With thanks, as always, to Kevin Ferris. And to the city I love.
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By: Beth Kephart ,
on 12/3/2014
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Philadelphia Museum of Art, Paul Strand Dorrance Galleries, Philadelphia marathon, Willie Sutton With t, Add a tag
In today's Inquirer I write of a recent visit to the Paul Strand exhibit, and the marathoners—and winners—who crowded the streets. The full story can be found here.
With thanks, as always, to Kevin Ferris. And to the city I love.
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 7/11/2012
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Stanley Kunitz, The Wild Braid, VAST, Philadelphia Museum of Art, garden writing, Add a tag
At the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where we're working on color, perception, metaphor, and the evocative shimmers of remembered gardens as part of the VAST Institute workshops, we were, on Monday, speaking of the senses writers tend to ignore. Smell and taste, perhaps because telling metaphors are elusive. Sound, because what we notice first—bird songs, insect buzz—seems somehow overly heard.
Today, while searching for illustrative examples to share by writers who are in possession of all their senses, not to mention all their wonder, I came upon this passage in Stanley Kunitz's The Wild Braid. Scale is not a sense, of course, nor is the passing of time. But they are elements of framing and reporting that writers must finally master. With the simplest possible language, Kunitz takes back in time. He isn't trying to be a poet here. He's saying, This is how it was; this is how I moved through things and saw.
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 7/8/2012
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Clean, Alyson Hagy, Kate Northrop, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Persea, Add a tag
Out in Wyoming, where Alyson Hagy lives and teaches and writes, there are many very real, very committed artists. One is named Kate Northrop, a poet with whom I have enjoyed a correspondence.
Her poems have been called "haunted." They have been likened to "the penumbra in painting, where light and shade blend." They have been described as "inclusive and generous, yet the tension, the thrill, never slackens." Kate herself has been hailed as a poet with a "remarkable ability to combine erudition and empathy." Last year she sent me an early copy of what would become the Persea publication Clean. I read it in a sustained state of awe.
Today, thinking of Kate, I returned to Clean—the manuscript she'd sent—and found this page, these words. I'm teaching this week at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I'm taking Kate's words with me.
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 6/23/2012
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Boleto, A Woman in Berlin, Summer Reading 2012, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Housekeeping, Dancer, beach reads, Michael Ondaatje, Book of Clouds, Colum McCann, Add a tag
But here is who I was or thought I'd be, in mid-April, when contemplating these questions by the sea.
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 6/21/2012
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Barbara Bassett, Nature Through Lens of Art/Science, VAST, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Add a tag
Later today I'll be on a train headed toward my city. I'll deboard at 30th Street and walk the hot mile or so to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where I'll be meeting with Barbara Bassett, who invited me to teach in this year's VAST: Nature Through Lens of Art/Science program being offered to area teachers. We'll be reviewing the collections. I'll be hunting for source inspirations.
It is an honor to be included in this program, described in full here. I excerpt these lines from the online description:
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By: Beth Kephart ,
on 12/3/2014
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Philadelphia Museum of Art, Paul Strand Dorrance Galleries, Philadelphia marathon, Willie Sutton With t, Add a tag
With thanks, as always, to Kevin Ferris. And to the city I love.
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 7/11/2012
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Stanley Kunitz, The Wild Braid, VAST, Philadelphia Museum of Art, garden writing, Add a tag
Today, while searching for illustrative examples to share by writers who are in possession of all their senses, not to mention all their wonder, I came upon this passage in Stanley Kunitz's The Wild Braid. Scale is not a sense, of course, nor is the passing of time. But they are elements of framing and reporting that writers must finally master. With the simplest possible language, Kunitz takes back in time. He isn't trying to be a poet here. He's saying, This is how it was; this is how I moved through things and saw.
During my adolescence, out in the open fields, I would sometimes pretend I was one of the insects. I became captivated by dragonflies and imagined I could see the world as they did. Everything had a different scale.
I reveled in the sensation of being so light and being able to go anywhere, unburdened by a body.
Discovering the body was part of the joy, the sense of infinite possibility of being out in the woods. I recognized that it had weight and had certain limitations—there was no denying that. Obviously one's sensitivity was less acute than that of any other living creature in the woods. At the same time, the body was the very instrument of exploration.
