From an Alejandro Zambra short story, translated by Megan McDowell:

“I’m a correspondent, but I’d like to know of what.”

“Play Rocky Top or I’ll Punch Your Lights Out” by the Red Clay Ramblers

Great to see this- and looking forward to Maine Arts Journal’s tribute to Baron Wormser coming soon.

Fun to see this post almost the same day I finished reading the brilliant novel Trespasses by @louisekennedy.bsky.social

Letting the light take over: Gisela McDaniel portraits in Ogunquit Explore Gisela McDaniel's first solo exhibition in the U.S. at OMAA, celebrating her CHamoru heritage and artistic vision.

My article on Gisela McDaniel's light-embodied portraits at Ogunquit Museum of American Art through Nov. 16.

Best writing teacher I ever had, and the most memorable moments in class were her reading aloud tragic epiphany stories by Turgenev and Mishima.

Judith Müller – the forgotten artist from Bern Born into an artistic milieu, Judith Müller influenced Bern’s art scene for decades. Despite producing public murals, taking part in numerous exhibitions and working to raise the profile of female art...

Fascinating profile of this Swiss artist.

Pen and ink sketch of the city of Avignon, France, by Étienne Martellange, showing the Palace of the Popes and surrounding homes and buildings in the Middle Ages: a crowded, hillside cityscape.

Very grateful to have a poem of mine in the summer issue of Maine Arts Journal with an introduction by Betsy Sholl: maineartsjournal.com/brian-boyd-p...
MAJ is a quarterly and free to subscribe!

Stage hands working on The Incredible Shrinking Man, 1957

Update: the Trump administration has proposed cutting the National Park System by $900 million, about one third of its budget.

I saw this amazing one-person play in New York- inspiring, beautifully written and performed!

'The Windshield, On the Road to Villacoublay.' Henri Matisse painted this view from his Renault in the summer of 1917 while being chauffeured by his son Pierre toward an airport on the outskirts of Paris.

No two people ever experience the same event in exactly the same way… I take that back.

Loch Thom by W. S. Graham 1 Just for the sake of recovering I walked backward from fifty-six Quick years of age wanting to see, And managed not to trip or stumble To find Loch Thom and turned round To see the stretch of my childhood Before me. Here is the loch. The same Long-beaked cry curls across The heather-edges of the water held Between the hills a boyhood’s walk Up from Greenock. It is the morning. And I am here with my mammy’s Bramble jam scones in my pocket. The Firth is miles and I have come Back to find Loch Thom maybe In this light does not recognise me. This is a lonely freshwater loch. No farms on the edge. Only Heath grouse-moor stretching Down to Greenock and One Hope Street or stretching away across Into the blue moors of Ayrshire. 2 And almost I am back again Wading in the heather down to the edge To sit. The minnows go by in shoals Like iron-filings in the shallows. My mother is dead. My father is dead And all the trout I used to know Leaping from their sad rings are dead. 3 I drop my crumbs into the shallow Weed for the minnows and pinheads. You see that I will have to rise And turn round and get back where My running age will slow for a moment To let me on. It is a colder Stretch of water than I remember. The curlew’s cry travelling still Kills me fairly. In front of me The grouse flurry and settle. GOBACK GOBACK GOBACK FAREWELL LOCH THOM.

You see that I will have to rise
And turn round and get back where
My running age will slow for a moment
To let me on. It is a colder
Stretch of water than I remember.

The curlew’s cry travelling still
Kills me fairly…

—WS Graham, “Loch Thom”
#WorldCurlewDay #poetry
1/3

A wonderful stage actor too - I saw his very funny and nuanced portrayal of Malvolio in Twelfth Night in Pittsburgh in the 70s.

I love this novel and his music too - Farina and his wife Mimi Farina, younger sister of Joan Baez, wrote Pack up Your Sorrows.

All while writing forty pages a week… “There has ever been the record before me, and a week passed with an insufficient number of pages has been a blister to my eye, and a month so disgraced would have been a sorrow to my heart.”

This is not normal

One of several portraits of Jacob by Modigliani, this one painted in 1916, on the cover of Rosanna Warren’s splendid biography

“A cloud is a postman between continents/ A primer on exile that the seas,/ Doomed by hell to tearful combat,/ Will not spell out on the sheen of space.”
- from “To Mr. Modigliani to Prove I’m a Poet” by Max Jacob, translated by William Kulik

The Better for a Sleep - Litro Magazine In today's #TuesdayTales, Brian Boyd's characters discuss unusual ice creams.

A short story of mine from 2022 - the Felliniesque candies I found in a shop in Carcassonne.

What an amazing show this was at Bowdoin College Museum of Art - my review in CAA.