Samuel Jan Child Sobbing at the Library Suddenly the quiet, that empty jug, is being filled with crying. A child is sobbing: not the wailing of a slapped kid, and not the tearful screeching of demands and whining. No, it is a child crying for something lost or broken, something that will never be replaced. […]

Mr. White’s Confession, by Robert Clark Picador USA, 1998 Reviewed by Seana Graham We should perhaps get clear from the start that the Mr. White in question here is named Herbert, not Walter. He is not a brilliant meth dealing chemist, but rather a lonely photographer with some memory problems. And the setting is not […]

And I Looked for It, oil on panel, 32″ x 24″, 2013 I Crossed That Off Too, oil on panel, 60″ x 48″, 2013 Lessons Were Learned, oil on panel, 48″ x 36″, 2013  Peace Is Soon to Follow, oil on panel, 48″ x 36″, 2013 Where the Water Left Me, oil on panel, 36″ […]

Xiong Lijun In praise and thanksgiving, we announce our Pushcart Prize nominees for 2013. Thanks to all our poets, writers, readers, artists, and loyal supporters! Spread the love. Pushcart Prize Nominees for 2013 Francine Leffler Ringold, “What to Do with Old Pictures” Simone Muench, “Wolf Cento” Susan Blackwell Ramsey, “Watching Sheet Lightning From The Porch of Ann […]

Sherry Karver The Jacksonian by Beth Henley at the New Group, New York Reviewed by Scott Klavan The Jacksonian centers on a mediocre motel by that name in Jackson, Mississippi in 1964. Here, a group of unhappy middle-aged southerners wreak havoc on each other and a little girl. Dentist Bill Perch (Ed Harris) has a […]

Scott Kahn Thank You, Chicago by Basel Al-Aswad Forty years ago, in August, 1973, an ambitious young man, I arrived at Michael Reese Hospital in the heart of the city of Chicago to start my Orthopedic Residency. I knew but two friends from back home (Baghdad) and all my belongings would fit in the back […]

Savannah Daras As the holidays and the dark days of winter approach, many people cope with depression or suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD), or are just plain cold and sad. In December of 2009, Escape Into Life founding editor, Chris Al-Aswad (1979-2010), was feeling cold and restless, was steadily writing in his journal, and […]

Brian Taylor No Man’s Land by Harold Pinter at the Cort Theater, New York Reviewed by Scott Klavan So how do you do Pinter in a Hunger Games world? How do you get across the subtle and sly interaction, elliptical, repetitive dialogue and nearly impenetrable story lines to an audience used to being spoon-fed blatant, overly explained, […]

Falconer, by John Cheever Vintage, 1992 Reviewed by Seana Graham I got on to this book after reading a recent Slate review, which claimed that Falconer was John Cheever’s masterpiece. I was surprised. Although I hadn’t read much Cheever, I’d thought his collection of short stories, which aficionados refer to as “The Big Red Book”, […]

  Ca’ d’Oro, Venice II, Watercolor, 7″ x 7″, 2013   Venice, Arrival, Watercolor, 7″ x 10″, 2013   Royal Palace Doorknocker, Fez, Watercolor, 8″ x 10″, 2012   Courtyard of the Mexuar, Alhambra, Granada II, Watercolor, 14″ x 9″, 2012   Royal Palace Doors, Fez III, Watercolor, 15″ x 9″, 2012 Artist Statement The […]

Nigel Cox Letter 3/12/07 At night, in the fields, small fires are burning. Nobody knows who sets them. People come and go in the darkness but they leave no trace. The moon enforces its pale cold silence from horizon to horizon and everything is strange to everything else. In the soil, small ordinary objects are […]

Angel Oak, 22 x 28 inches, 2012 Aspens, Utah, 22 x 28 inches, 2013 Sun’s Rays, Rialto Beach, 22 x 28 inches, 2012 Trees and Fog 2, Blue Ridge, 22 x 28 inches, 1997 Trees Taiwan, 22 x 28 inches, 1995 Leaning Trees, Yellowstone, 22 x 28, 2009 Dead Trees, Idaho, 22 x 28, 2012 […]

Darling Hands, Darling Tongue by Sally Rosen Kindred Hyacinth Girl Press, 2013 Reviewed by Kathleen Kirk EIL Poetry Editor Cover art by Nashay Jones I’ve recently learned two words, from other languages, similar to “nostalgia”—the Welsh “hiraeth” and the Portuguese “saudade”—that also describe feelings I get reading Peter Pan, seeing the movie, Finding Neverland, or […]

