Betye Saar
Gris Gris Guardian
Wood, wire, glass, candles, braided rope,
stones, nails, oil paint, feathers, beads, steel,
bronze, corn husks, and petrified wood
(28 × 11 × 7.5 inches), 1990–1993
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles,
purchased with funds provided by the Richard Florsheim
Art Fund and the Modern and Contemporary Art Council.
© Betye Saar. Courtesy of the artist and
Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, California.
Digital image © Museum Associates / LACMA.
Licensed by Art Resource, New York.
Rayburn escaped from the painful sunlight of noon. No one greeted him at the front door of the restaurant. From the floom of the foyer, he looked down the tunnel of the corridor. A man was standing behind the counter stirring a giant cauldron, skin hanging off his arms like noodles drying on an ancient rail. Something was boiling. Socks, he thought. Underwear.
Already fallen leaves
are turning in the wind, as if
the poplars were twigs without shadows.
This morning I heard a news report on the radio about a halftime drag show to be performed at a high-school football game in support of LGBTQ+ people and their rights. I expect the show will generate some differences of opinion. If it had no potential to generate differences of opinion, I might not have heard about it on the radio.
I first met James Longenbach in 2013 when he gave a reading in Oxford. He read his poems beautifully that night. I remember his voice as he inhabited "The Crocodile," his smile when confessing "I pretended to be myself," and then the swerve to memories of his mother's death.
Summer 2024
Spring 2024
Winter 2024
Fall 2023
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