Most Recent Posts

Images by Mikel Patrick Avery

By Dan Ursini ©2021

The COVID-19 era is about many things, but joyful sunlit release is definitely not one of them. Yet that is precisely what comes through in the music of guitarist/composer Dave Miller’s …

Emma Kidd’s Monsters

I Get It, Now

Reviewing the drama of my life
sometimes, I pause and wonder
was this or that incident intended
for my enjoyment or torment?

How about this or that person
do they represent pleasure or …

A Tale Has Been Born, oil printing/mixed-media work on paper, 23″ x 20″, 2020

Blissful Reverie, oil printing/mixed-media work on paper, 24″ x 20″, 2020

The Tree of Life, oil printing/mixed-media work on paper, 24″ x 20″, …

Code of Hammurabi

75th Birthday Post

The Longest Journey, Mesopotamia to The New World

Born in the land of the ancients,
of Warriors, Kings, and Prophets.
Civilization rises and empires fall.
His roots are deep,
his ancestors steeped
in faith …

John William Waterhouse, Psyche Opening the Door to Cupid’s Garden

Ex-Husband
         
               “The door swings open:
               O god of hinges, 
               god of long voyages,
               you have kept faith.”
               – Margaret Atwood, “The Door,”
         
Say instead he is the man you met…

Folded paper by Eric Gjerde

Maria Garcia Teutsch 

La Garza (The Crane)

She folds the first love letter he sent into an origami crane
and sets it afloat. She watches all the pretty words float downstream, words like: ‘rare’ and …

Now that Trump is out of office without a federal self-pardon, what can we expect as far as lawsuits against him? I did a few days of searching online, and came up with a list. It doesn’t include any actions …

Our new President, Biden, the one who actually won the election by a landslide, has asked for this nation to come together and heal the divide. So, in that spirit, I am supplying a guide to those who lost the …

So where next for Dear Leader? He fled to his golf resort in Florida, but he is legally enjoined from living there permanently. New York City hates his living guts. In fact, in most of America he’s likely to be …

Vera, ceramic, stain, and oils, 16″ x 4″

Vera (detail)

Vera 2

Iris, ceramic, stain, and oils, 14.5″ x 4″ (detail)

Iris (detail)

Iris 2

Kika, ceramic, stain, and oils, 18″ x 4″ (detail)

Kika (detail 2)…

Well, it’s a wrap. Dear Leader has Left the Building, and is now just another bitter old bigot, nursing his many resentments, up to his bushy eyebrows in debt, and facing a lifetime in legal jeopardy. There were some nervous …

Self-Portraits by Susanna Lang
Year of Convergence by Jennifer Grant
God of Sparrows by Christina Lovin

Three chapbooks bound together as Delphi Series Vol IX (Blue Lyra Press, 2020)

Reviewed by Kathleen Kirk, EIL Poetry Editor

First, praise for the …

Most people I know think wind turbines look rather majestic. In addition, they symbolize a better, cleaner, more responsible and sustainable world; indeed, they’re helping bring it about. Dear Leader hates ’em. He cares nothing for living sustainably or responsibly …

Art by Mike Worrall

I am part of a small meditation community that has met on Sunday evenings every other week for many years. Until the pandemic hit us, we gathered in a hall generously provided to us in a …

Dear Leader is not happy. Congress is meeting to certify someone other than him to be president! What’s a statesman-patriot to do?! Why, exhort your fanatical, cultlike followers to stage your very own Reichstag fire-like disruption of the proceedings …

Art by Elise Ritter

One day he decided he wanted to live

in Vienna, to waste the summer musing,
maybe all of autumn, too, drinking sweet
tea in cafes and eating Sachertorte, listening
to Mozart and Brahms. He took a …

(This is Not a) Mixtape for the End of the World
by Daniel M. Shapiro
Published by bd-studios.com in New York City, 2020
Cover design by luke kurtis
Art by Stephen Tornero

Reviewed by Kathleen Kirk, EIL Poetry Editor

This …

Remember those advent calendars that always appeared during the holidays–the ones that counted down to Christmas? Sure you do! Well there’s another hotly anticipated event we’re all counting down to. Let’s count down together, shall we?

Join me here every …

Art by Julie Blackmon

Revenge of Winter and Future       

Upslant of light. A licorice wind along runnels of sky.

My left hand in a red glove on the bent spokes of a turquoise bike.