  The Haiku Apprentice, by Abigail Friedman Stone Bridge Press, 2006 Reviewed by Seana Graham A couple of weeks ago, this book came to mind again in the course of an online conversation, and I thought it would be a perfect one to share with readers here at Escape Into Life. The Haiku Apprentice is […]

Caravaggio Praise Your Life When on a June morning heavy with rain, you can taste the best cappuccino this side of Rome, in a cafe with scarred maplewood tables, a book of Caravaggio splayed open: The Calling of St. Matthew that could be set in a tavern, a gambling den, a dank office where tax […]

Dan May Kate Bernadette Benedict  The Gathering A spray of chevrons, epaulettes so fine! The thirteenth chevron seems a lucky sign. Indeed, this was the proper place to gather, where the better roads meet: 66, the Silk, the Via Regia. My compliments for choosing it. Yes, done! I’ve taken roll call. Only a few drones […]

The Black Spider by Jeremias Gotthelf, translated by Susan Bernofsky NYRB 2013 Reviewed by Seana Graham New York Review Books has published this Swiss classic just in time to be part of our creepy Halloween lead up. Gotthelf is actually the pen name of a Swiss pastor, Albert Bitzius, who published the original in 1842, […]

Romancing Gravity by Daniel Romo Silver Birch Press, 2013 Reviewed by Kathleen Kirk, EIL Poetry Editor Romancing Gravity is a book with balls. Stickball, baseball, football, tee ball. Swear words, anger, regret. Drive-in movies, magic shows, liquor stores. Current events, social commentary, nostalgia. And a car chase. It’s got prose poems, free verse, and a […]

Hunted, oil on beeswax and Dutch metal on board, 23″ x 40″, 2013 Cocoon, oil, beeswax, and Dutch metal on board, 69 cm x 69 cm, 2012 Still Here, oil on metal leaf gilding on canvas, 40″ x 40″, 2013 The Players I, oil, beeswax, and Dutch metal on board, 24″ x 18″, 2012 You Made […]

Unexplained Fevers by Jeannine Hall Gailey New Binary Press, 2013 Reviewed by Kathleen Kirk, EIL Poetry Editor Unexplained Fevers, by Jeannine Hall Gailey, is a scary book of poems. The title hints at the danger: if the fevers are unexplained, there won’t be a way to find a cure. The fevers will remain a mystery […]

Don’t Look Now, by Daphne du Maurier NYRB , 2008 Reviewed by Seana Graham “Don’t look now,” John said to his wife, “but there are a couple of old girls two tables away who are trying to hypnotise me.” So begins the title story of a New York Review Books Classics collection of creepy tales that seems […]

Rashod Taylor If you had never known fear If you had never been told what to avoid, where not to walk at night. If you had never heard stories of girls who went out alone, the violent endings that keep you hyperaware and vigilant. If your body could be something other than desire’s object. If […]

Trine Bumiller Our newest Artist Watch editor at Escape Into Life is Maureen E. Doallas, who is also an EIL poet and who writes her own blog on the arts, Writing Without Paper. Maureen E. Doallas is the author of Neruda’s Memoirs: Poems (T.S. Poetry Press, 2011). Her work can be found in Open to Interpretation: […]

Meghan Howland EIL poet Susan Elbe has a new book out, The Map of What Happened, which won the Backwaters Prize at Backwaters Press. (By lovely chance, EIL poet Aaron Anstett is also a past winner of the Backwaters Prize, for No Accident.)  Susan will be reading from her new book this month at several […]

Samantha Huang We have a new Book Review editor at Escape Into Life, Seana Graham.  Seana is a reader, former bookseller, and fiction writer who maintains blogs on a variety of topics. We are glad to have her telling us about books here at EIL. Seana Graham worked for many years in an independent bookstore […]

Kenichi Hoshine A Deep Dark Wood All the raccoon thinks are raccoon thoughts, and all the chicken thinks are chicken thoughts. When they think of the thoughts of the other all they imagine is hunger. When they think of the thoughts of human beings all they imagine is hunger. Raccoons and chickens are very wise, […]

Our EIL Artist Watch photographer Rashod Taylor has this event coming up on October 12!  Check out his feature here, and if you live in central Illinois, consider a tintype portrait!

Saturday Night at Magellan’s by Charles Rafferty Fomite Press, 2013 Reviewed by Seana Graham Regular visitors to Escape Into Life may already be acquainted with the work of Charles Rafferty, as he is an EIL poet. I’ll give you a link to some of his work here at the end of this review. But it’s […]

Rapids, 8×10 tintype, 2013 Rapids 2, 8×10 tintype, 2013 Untitled, 8×10 tintype, 2013 Boat on lake, 8×10 tintype, 2013 Snow, 8×10, ambrotype, 2012 Mist on grass, 8×10 tintype, 2012 Countryside, 8×10 tintype, 2013 Kids at play, 8×10 tintype, 2013 Artist Statement As a photographer, I’m naturally drawn to portraiture. I believe it’s a perfect collaboration […]

Holly Friesen It’s Fall! Three poets are “falling for poetry” in the Washington, D. C. area this season, and two of them are EIL poets! Paulette Beete and Maureen Doallas will join Yahia Lababidi on October 27, for Falling For Poetry, a reading sponsored by Capitol Arts Network. It starts at 2:00 p.m., at 12276 […]

    Kitchen, by Banana Yoshimoto A Black Cat book from Grove Atlantic Reviewed by Seana Graham Have you ever gotten the completely wrong end of the stick about an author you haven’t read yet? Such was the case with my initial exposure to Banana Yoshimoto, pen name of Mahoko Yoshimoto (in English rather than […]

Her Vena Amoris by Carol Berg Red Bird Chapbooks, 2013 Review by Kathleen Kirk, Poetry Editor Carol Berg’s newest chapbook, Her Vena Amoris, goes after all the yearning, resentment, risk, confusion, frustration, and powerful love it takes to be a woman and a wife. Its organization lays it out for us beautifully: Part I contains […]

Sunset, acrylic, texturing medium, and varnish, 30″ x 40″, 2010 Eruption, metallic paint, texturing medium, and varnish,  24″ x 48″, 2012 A Paradox, texturing medium, acrylic/metallic paints, and varnish, 8″ x 24″, 2011 Growing Roots, texturing medium, acrylic/metallic paints, and varnish, 12″ x 48″, 2012 Lone Bare Tree, acrylic/metallic paints, texturing medium, and varnish, 30″ […]

Kelly Reemsten Watching Sheet Lightning From The Porch of Ann Paulson’s Cottage While Aretha Franklin Sings Inside The sky above the bay flares white, sustains it, gasps briefly black then goes for bright again, a mirror held up to the voice behind us. Feet up, tepid chablis in hand, we let passion by proxy wash […]

Speedboat, by Renata Adler Reviewed by Seana Graham  Renata Adler’s Speedboat was originally published in 1976 and it has been bouncing its way across the waters to us ever since. It has been on my radar but remained unread for a long time. I hadn’t realized that it has been out of print for many […]

Notes from the Journey Westward, by Joe Wilkins Reviewed by Kathleen Kirk, Poetry Editor Winner of the White Pine Press Poetry Prize Notes from the Journey Westward, by Joe Wilkins, reads like wisdom to me. “There’s nothing to be done / about hope,” he writes, in “Hardscrabble Prairie Triptych,” about cracking open mussel shells in […]

Monika Nguyen  It’s Labor Day in the United States, when we celebrate the achievements of American workers! Some of them get a holiday from work today, while others are working away relentlessly (in retail sales, for instance). And still other hard workers, many who never get a “holiday” from their labors, work on dutifully in […]

Alexander Korzer-Robinson Well, I had a plan this summer: to read and review a bunch of poetry books by EIL poets! Some I had requested for this purpose from the poets, some were given to me, and others I got hold of on my own. But, as John Lennon said in the song “Beautiful Boy […]

Amy Guidry Wolf Cento From this bleak hotel, & at the bored little forest, someone looks at me with the eyes of a wolf—domes shine out their darkgold— but I’m just tired like dead bees or numbers. All sleeping is a sinking down, all waking another sinking. Sometimes a door is opened that opening, letting […]

 A Priori, oil on panel, 42 x 84 inches, 2013 Death Lily, oil on canvas, 40 x 74 inches, 2013 Forget Me Not, oil on panel, 68 x 44 inches, 2013 Heart of Stone, oil on panel, 35 x 84 inches, 2013 Kinnick Kinnick, oil on panel, 38 x 86 inches, 2013 Middle Distance, oil […]

Martine Roch Here is the promised continuation of the Dog Days of August poems with dogs in them! Click on each poet’s name to see her or his solo poetry feature here at Escape Into Life. The mixed media art is by Martine Roch. Peg Duthie  Clinging The dog trots in, white blobs on her […]

“Neptune Estate” feels like the very end of a quiet night with friends, drunk in the booth of a dark bar. It feels like the end of a good night, to be sure. But…not a great one. A little melancholy mixed with your BAC. You’re still left thinking about that one person, your face illuminated […]

Kate Pugsley The dog days of summer are those terribly hot days in July and August when even dogs don’t want to get up! But here are some fine poems—with dogs in them—that manage to keep their cool! Sarah J. Sloat  Song of the Small Dog The dog raids the railroad yard to run alongside […]

Caught somewhere between a dream and the dance floor, ”Envision” is a brilliantly paced dance/pop/house song by Chicago duo Supreme Cuts and kicked up into the stratosphere by the exquisitely haunting guest vocals of Polica‘s Channy Leaneagh. Listen below. Chris aims to expose viewers to some of the most legit tunes of the times, peeling back […]

Maryjo Koch, Painted Letter with Broken-Winged Butterfly, gouache, 8 x 10, 2012 July is a delicate month for us here at Escape Into Life, as it is the month in which founding editor Christopher R. Al-Aswad was born (July 16, 1979) and died (July 27, 2010).  Chris dedicated Escape Into Life to his mother, Rosalind […]

Marci Cheary Best of the Net Poetry Nominations [for work published between July 1, 2012 and June 30, 2013] The list: Kate Bernadette Benedict “No Occasion Whatsoever for a Parade,” December 12, 2012 Carol Berg “The Wife’s Mid-Life Crisis While Dusting the Bathroom Cabinet,” August 8, 2012 Richard Fox “Small Love Poem” February 13, 2013 […]

Dark Eyed Junco Nest with Dry Leaf, oil on canvas, 8 x 10 inches, 2011 Blackbird Nest, acrylic on board, 16 x 20 inches, 2012 Red-Winged Blackbird Nest with Eggs, gouache, 8.25 x 11, 2013 American Goldfinch Nest, watercolor and gouache on watercolor board, 8 x 10, 2012 Artist Statement As a child I was […]

Phillip Compton  From Basel Al-Aswad to his son and EIL founder, Christopher, on his 34th birthday: We mark your birthday today, dear Chris. You would have turned 34 years old. But you are gone and we are still here. “Death,” Kubler-Ross puts it, “is simply a shedding of the physical body like the butterfly shedding […]

Wayne White Bluff as a Theorem “Indeed, this world is flat; as for the other, nonsense.”  —Jules Laforgue My blood girds up, and that knucklehead, my heart, says its two words over and over. This filibuster of dark and light and dark again just doesn’t stop. Now I might swagger the front stoop, bluff as […]

Tangerine in a Silver Cup, oil on linen, 8 x 10 inches, 2012 Oranges and Ceramic Jars, oil on linen, 14 x 16 inches, 2013 Pear, Cheese, Grapes, Walnuts, Glass, oil on linen, 12 x 10 inches, 2013 Roses, Lilacs, Letters, oil on linen, 14 x 18 inches, 2013 Roses, Silver Vase, Grapes, Apples, oil […]

Brian Taylor Statue of the Blind Girl Nydia, the blind flower-girl of Pompeii She listens, not to the green world exploding around her, not to Vesuvius howling— the hour has come; of two working in the field one shall be taken; of two women grinding wheat one shall be taken; Vesuvius erupts and the black […]

Alison Jardine  From Basel Al-Aswad to his daughters and to his son, Father’s Day 2013: On this Father’s Day, I love you, Mandy & Susan, and I miss you Chris. You always came to Chicago to visit me. This time I was at your home in Normal, then paid you a visit at your resting […]

Diana Lemieux This Morning A weeping pipe, a peep. Silence. Finally, a persistent whine and again that urgent peep, neither bird nor human. The light is up, Pete with it. He stretches . . .Sighs. Cocks his head. Waits. Does a star dance when I appear. So it is with attachment. It feeds us. It […]

Inksuite, by Sarah J. Sloat Review by Kathleen Kirk Inksuite (dancing girl press, 2013), by Sarah J. Sloat, is a wonderfully smart and funny chapbook of poems focused on font and other particulars related to printing and ink. Its Emmanuel Polanco collage cover shows a boy with wings holding a book, his eyes gone in […]

Glenda Lissette On the Horizon, A Small Rustle of Wings and great conquering black eyes, river water, a nest of kisses, little puppets, mad with love. Sighing, the evening curves her back over the dark lilacs, rushes on their pale vertebrae. Vaguely lit by the summer moon, gods who bit flowers of ink jostle together […]

Untitled ( unit 21 of 55 ), 2012, photographs and acrylic on wood panel, 18 x 24 in. Green Island, 2012, photographs and acrylic on wood panel, 20 x 24 in. After Island, 2012, photograph on photograph, 12 x 18 in. Headland, 2012, photograph on photograph, 12 x 18 in. Portmanteaux Two, 2012, photographs on […]

 Anna Pogossova’s Website

Cecilia Carlstedt In one way, Survivors’ Picnic, by Debra Bruce, is no picnic. Its tough topics include divorce, breast cancer, and an emotionally ravaged son. In the poem “Someone’s Attention,” she’s straightforward about an awkward truth: “A woman can’t elasticize her years.” In “Plunder” it’s difficult even to say “surgery’s / savagery’s smoothed over,” let […]

Peg Duthie  Remnant a sprawl of tulips sassily yellow distant kin to the antique gown that once was white petals so bright against the mottled stone its text all but gone the chiseled lines now softer than the folds of a flower or a dress Robert McDonald  Dear Jelly Jar Glass of Water, I want […]

Untitled, 2012, oil on canvas, 195 x 150 cm Untitled, 2012, oil on canvas, 195 x 140 cm Untitled, 2011, oil on canvas, 165 x 97 cm Untitled, 2011, oil on canvas, 195 x 130 cm Untitled, 2012, oil on canvas, 195 x 150 cm Untitled, 2012, mixed media on canvas, 165 x 195 cm […]

Some songs asked to be dissected, taken apart to watch the knobs and gears twist and turn, analyzed and then put back together again. Guitar effects examined, lyrics parsed, influences interpreted. But other songs, like “Stand in the Sand” by Chicago teen punks Twin Peaks, feel like they can only exist if you refuse to look […]

David LaChapelle  Richard Fox  Your flowers pull everything they need out of the ground—even the sun, suppurating over lusterfancy morning. Buds: blooms: I am that I am. Though uncomfortable with your Christianity, you know it sometimes matters. Carol Berg  Self-Portrait As Farmer’s Market I am the sweetest thing you will ever put in your mouth […]

Ai Shinohara Almost Harmless I want him to rise, to grow, I want his fingers longer and his body lean like a cold wind, leaning away from me, taking off at a run if that’s what it takes to wake and speak from his own hard teeth. I don’t want him to be who I […]

April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land… –T.S. Eliot, “The Waste Land” We poets are often told not to write poems about poetry. But we can’t help it! We love poetry! So, as April, National Poetry Month, moves cruelly toward its close, let’s say a gentle, gradual goodbye with these […]

Sarah K. Byrne’s Website

In our ongoing celebration of National Poetry Month, here is something two of our EIL poets are doing: the Pulitzer Remix. Sarah J. Sloat and Daniel M. Shapiro are among the 85 poets taking part in this project, sponsored by Found Poetry magazine. They are “finding” poems by way of collage, using words from the […]

EIL poet Scott Poole is also a runner, and he’s written a poem in response to the Boston Marathon explosions and in honor of the resilient spirit. You can read it above, and also here, at WBUR, Boston’s National Public Radio station, on the Here & Now show with Robin Young, where you can also […]

Cédric le Borgne Ren Powell I was early taught to sorrow to shed tears and now when sudden joy lights up or any unexpected sorrow strikes my heart I find it difficult to repress the full swelling tide of feeling translated into Norwegian by Eirik Lodén Jeg lærte tidlig å sørge å felle tårer og […]

Cassette Old Man on Bike Fire Hydrant  White Couch  Honest 8 Construct Lemons Horse on Back  Megan Dorien’s Website

Although Balearic pop’s big moment in the spotlight of the American music scene seems to have swiftly come and gone (see jj, Air France, etc.), its sound is still as infectious and transporting as ever. It’s tough to listen to a song from that genre and not feel carried away to some beach-side cafe in […]

Eric Zener translations from the Spanish poems of Graciela Reyes, by Jackie K. White Barcelona It was the best day of our life together, and the best afternoon in the city of Barcelona: the splendor of solstice over the lingering crispness of winter, the taste of champagne in the air, the celebration we carried on […]

Artist Statement Some of my paintings are about the exploration of my dreams. Exploring the unknown helps me appreciate the existence of life. I like to tell stories with my paintings with symbols. The web formations in several of my paintings deal with something that has been woven or created relating to my past, and […]

Artist Statement Because of my training as an Illustrator, I was very comfortable doing things in a realistic manner. However, at some point I felt I needed to let go of what I felt most comfortable doing and challenge myself further. Exploring new ways of expressing myself led to a much looser and more abstract […]

Julie Blackmon Standing in the corner The chair ended up in my hands while watching a childhood western. Spindles, rungs, rails and splats, the seat a block of burled pecan, whorls of accidental events frozen in the grain, transforming history into design. Tendrils slither and suck, saplings spiral and aspire, biting beasts writhe and burst, […]

Igor & Marina There’s a theatre game called Gibberish, invented by Viola Spolin, who said, “Gibberish forces the player to show and not tell.” Ah, that’s what we poets are supposed to do! In the game, one player speaks in gibberish, and the other “translates.” It’s fun, freeing, and leads to a direct experience of […]

Jeremy Geddes …from the journal of EIL’s founding editor, Chris Al-Aswad, in the last year of his life, a few months before his death… …and yet I also sense that I am in the middle. The end is either far away or too vague to be a point on the map. There is no map, […]

Clementine, charcoal, ink and fabric on Stonehenge paper, 11 x 14 in. One Week ‘Til Spring, mixed media, 11 x 14 in. Burn, pencil, ink, cotton, burnt paper, 18 x 24 in. Peach Hug, charcoal, ink and fabric collage on Stonehenge paper, 11 x 14 in. Blue Back Piece, pencil, ink on cotton, 16 x […]

Markus Åkesson Sunday Afternoon From Café Florentin on Giles Street everything is yellow— Sunflower trim Thick paint on door- knob and frame Emerging from cardigans lemony wedges of shoulders turned up to the sun The bubbly yellow crust of my hot croissant au jambon with cheese The woman in the vivid red blouse with dark […]

FINALLY. The band that, upon its first release, looked poised to be a less afropop-inspired, more tightly wound version of Vampire Weekend seems once again ready to take up that mantle. After a promising self-titled debut and an excellent follow-up in Red, Yellow and Blue, Born Ruffians lost all momentum, not to mention a bit […]

I study both the physical attributes of the terrain and the features of my chosen subjects. I search for opportunities to synchronise the two, finding similarities between the patterns, before drafting out the portrait and building the tone. – Ed Fairburn

An Elastic State of Mind: D.L.D.’s Autobiography in Poems, by Ren Powell, is a fascinating book in an elegant hardbound bilingual edition (Wigestrand, 2012), with the English poems, notes, and introduction translated into Norwegian by Eirik Lodén. D.L.D. is Dorothea Lynde Dix (1802-1887), an accomplished woman of her time, able to support herself with her […]

About the Off II Series Through digital communication like Facebook, Twitter, online dating and personal websites, the representation of our personality becomes more and more streamlined. We have the possibility to project an idea of how we are as a person into the world around us, but with the constant option of censoring information and […]

Sebastien Tabuteaud New Year And who but I should be the poet of comrades? ~Walt Whitman (1892) We were in the dark—forty degrees, the live oaks creaking above us, the boardwalks weeping with ice, our friendship a small thing, a match that flares in a cupped hand. I asked for a kiss—a heat of summer, […]

Seattle, WA + Portland, OR, USA, 2010 New York, NY, USA, 2011 Seattle, WA + Portland, OR, USA, 2010 New York, NY, USA, 2011 Portland, OR + St. Mary’s, GA, USA, 2010 La Grande, OR + Los Angeles, CA, USA, 2010 New York, NY, USA, 2011 Portland, OR, USA, 2010 Artist Statement I live in […]

 About the Artist Paris born artist Cédric Le Borgne invites everyone to view daily life in a fresh way, to rise up, to dream. By abolishing barriers, his work of exploring spaces is sensitive, his poetry subtly interacts with each place it comments upon. From sculptures made of chicken wire to photo or video, from […]

April 9th will see the release of, Wakin On A Pretty Daze, Kurt Vile’s fifth album in as many years. In anticipation, the Phillie rocker has put out the almost title track “Wakin On A Pretty Day”, which is an utterly lovely nine and a half minutes of focused noodling. Please don’t misinterpret the “noodling” comment […]

Today, March 8, is International Women’s Day. In celebration, here are a few lines each from the solo poetry features of a baker’s dozen (13, as in 2013) of our international women! A tapas feast, a virtual banquet. Please click each poet’s name to read more of her work. And please also visit our Women in […]

