The Wall verses the Egg Haruki Murakami states, “Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg.” (Always on the side of the Egg). Murakami chooses to write about and stand alongside the egg. …

In Mohja Kahf’s , My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears, she depicts these two worlds merging together with irritation and misunderstanding towards one another. Respect is the key when it comes to cultures crashing. The grandmother simply, “puts her feet in the sink…

When reading To converse with the greats by Vera Pavlova, I saw the various interpretations the poem offers. The poem is open-ended, providing the reader an opportunity to interpret the meaning however they feel, with varying perspectives. My interpretation of Pavlova’s words is that experiences help us better understand circumstances. …

Often people blame their lack of success on the system. They can’t bear the thought that their hard work goes unnoticed. That their effort doesn’t deserve a raise, a college acceptance letter, or any reward for that matter. They complain about the “unfair” system. …

With COVID still consuming our lives, I was captivated by Elan Cohen’s essay, Harassing Boredom in the Age of Coronavirus. Cohen reminds us that it is “OK to be bored.” Startled by this simple statement, at first I thought of course it’s okay to be bored. …

The wonders of the heart are explained in Joyas Voladoras, by Brian Doyle. Doyle states, “We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart.” He compares the heart to a house. Adding to the features of a home, he uses “open windows,” to indicate…

When listening to the podcast Works of Art by Agnes Martin and Hiroyuki Doi, John Green shares an incident in which gallerist, Arne Glimcher’s eleven year old granddaughter Isobel visited artist Agnes Martin. Isobel held onto a rose. Agnes Martin seized the rose from the little girl’s hand and asked…

In the video Ed Ruscha: Building and Word, Jim Ganzer says “It looked like anybody could have done that if they had their eyes open.” Ed Ruscha, a famous artist for nearly a century, took photos of a series of gas stations in the 1960s. He captured those photos and…

In Nathaniel Mary Quinn’s art piece “Mend,” the use of numerous materials brought together help create this image of a person. Notice how through the use of borrowing, adapting, deconstructing and reconstructing sources, Quinn creates this collage. His art piece embodies this idea of taking what’s around you and making it your own. This collage strategy reminded me of another form of art that deconstructs writing to form a new story. Quinn’s art piece “Mend” can be united with black out poetry. The same way Quinn took various existing photographs, drawings, materials and placed them cohesively, blackout poetry allows individuals to take existing written work and create their own message. I like to think of black out poetry as a written collage. When borrowing, adapting, deconstructing, and reconstructing an author’s words, blackout poetry emerges. Something new is created from something that already existed.