I ride uphill along the dominion …

Serious Moonlight by Carol Lukitsch

What an irony: we crave success, but it’s mostly fleeting and rarely educational. We abhor failure, though it can be deeply transformative. As with all of you, over the years I’ve had my share of …

Snowman Cuddles, 2019

Presents for the Dogs, 2019

Festive Tree, 2019

Tree Peonies, 2020

Long-Tailed Tit on Apple Blossom, 2020

Fawn in the Snow, 2019

Artist Statement

My work is endlessly inspired by and …

One of the earliest things you learn as a photographer is that looking at famous artworks will help develop your eye for lighting, placement, balance, and design. Most photographers embrace the possibility of using their camera as not just a …

The Best of Brevity: Twenty Groundbreaking Years of Flash Nonfiction

edited by Zoë  Boissiere and Dinty W. Moore

Rose Metal Press, 2020

reviewed by Seana Graham

Although I’ve become more aware of flash fiction through a circle of writers I …

Hotel Almighty by Sarah J. Sloat

Sarabande Books, 2020

Reviewed by Kathleen Kirk, EIL Poetry Editor

Travel is out of the question, so the only hotel I’m staying in these days is Hotel Almighty by Sarah J. Sloat. Or …

I’ve been in a deep state before… a deep state of meditation. That’s the kind of deep state I believe in and enjoy.

Now I’ve heard tell about a deep state that is bad, mysterious, and shrouded in evil. Apparently, …

The Wood Demons: Rare and Welcome

By Dan Ursini  © 2020

I am always excited about debut albums by bands which have been around for a while. The best of them include songs with the seasoned strength that results from …

Twenty four years old, graduated from medical school and just done with my two years of compulsory military service while I was serving in the Iraqi Armed forces in Jordan, I immediately traveled to Lebanon and was delighted to arrive …

Simeon Walker: Essential Space

By Dan Ursini, ©2020

British composer and pianist Simeon Walker is a leading UK figure in the Modern Classical movement. His new album, Winnow, is about a volatile subject: leaving behind a religion that was once …

Beached, oil on canvas, 28″ x 22″, 2019-2020

Beginning, oil on canvas, 28″ x 22″, 2019-2020

Cliff, oil on canvas, 28″ x 22″, 2019-2020

Crest, oil on canvas, 28″ x 22″, 2019-2020

Dragon, oil on …

Art by Mike Worrall

There hasn’t been live indoor theatre in New York City since March. Many theatre-related jobs have melted away, temporarily or permanently, from actors and directors and playwrights, to costume and lighting designers, stage managers, from waiting …

Traces of Home by Ellen Von Wiegand

Resilience, Restoration, Reconciliation

Reaching back to my own past when I was facing major life-shattering events, estrangement, divorce, and finally death of loved ones, going through these three phases–resilience, restoration, and reconciliation–was essential …

So here we sit, in the murky wake of a hotly contested election, watching the actual President having an actual temper tantrum, refusing to accept the results—and fully supported in this effort by the leadership of his actual political …

Art by Duy Huynh 

Please join us in congratulating our Pushcart Prize nominees. Here are their poems, published in 2020 in Escape Into Life. You can click each poet’s name to see the work as it first appeared. The …

Art by Heather Benning

The Lump

by Jessy Randall

The first time Hazel noticed the lump was when she got up in the night to use the bathroom. Half asleep, she lurched down the hallway, trailing her hand along the …

“Not that he had anything particular in his mind to write about. But the city was such a razzle-dazzle of dreams, tragedies, fantasies; such a crazy monotone of streets and windows that it filled the newspaper man’s thought from day

Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey: A Novel

by Kathleen Rooney

Penguin Books, 2020

Reviewed by Kim Kishbaugh

More than six months into a pandemic isolation we initially hoped would last weeks, it’s hard not to think and speak …

Art by Helen Sear

Matthew Murrey

Buried

Today our cat died—
the one that liked to sleep
on my chest, head by my chin—
and I’ll have to take the shovel
out back and start digging.

One love of my …

HOLD FAST by Holly J. Hughes

Empty Bowl Press, 2020 

THE BLOSSOMS ARE GHOSTS AT THE WEDDING: EXPANDED EDITION by Tom Jay

Empty Bowl Press, 2019

reviewed by Bethany Reid

Recently Empty Bowl Press sent me two books. I …

everything seems so bright, acrylic on stretched canvas, 65 cm x 55 cm, 2020

everything seems so bright, acrylic on stretched canvas, 65 cm x 55 cm, 2020

everything seems so bright, acrylic on stretched canvas, 40 …

Ranjana Ghatak: Stunning Debut

By Dan Ursini ©2020

Ranjana Ghatak’s bold debut album, The Butterfly Effect, opens with considerable drama and surprise. This gifted vocalist trained in the tradition of the Classical Music of India, and that is …