March is Women’s History Month in the USA and Friday, March 8, 2013 is International Women’s Day. To celebrate, Escape Into Life presents this mini-anthology of international women in history by an international group of women poets. Click on each poet’s name to see her solo feature at EIL. For more sculpture by Petah Coyne, […]

I Was Supposed to be Having the Time of My Life, 2011, gouache, acrylic, acetate, colored paper and found images on museum board, 7 x 5 in. The Wild Side of Life, 2012, gouache, acrylic, acetate, colored paper and found images on museum board, 5 x 3.5 in. If Everyone Was Happy There Would Never […]

Prairie by Shawn Decker To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do If bees are few. This brief poem by Emily Dickinson reminds us of the importance of reverie in our lives. Contemplation. Dreaming. Clear, cold thought. It’s all important. […]

On a visit to Chicago this month, I got to see and hear Shawn Decker’s Prairie at the Chicago Cultural Center, in the Sidney R. Yates Gallery. It’s a combination of sound sculpture and art installation, and it’s wonderful. When I went, there was a half-hour ballet in the space, On the Prairie: Elemental, a […]

Turn, 2012, mixed media collage on paper, 6 x 6 in. Soon, 2012, mixed media collage on paper, 10 x 12 in. Surround, 2012, mixed media collage on paper, 10 x 12 in. Le Bois, 2010, ink, pencil and cut paper on paper, 27 x 35 in. Distance, 2012, mixed media collage on paper, 10 […]

Sergio Lopez Here, in February, the month of romance, it might seem odd to explore the “death sentences,” or sentences about death in the journal of Escape Into Life’s founding editor, Chris Al-Aswad, but in another way, it seems quite natural that, like John Keats, a Romantic with a capital “R,” Chris was “half in […]

  Pascaline Dargant’s Website  

Camp Home series Camp Home series Camp Home series Fast Food series Fast Food series As Seen series As Seen series As Seen series Camp Home Artist Statement In the series Camp Home (2007-present), I document the reuse of buildings from the Tule Lake and Heart Mountain Japanese internment camps, where members of my father’s […]

Ah, Valentine’s Day. Each year we do something a little different to celebrate. This year, here are some love poems by men. Art by Joan Proudman. Eric Burke Scenic Overlook “Be one with the land,” I said, “like me.” You said, “I am one with the land like you, my songbird.” Mather Schneider Loco for […]

“Aching” is a descriptor that has become an unfortunate crutch for me when I’m talking about music. It’s not that I overuse it, or misuse it. I believe I use it pretty appropriately. But I use it lazily. I use it when a song makes me weak and sad, makes my bones hurt and I […]

  Joe Sinness   Forget About Our Jobs At The Record Store My mustache is not conducive to twiddling, palms unscathed of dangling your father’s foreclosed home above your bodice like a pair of left-handed scissors. I want us to take turns treating everything like train tracks, feed our rescuers their own horses; they’ll never […]

Winter Pelicans, 2012, watercolor and gouache on paper, 9 x 10 in. Return to the Woods, 2011, watercolor and gouache on paper, 11 x 14 in. Wings, 2012, watercolor and gouache on paper, 14 x 17.5 in. Pheasant and Pods, 2011, watercolor and gouache on paper, 12 x 16 in. Dove Diamond, 2012, watercolor and […]

Howard Hodgkin was born in London in 1932 and attended Camberwell School of Art and the Bath Academy of Art, Corsham. In 1984, he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale and in the following year won the Turner Prize.

A review of Sunday Rising by Patricia Clark by Kathleen Kirk, Poetry Editor, Escape Into Life Art by Philip Govedare Sunday Rising, by Patricia Clark, is both elegiac and rebellious in tone. It mourns our losses, whether in our individual narratives or on our shared earth, and accepts what must be while saying no to […]

  Alex Steckly’s Website

Kevin Eichorst Last week we lost a “writer’s writer” from the literary world, Richard G. Stern. Chris Al-Aswad was a friend of Richard Stern and his wife, the poet Alane Rollings. Chris considered her a mentor and turned to her for advice and moral support, and she attended the memorial service for Chris’s mother at […]

Before I really knew what indie rock was, when I was less versed in the music of the sprawling and incoherent genre that the phrase indie rock has come to represent, a song like “Get Lost” would have represented to me its Platonic ideal: jangly, simple, aggressively melodic, slightly crunchy. It’s by no means the […]

