baublefobbersleuth

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‘Ebullient, Rigorous and Boastfully Esoteric’

“Flowers, Mosses and Lichens,” conceived 1919–20; artist’s copy completed by 1926. Notebook with watercolor, metallic paint, pencil and ink. Credit… via Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm. [New York Times caption and illustration] Walker Mimms’s treatment of Hilma af Klint is elegant, lyrical, explicit. Alongside the careful realism of her herbal specimens, af Klint inscribed diagrams…

[baublefobbersleuth]

Campaign in Poetry, Govern in Fiction

Cover art by Mike Renaud. “Eggs have come down 400%. Everybody has eggs now.”— Trump, apparently unaware prices can only drop 100% Say What? Archive No no, it’s true. Eggs aren’t only FREE now, grocery stores are PAYING customers to walk out with plenty of them. (c) 2025 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

[baublefobbersleuth]

Caviar Bumps at Butterworth’s: Triolet

A The scene is festive. Where the flames are fedB Tainted choirs croon, “More and more is less.”c Spuds fried in tallow — gag me with a spoon!A The scene is festive where the flames are fed.a In the eyes, it’s interesting: They’re dead.b Festooned sockets orbed with emptiness.A The scene is festive where the flames are. FedB Tainted choirs croon more. And more is less. Never explain your…

[baublefobbersleuth]

Before Bidding Eau de Revoir to the May Issue

Here’s something called a triolet from Poetry, May 2025. The form is new to me and strikes a chord: concision, repetition, the discipline imposed. Triolet with a Line by Sylvia Plathby Brittany Perham We take the N out to the turnaround.The only thing to come now is the sea.The ice plants make the pink world loud.We take the N out to the turnaround.The fog fades in with its foggy sound.The end…

[baublefobbersleuth]

Pride Goeth Before a Parade

They say: A man who can’t tell shoe polish from shinola is fit to be tied by time and the tide. It’s one of those old sayings they say is never insufficient to the day thereof.  They say: A stitch in time is a penny earned. Penny for your thoughts. Pennies from Heaven. Common sense. Many timeless zingers they say come from faith baseness: Trespass not, brethren, lest ye commit foulness one upon…

[baublefobbersleuth]

Manifest MAEGAN

Make American English Great Again Now  — MAEGAN — is a sweet hotrod of a movement, a screaming dragster with four-barrel carburetor smoking the shithole competition wherever jalopies duke it out. The Nineteen-Fifties burn rubber in the Twenty-Twenties like there’s no tomorrow. The Eighteen-Fifties bray: Go West, inseminating Dude, East, North and South, mad Monoglot!From Greenland to the…

[baublefobbersleuth]

Nice Day. Be a Shame You Didn’t Have One.

Where the living language is concerned, which let’s face it. So.  Can you spot the tuber posing as a goober? What about a dangled thought left to? Hip to messaging that carries false report? Words happening metaphorically, knot in real time? Factitious takeaways? Can you tell a genuine non sequitur from a contrived segue? Objurgation that minces? Pinpoint aggrieved pseudo-nostalgia that feels…

[baublefobbersleuth]

‘His Technique Can Be Potently Slapdash’

Ben Shahn, “Scotts Run, West Virginia,” 1937. During the Great Depression, Shahn felt sympathy for Americans suffering the deprivations he grew up with. (This painting was based on a photograph he took.) Credit… Estate of Ben Shahn/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY; via The Jewish Museum. [New York Times caption and illustration] If the images in the survey feel more like news…

[baublefobbersleuth]

‘That Falls Well’: Cartoon Paean Times Three

As a kid studying high school French, I read with delight Mark Twain’s depiction of an American’s attempt to converse with a Frenchman. Twain wickedly renders the Frenchman’s remarks in literal English, alongside his own fractured French, to comic effect. Their exchange has something to do with bananas — bananes. Of course it does! Investing the mundane with eventfulness: the Twain approach to…

[baublefobbersleuth]

Toyin Ojih Odutola Draws Loud

“Congregation,” 2023, with three figures who seem to be gossiping or complaining, has a camp humor that sometimes pops up in Ojih Odutola’s work. Credit… Toyin Ojih Odutola, via Jack Shainman Gallery, New York; Photo by Dan Bradica Studio. [New York Times caption and illustration] I like how Toyin Ojih Odutola assembles faces from facets, a treatment I strive increasingly, if feebly, to…

[baublefobbersleuth]

‘O Brute May I Come In, O Brute You May’

My treatment of Mitchell Glazier’s “The Gazing Ball” (Poetry, May 2025) wasn’t fit for purpose because it came across as testy and dismissive. I’m not equipped nor disposed to be a poetry critic, only a consumer with thoughts. And my thoughts were unruly. A standard I try to uphold if I’m to sound off is to take a writer seriously. Doing so entails allowing myself to be roiled and provoked by…

[baublefobbersleuth]

Queenly Swans Are Nudging Eternity Figs

“Gray Isn’t a Black-and-White Proposition: Ivory Black Mixed With Phthalo Green Light (Vert Anglais Clair, Englisches Grün Hell, Verde Cromo Claro) Cut to Varying Values With Titanium White,” oil on watercolor paper, 24×30 in., (JMN 2025). What the hell is going on in “The Gazing Ball”?  I had to lock horns with Mitchell Glazier’s poem (Poetry, May 2025) and break it down robustly in order to…

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Purloining With Pizzazz: Wayne Thiebaud

Wayne Thiebaud – A Sunday on La Grande Jatte (after Georges Seurat), 2000. Photograph: Wayne Thiebaud Foundation. [Guardian caption and illustration] This copying work helped Thiebaud figure out his own solutions to artistic problems. I blush to own it, but I was never keen on pointillism. For all that it purported to be scintillating, it has a diffuseness that feels static. It did show how not…

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The Future Walks on Baby Feet

Detail, “Son and Daughter,” oil on canvas (JMN 2016). Here’s my English reading of “Contar Cuentos” (Telling Stories), a poem written in Spanish by Azurea20 published at LA BANCARROTA DEL CIRCO on April 27, 2025. TELLING STORIESMy memory invents you,strips you nakedtells itself stories,closes your eyes,obliterates your mouth,discovers verbs that are notconjugatednor partake of grammar.They keep…

[baublefobbersleuth]

Reading ‘Reading Ulysses in Montana’ in Texas

Detail, “Son and Daughter,” oil on canvas (JMN 2016). Delving Yardbarker is the nom de guerre of the creator of “Reading Ulysses in Montana.” As with Luvgood Carp, it gives me pleasure each time I say “Delving Yardbarker.” Sonorous, compressed, quirky, inventive, mischievous, literate, subversive, diverting, intriguing, outrageous, prolific, impudent, fearless… Which of these adjectives sticks?…

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A Good Illustrator With a Modest Streak

One of the many Philip K. Dick books that Chris Moore did cover illustrations for was “Beyond Lies the Wub: Volume One of the Collected Stories.” Credit… Chris Moore, via Art Partners. [New York Times caption and illustration] … Mr. Moore remained steadfast in avoiding lofty posturing as a fine artist. “If someone wants a picture of a horse to illustrate their new range of lasagna,” he said in…

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‘Machismo’ Cuts the Cheese Over Yonder

Oil on canvas. Fun fact: In Great Britain they pronounce it mah-KIZ-mo. On the shores of the Gulf of Mexico America Mar-a-Lago we say mah-CHEESE-mo. (c) 2025 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved