin

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From Painting the Dream: The Visionary Art of Navajo Painter David Chethlahe Paladin 

Wesley the Owl by Stacie O’Brien

Wesley the Owl is a fascinating story about the 19 years Stacie O’Brien shares with Wesley, a barn owl.  Stacie, an employee at Caltech, is offered the opportunity to raise Wesley.  She immediately accepts the offer and throws herself into the arduous but overwhelmingly poignant task of creating a happy and long life for her new feathered baby.  Wesley thrives in Stacie’s care, and Stacie, in return, becomes the best owl mother a baby owl could ask for.  At a very funny moment in Wesley’s life his relationship with Stacie changes, and he chooses her as a mate.  Because of The Way of the Owl this switch is quite necessary, but as you read about it you will be startled for a moment before succumbing to the giggles. In fact, you will find yourself giggling most of the way through this book.  You will leap up at moments, as you struggle to contain the vast joy inside your chest with the hand that is not holding the book.  You will cackle with delight as Wesley encounters mice, magazines, water and many other things. 

Perhaps my favorite moment from the book involves one of Wesley’s attempts to catch and eat a live mouse.  Stacie places Wesley and the mouse in the bathtub and while Wesley doesn’t understand that he should be killing the mouse he is still curious.  The mouse of course doesn’t really care what’s going on until Wesley becomes curious.  So when Wesley plays with the mouse a bit the mouse bites him.  Wesley is appalled.  He turns back into a baby and he is quite pouty for a moment.   What a scenario!

Towards the end of the book Stacie divulges the last name of her best friend, who is mentioned throughout the book.  It turns out that the Wendy in this book is Wendy Francisco.  NO WAY, you all are saying.  Yes, I am serious!!!!  For those of you who are not familiar with Wendy Francisco, she is the lovely lady who sings the God and Dog song.  It makes perfect sense that Stacie and Wendy are best friends, and it makes me incredibly happy.  

Morris Graves

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From Morris Graves: The Early Works