Brandymore Castle

I believe the contaminated tomato debacle unfolding over the last week has something to tell us about the factory food system, which supplies much of what we eat. It is fascinating how this came to be embodied in the shape of our tomatoes. A lot of people are asking the question, just what kind of tomatoes are safe to eat? One answer, we are told by news and government, is to suspect our round tomato friends of harboring salmonella. I had to stop and ask why is this? Why round tomatoes? Although the description has caused confusion, my first thought was that by “round red tomato” they were talking about the class of nondescript tomato one finds commonly in the supermarket produce section, piled high in a bin. Typically, these are large, as nearly perfectly spherical as the tomato board can blandish producers into making them, bland looking orbs sold in the supermarkets and funneled by the ton into the fast food system to be slapped onto burgers. They are the perfect food to fit the mac...

It doesn't matter to me whether I write haiku or senryu or whatever, as long as what I am writing is a satisfying expression of my need to share experience and thought. It would do no good to say a particular poem of mine is senryu and show me how to make it haiku, or to say I should withdraw it because it is not haiku. It isn't the form of poetry that matters. I'm not trying to write haiku , I'm trying to express myself . That's a crucial difference. Beginners want to know how to write haiku. But I what I tell you is that you want to find the form that enables you to express yourself, not learn to write haiku or iambic pentameter. You need to learn from these forms the form that suits you best, or a form in between no one has ever imagined yet. Each form you may take something from, you may move toward one or the other, or among them, but there will be a form that liberates your expression and you should use whatever form that is. Haiku is the just form of express...

I recalled the story of Degas's sculpture the Little Dancer the other day. For a long time I have looked upon it as an example of how creativity really works and some of the misunderstandings about creativity our society perpetuates. It might surprise you to know that Degas was not a sculptor. Although he made a number of sculptures, none of them were ever shown to the public except for the dancer. For a long time Degas was frustrated that sculptors were failing to explore what we now call realism in sculpture. It appears that Degas' interest in photography may have inspired him to envision a new vocabulary for sculpture, which depicted the subject as it really was, instead of attempting to inspire people with an idea or vision of what ought to be. Most sculptors of his time continued to work in this tradition of heroic or uplifting sculpture. Oddly enough, this is akin to "socialist realism" of the 1930s, which demanded that art earn its living by bringing about soci...