Young Girl With Dog and Bird: Sorry To Tell You, But Your Girlfriend Looks Like A Farm Animal, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 32 in. Young Girl With Dog and Bird: Sorry To Tell You, But Your Girlfriend Looks Like A Farm Animal (Detail) The Transient State of Mr. Henry Rice, 2012, acrylic + […]

    About Jaume Osman Jaume Osman Granda is a designer from Vilanova i la Geltrú, near Barcelona. He studied multimedia programming at the Polytechnic University in Terrassa. He first worked designing web pages and was later hired by Gominola as a flash programmer. After a couple of years, tired of action script, he moved […]

Tifenn Python   Art This, Not That (for Susan Sontag) I. “Art is secreted, not constructed,” she observed. Tree-sap, teardrop, spittle, sweat – Not pitched tent, igloo, lean-to, yurt. Not pre-fab framework for a thought; Not the net that traps and grapples with the fish, But the wriggling, hook-pierced word itself made flush. II. She […]

See No Evil, acrylic on board, 32 x 43 cm Neon Nihon, acrylic on board, 107 x 160 cm Tokyo Time, acrylic on board, 107 x 160 cm Hear No Evil, acrylic on board, 32 x 43 cm Resurrection, acrylic on board, 107 x 160 cm Osaka Time, acrylic on board, 107 x 160 cm […]

Chicago based husband and wife team, Igor Kozlovsky (b. 1956, Slobodskoi, Kirov Region, Russia) and Marina Sharapova (b. 1960, Leningrad, Sankt-Petersburg, Russia), work together on the same canvas, striving to “give new meaning to familiar images, placing them in unexpected frames.”

Nicholas Stevenson is a London based illustrator who makes pictures that are fun, lively, mysterious and occasionally a bit unsettling.

Margriet Smulders   A mini-review of Ophelia Unraveling by Carol Berg by Kathleen Kirk, Poetry Editor Ophelia is a character who infuriates some readers of Hamlet, or some audience goers, depending on the actress’s interpretation of the role. If she’s a helpless innocent, an ingénue undone, a girl without spunk, unable to disobey her father, […]

The Good Wife Three Hour Tour The West, Then and Now Lake, Boy, Indian Somewhere a Man’s Shoes are Wet The Wolf on My Island Little Pink Houses Changing Nature Artist Statement I create photographically illustrated books springing from my fascination with the book format and a love of texture in art. My imagery is […]

Each image, a portrait of Herero tribe members of Namibia, reveals a material culture that harkens the region’s tumultuous past: residents wear Victorian era dresses and paramilitary costume as a direct result and documentation of its early 20th century German colonization.

Our EIL poets are warming up the Internet this winter! Jessy Randall and Daniel M. Shapiro, who so often appear together, appear together again in the winter issue of Arsenic Lobster! But each is responsible for her or his own poems: “One Hundred Things” by Jessy and “All Women” by Daniel. Arsenic Lobster is edited […]

Territorial Disputes, 2010 The Artist as a Portrait of his Material.., 2012 The Paper Tile Game, 2011 My Time Ain’t Long, 2011 Memory of Mother in the Rock, 2011 My Kingdom is One of Blissful Revelations, 2011 Give Me One Look and You’ll See Right Through Me, 2010 Three Arrivals, 2012   Chyrum Lambert’s Website

Drew Tyndell is an Atlanta-based artist who combines graphic design, architecture and woodworking to create thoughtfully structured abstract works that have freshness, charm, and the bold appeal of children’s wood block constructions.

Artist Statement Paintings are an optical art form. A vast array of colors, and their infinite combinations, generate visual effects which relate to the eye’s experience of the world, i.e. shadow and light, cool and warm, push and pull. My goal is to question and manipulate these principles of optics within the confines of paint’s […]

The Violinist, 2011, mixed collage, 8.5 x 11 in. Captive Escape, 2011, mixed collage, 8.5 x 11 in. Greed, 2011, collage, 8.5 x 11 in. Lust, 2011, collage, 8.5 x 11 in. Dance with the Devil, 2011, mixed collage, 8.5 x 11 in. Bride’s Gifts, 2011, mixed collage, 8.5 x 11 in. The Suitor, 2011, […]

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Escape Into Life’s founding editor, Chris Al-Aswad (1979-2010) was interested in many things—among them, literature, philosophy, the economy, and our spiritual wellbeing. In this journal excerpt from October 2005, he ponders an economy that is robbing human beings of their peace of mind—alas, with their apparent consent. He describes a context and articulates a resolution […]