Art by David Vogin

Adam, In Search Of Music

     I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music.
     I see my life in terms of music. —Albert Einstein

Hmm, this bone would make
a nice flute, if …

Oreo, by Fran Ross

Greyfalcon House, Inc. 1974, New Directions, 2015

reviewed by Seana Graham

Sometimes, books arrive too early. Or maybe it’s just that they have to help create the audience that will later be ready to …

Art by eX de Medici

Last night I was assaulted in my own apartment. No, it was not an intruder. Sitting on my couch I turned on the TV to watch the presidential debate just like millions of other citizens …

Art by Josh Keyes

Please join us in congratulating Escape Into Life’s poetry nominees for Best of the Net 2020, for work published between July 1, 2019 and June 30, 2020. Click the links in the list below to revisit …

Art by Jacek Yerka

The Other Way Around

My son asked for a quick bedtime story.
So I said time is the horizon of all being,
go to sleep. At which point he said
I think you’re wrong about that …

World Upside Down, oil on linen, 22″ x 28″

Up on the Roofie, oil and colored pencil on linen, 24″ x 30″

Brothel Born, mixed media on linen, 16″ x 20″

Time Out, mixed media, 24″ …

In October, 2016, at a social gathering in my building I met a couple who lived in the suburbs but came downtown for weekends. They were lovely, well read, and we hit it off right away with our common interest …

NIU Jazz Ensemble to record “Black and Cardinal”

Music for Music: Joe Clark: Breath is Truth

by Dan Ursini ©2020

Time and again, Chicago has risen from catastrophe and soared phoenix-like toward rebirth. But these comebacks are tragically incomplete. The …

Art by Lars Henkel

Two by Brian Rihlmann

Opening the Cage
 
he finally retired at 65 after
a quarter century on the job
25 years cleaning toilets
25 years waxing and polishing floors
25 years scraping kids’ chewing gum
from …

Julie Mehretu

I have a confession to make. I believe that I’m seen as forward looking, planning ahead and being an activist concerned about our country and the planet’s future from a variety of perspectives, social, economic, and environmental. I …

The English Pilot

Motorcycle Yorkie

Cool Pug

Cool Lab

Minnesota Dogs

Motorcycle Dachshund

Da Tongue Corgi

Artist Statement

It is my passions in life that have led the way to my art. I love to see people laugh, to …

Scott Poole, For George Floyd, June 2020

Scott Poole

Thoughts Behind a Mask

Wearing a mask,
thinking about George Floyd’s
‘I can’t breathe,’
thinking about Jefferson mouthing
‘inalienable rights’ as he 
pressed them into parchment,
thinking of a knee on …

Photography by David Burdeny

Poems by Marion Starling Boyer

The Sledging Commences
                       
                                     A golden shovel for William Carlos Williams
                  
Ernest Joyce, January 24, 1915

In his great rush Mack’s risking our dogs, that I
know are unfit, and the men’s …

Kissing the Long Face of the Greyhound by Yvonne Zipter

Terrapin Books, 2020 

Cover art:

Tulip Greetings by Elke Vogelsang 

Reviewed by Kathleen Kirk, EIL Poetry Editor

How perfect to begin this book with “Summer Lament” in a …

Dancing With Myself, Melissa D Johnston

My Son, My Voice: A Letter on the 10th Anniversary of Your Death

In nations, peoples, or even family histories, 10 years may not be enough time to look back and reflect, but …

Earth I, oil on linen, 8″ x 10″, 2019

Enchanted Crown, oil on linen, 8″ x 10″, 2019

Enchantress 2, oil on copper, 5″ x 7″, 2019

Last Light, oil on linen 7.5″ x 11″, 2019…

Art by Joel Rea

Karen Craigo

Ex Doesn’t Answer

And he always answers, 
so I’m left to wonder 
where he is, but also 
how—did he wake today, 
did he fall, did he clutch 
at his sternum and gasp 
for air, …

I was teaching a remote Drama/Acting class for older adults and we were reading the play You Can’t Take It With You, Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman’s 1938 comedy about an eccentric New York city family fighting the conventionality …

Art by Frédéric Bourret

What the Condor Saw in Big Sur

At the edge–
            spotted stones
                        and roiling kelp.
The day facets me in its diamond.
            Wind-chimes are silent,
Buddha’s stone head bows.
A gap in the fence could tell–…

Cody, Wyoming, 2006

Have you ever read a gripping mystery novel and got really immersed in it? Did you feel that you are in the story, observing the characters and witnessing the events as they unfold as if you were …

Chris Warner: Stories within the Stars

©2020 by Dan Ursini

Chris Warner, the British composer of Wonders of The Cosmos, is a person of uncommon choices.