I would find a leaf or a stone in the underbrush and have the sensation that nobody else had seen quite the same thing. And if I came across an arrowhead, that was a real triumph.
Sometimes, especially when one gets older, one gets very clumsy in the handling of delicate objects. The hands, the fingers, are less nimble than they were. But then, there's the compensation that one knows a bit more. There's a quid pro quo.
In the woods, one loses the sense of time. It's quite a different experience from walking in the streets. The streets are human creations. In the woods what one finds are cosmic creations.
1 Comments on teaching scale and time (and Kunitz), last added: 7/11/2012
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By: Beth Kephart ,
on 7/8/2012
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Clean, Alyson Hagy, Kate Northrop, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Persea, Add a tag
Out in Wyoming, where Alyson Hagy lives and teaches and writes, there are many very real, very committed artists. One is named Kate Northrop, a poet with whom I have enjoyed a correspondence.
Her poems have been called "haunted." They have been likened to "the penumbra in painting, where light and shade blend." They have been described as "inclusive and generous, yet the tension, the thrill, never slackens." Kate herself has been hailed as a poet with a "remarkable ability to combine erudition and empathy." Last year she sent me an early copy of what would become the Persea publication Clean. I read it in a sustained state of awe.
Today, thinking of Kate, I returned to Clean—the manuscript she'd sent—and found this page, these words. I'm teaching this week at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I'm taking Kate's words with me.
The first day they had to name
Three things they loved, three
They hated
Loved: pulling moss from the seams
Between bricks; a stone
Cracked open; Jello, when you touch it
With a spoon, how it resists
Hated: a too-visible part
On the girl in front of you, scalp;
The skin formed on house paint;
Feet; white condiments
(Miracle whip, tartar sauce, mayonnaise)
2 Comments on three things loved, three things hated: Kate Northrop's haunted poetry, last added: 7/9/2012
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By: Beth Kephart ,
on 6/23/2012
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Boleto, A Woman in Berlin, Summer Reading 2012, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Housekeeping, Dancer, beach reads, Michael Ondaatje, Book of Clouds, Colum McCann, Add a tag
Back in mid-April, while living those few glorious days beside the ocean's gentle roar, I was asked some questions about my hoped-for summer reading. Two months have passed, and some of my predictions for myself have held true. Some predictions are still waiting to be fulfilled. Some books were in fact what I hoped they would be. Some (or, to be specific, one) severely disappointed.
This beautiful girl lives, by the way, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She's one of my teaching aides for the upcoming VAST Teacher Institute.
But here is who I was or thought I'd be, in mid-April, when contemplating these questions by the sea.
What are you reading this summer?
I have an exquisite pile of books waiting for me—Cheryl Strayed’s WILD, Katherine Boo’s BEHIND THE BEAUTIFUL FOREVERS, Adam Gopnik’s WINTER, Loren Eiseley’s ALL THE STRANGE HOURS, and the GRANTA BOOK OF THE IRISH SHORT STORY (edited by Anne Enright and including such gems as the Colum McCann class “Everything in This Country Must”). I like to mix it up—new and old, memoir and fiction.
What was your favorite summer vacation?
Favorite is a hard word for me. Love is easier. I loved my family’s summers at the Jersey shore when I was a kid and my father taught me how to dig for the clams with our toes. I loved Prague and Seville with my husband and son. And last summer I fell head over heels for Berlin. Anybody would.
What’s your favorite book about summer?
Harper Lee’s TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD isn’t about summer, per se. But all of its most lush and important parts happen within and under the summer heat.
What was your favorite summer reading book as a kid?
How boring, how obvious, how true to admit that it was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s THE GREAT GATSBY that enchanted me, again and again, as I sat collecting sun on my face with a piece of tin.
What is your favorite beach read?
I never read on the beach. I walk and look for dolphins. I read at night, when my body is still.
What’s the last book you devoured on a long flight?
The last time I was on a long flight I re-read BOOK OF CLOUDS by Chloe Aridjis. I was glad I did. I took off from Heathrow. I landed in Philadelphia. And in between I’d lived Berlin.
What’s your go-to book to read when you know you only have a few uninterrupted moments of peace?