First and foremost is his career, demanding a highly rarefied skillset: writing …

Having looked into questions about why and how to wear a mask and what kind of mask to make in Part One, now I turn to environmental studies to better my odds of not getting Covid-19. 

How much Covid …

“A lot of people, when they hear that you can’t completely get rid of your risk, they think, ‘Well, that means that it’s inevitable… “But there are lots of things you can do in between nothing and everything.”

Vox article …

Audubon’s Sparrow
A Biography-in-Poems
by Juditha Dowd
Rose Metal Press, 2020

Reviewed by Kathleen Kirk

What a wonderful book. Juditha Dowd has created a biography of Lucy Bakewell Audubon, a person in her own right but also the wife …

Photo by Anthony Martinelli

Over my last 43 years of practicing orthopedics I have treated patients in a variety of ways, such as medications, splinting, and surgery. However, advice and recommendations regarding their health and well being such as weight …

Soul Mate, photography, acrylic, and liquid acrylic, 16″ x 20″, 2019

Starry Night, photography, acrylic, and liquid acrylic, 16″ x 20″, 2019

Broken System, photography, acrylic, and liquid acrylic, 16″ x 20″, 2019

Friendship, photography, acrylic, …

Art by Mike Worrall

Jim Moore

Little Sainthood

On one of my good days
you could tell I lived happily here, inside
the all of it.
You could tell all was stilled,
calm as the warm hand
of my father …

ATMA at EIL

Confrontations, Conversations, and Reconciliations

There are relatively standard stages in conflicts, whether interpersonal, community, national, or international. First, there is disagreement and confrontation, followed by some sort of dialogue, discussion, and conversation. Conflicts can be stuck in …

Murder from Scratch

by Leslie Karst

Crooked Lane Books, 2019

reviewed by Seana Graham

As I’ve been reading this latest offering, fourth in the Sally Solari series written by my friend Leslie Karst, I’ve been thinking a lot about …

Naomi Ashley: Exhilaration and Risk

By Dan Ursini  ©2020

As we try to live ordinary lives in the blur of a seismic moment in the human community, the music of roots singer/songwriter Naomi Ashley resonates especially well. The driving impulse …

Art by Laura Redburn

Wang Zhenyi (1769-1797)

Come to the garden with me
and sit in the pavilion.
Imagine the table is the earth;
this crystal lamp the sun;
this round mirror the moon.

No, we’re not doing astrology.
We’re …

Last Sunday, the New York Times adorned its front page with the names, ages, and a short description of 1000 deceased victims of COVID-19, to commemorate the first 100,000 Americans to die of the disease. It was a stark …

It’s Memorial Day weekend, the sun shines, the temperature just right. Looking out from my living room I behold a magnificent view, Millennium Park and Lake Michigan, both expansive and uplifting. Down below, slow moving cars, few walkers, runners, even …

Art by Peter Ravn; Dialog (2010)

Like a Mother

don’t you know that we’re made to
care what others think? don’t you
know that we survived for millennia
because we followed? do you not
realize that the one who says …

Out of Your Depth, Photographic Mixed Media, 2020

Our Lady, Photographic Mixed Media, 2020

Medusa, Photographic Mixed Media, 2020

Tempest, Photographic Mixed Media, 2020

Sojourner, Photographic Mixed Media, 2020

Mother Nature, Photographic Mixed Media, …

Mothershell by Andrea Potos
Kelsay Books, Aldrich Press, 2020

Reviewed by Kathleen Kirk

Maybe I should have reviewed this book when I first read it, but, no, I always need to re-read books before I write about them. So …

Art by Yellena James

Black Hollyhocks in the Old Orchard

The air around them
is charged, electric.

They look so impossibly dark
as if they had absorbed all

of the colors of other flowers,
purple-black like the sheen

of oil …

Photograph of Anna Akhmatova with husband and son

Scott Klavan: Poetry on Stage: Directing Night Shadows

So how do you direct a new play about poetry and poets, when most Americans rarely read poems, don’t like them much, and, certainly …

Bunny Mazhari, Moleskine journal

Yvonne Zipter

Cleaning Fish, Post Lake, July 1941

I always thought the photo of my grandfather
and his brother, with the scarred wooden table

between them on which they are gutting fish,
was about them, about …

The Overstory

by Richard Powers

Norton 2018, paperback 2019

reviewed by Seana Graham

Near the beginning of Richard Powers’ remarkable, expansive novel centering around a motley crew of individuals who become activists for the trees in their lives, he recounts …

Art by Philipp Igumnov

The List

What follows is not a poem or an essay, not advice or education, nor even insight or inspiration.