I read Gerald Stern’s poems. They fix my migraines.
What’s a great book about discovery or travel to read on a long road trip over several days?
Steinbeck often works.
What would you re-read?
I will be re-reading Alyson Hagy’s BOLETO when it comes out in May from Graywolf. I read it in galleys, my Christmas Day present to myself. I was literally jumping off the cou
I have an exquisite pile of books waiting for me—Cheryl Strayed’s WILD, Katherine Boo’s BEHIND THE BEAUTIFUL FOREVERS, Adam Gopnik’s WINTER, Loren Eiseley’s ALL THE STRANGE HOURS, and the GRANTA BOOK OF THE IRISH SHORT STORY (edited by Anne Enright and including such gems as the Colum McCann class “Everything in This Country Must”). I like to mix it up—new and old, memoir and fiction.
What was your favorite summer vacation?
Favorite is a hard word for me. Love is easier. I loved my family’s summers at the Jersey shore when I was a kid and my father taught me how to dig for the clams with our toes. I loved Prague and Seville with my husband and son. And last summer I fell head over heels for Berlin. Anybody would.
What’s your favorite book about summer?
Harper Lee’s TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD isn’t about summer, per se. But all of its most lush and important parts happen within and under the summer heat.
What was your favorite summer reading book as a kid?
How boring, how obvious, how true to admit that it was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s THE GREAT GATSBY that enchanted me, again and again, as I sat collecting sun on my face with a piece of tin.
What is your favorite beach read?
I never read on the beach. I walk and look for dolphins. I read at night, when my body is still.
What’s the last book you devoured on a long flight?
The last time I was on a long flight I re-read BOOK OF CLOUDS by Chloe Aridjis. I was glad I did. I took off from Heathrow. I landed in Philadelphia. And in between I’d lived Berlin.
What’s your go-to book to read when you know you only have a few uninterrupted moments of peace?
I read Gerald Stern’s poems. They fix my migraines.
What’s a great book about discovery or travel to read on a long road trip over several days?
Steinbeck often works.
What would you re-read?
I will be re-reading Alyson Hagy’s BOLETO when it comes out in May from Graywolf. I read it in galleys, my Christmas Day present to myself. I was literally jumping off the cou
7 Comments on Summer Reading 2012: Responses to a Questionnaire, last added: 6/23/2012
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By: Beth Kephart ,
on 6/21/2012
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Barbara Bassett, Nature Through Lens of Art/Science, VAST, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Add a tag
Later today I'll be on a train headed toward my city. I'll deboard at 30th Street and walk the hot mile or so to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where I'll be meeting with Barbara Bassett, who invited me to teach in this year's VAST: Nature Through Lens of Art/Science program being offered to area teachers. We'll be reviewing the collections. I'll be hunting for source inspirations.
It is an honor to be included in this program, described in full here. I excerpt these lines from the online description:
Each summer the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Education department offers K–12 teachers of all subject areas the chance to immerse themselves in the Museum’s collections and explore the special nature of art and its use as a classroom resource.
The natural world serves as a source of inspiration for artists and scientists, fostering inquiry and enlivening the imagination. This one-week seminar explores nature through the lens of art and science and discovers the intersections between the two disciplines. Lectures by curators and invited scholars and gallery sessions with Museum Educators enable the examination of a range of art from different times and places, including seventeenth-century Dutch still lifes, Japanese scrolls, Hudson River School paintings, and twentieth-century environmental works of art. Special visits to area institutions the Barnes Foundation and the Academy of Natural Sciences further supplement this seminar’s coursework.
Through lectures, small-group gallery discussions, writing, and hands-on art workshops, participants will engage in approaches and activities that can be used both in the Museum and in the classroom to promote looking, thinking, and writing. Sessions will be led by Museum Educators, guest speakers, and artists. Teachers will be grouped into elementary, middle school, and high school work teams to facilitate meaningful discussion and brainstorming of curricular connections. All VAST participants will receive a resource guide with background information of artworks, discussion questions, and writing connections to bring back to the classroom.
2 Comments on Preparing to teach at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, last added: 6/21/2012
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Love Stanley K. And this. Thanks. My friend Anne - whom you shall meet, spent 6 hours in the woods the other day. She, too, revels in nature.