Just an acknowledgement of what arises from the heart when it abides in stillness, then pours …

So, we’ve been at this stay-at-home-thing long enough to laugh at it, I guess. The internet jokes just keep rolling on in. Who writes all these? Who makes all those memes and vids? Everyone, it seems.

My favorite silly video …

Has anyone else been having trouble reading?

One of the ways my anxiety seems to manifest is in an inability to concentrate well on reading. This is disconcerting in many ways, but most especially because reading has always been my …

Blinded by the Light 1, porcelain, clinker, and emulsion, 28 cm x 18 cm x 15 cm, 2019

Breathe (bronze), bronze, resin, and gold, 90 cm x 50 cm x 60 cm, 2019

Breathe 1 (detail), black stoneware, resin, …

Art by Rodney Smith

The Mind

The mind is an ancient and famous capital…
—Delmore Schwartz

All down the steps of these long decades
I have enjoyed living inside my mind,
an ancient capital, ruined and eternal,
as great a …

Barbara Remington died recently, which set me to thinking about literature, illustration, and my relationship to both.

My father dabbled in cartooning. I used to love to watch him draw; it was  exhilarating to see him effortlessly create silly characters …

On Sunday, I tuned in on Facebook to a live living-room concert by folk singer Richard Thompson. I didn’t know about it in advance, just happened to be on Facebook when one of my friends shared that it was happening. …

Art in nature by Ernst Haeckel

Happy National Poetry Month to us all! Here are some poems that reference poetry itself, or poets. Find links to more such poems at the end, and click each poet’s name for more of …

Half Life in Full Circle, by Duy Huynh

Except for medical personnel, first responders, essential workers, and others on the front line in this COVID-19 pandemic, most of us including myself have been at home for a week, …

The Mindful Pleasures of Time Falling

By Dan Ursini ©2020

Time Falling by Dutch composer Michel van der Aa is filled with mindful pleasures. This indie/alt-pop release on the Disquiet label deals with alternate realities, soul travel, and remote states …

Photography by Camille Seaman

Frostbite, Last Team on the Barrier

Ernest Wild, March 24, 1915

On half rations we headed to safety camp
fifty miles north, day after day, small steps.
By the time we got there I could barely …

A report on theater in New York City during COVID-19

Hello from New York City, the center of the coronavirus outbreak in the USA. Having written many theater reviews for EIL over the past five years, I wanted to report …

It was a dark and stormy morning. Raining so hard that my in-car surveillance was opaque. I couldn’t see out my car window without running the wipers full-speed. I was following a tip that Super Target was getting an overnight …

Demerrara Dreams, gouache and Mattai’s mother’s sari on printed fabric, 66″ x 52″, 2019

(Photo by Wes Magyar)

Silence, mixed media on fabric, 48″ x 37″, 2019 (Photo by Wes Magyar)

My Life is Not My Own, …

Friday, March 13, 2020 in Normal, Illinois
Photo credit: Basel Al-Aswad

Via Basel: Solitude, Reflection, and Introspection in the Age of Coronavirus Pandemic—A Perspective

The shift was as sudden as it was dramatic. From thriving globalism, hyper-connectivity actually and …

Via Basel: Uncle Ramzi, Earliest Family Immigrant, A Tribute

The year was 1957, President Eisenhower was in the White House. Iraq was ruled by a king but had a nascent parliamentary democracy and in general political and economic stability. My …

Photography by Adrien Broom

Émilie du Châtelet (1706-1749)

I’m pregnant again, trying
to finish my book. To save time,
I stop lifting the pen between words.
I’m up until five in the morning.
I keep awake by plunging
my arms …

Antoni Gaudi, Sagrada Familia nave

Hawley: Music at the Granular

By Dan Ursini ©2020 

There are lots of reasons why it can take forever to come up with a good song. Even a simple tune of familiar ideas requires the …

Mourning Doves, watercolor, 27″ x 35″, 2020

Down Main Street, watercolor, 27″ x 35″, 2019

Reminiscence, watercolor, 27″ x 35″, 2018

Through the Doll, watercolor, 27″ x 35″, 2019

Entering the Fairy Tale, watercolor, 27″ …

I’ve been writing a lot lately, sometimes to let off steam, but often to express sentiments in my local newspaper. Quite a few have been published, too. So I thought I’d do a quick summary of how to write those …

Art by Suzanne Stryk

Christina Lovin

Some Females Fake Death to Avoid Nasty Suitors

Dragonflies, damselflies, darners, or darters,
meadowhawks, skimmers, snake feeders—regardless,
these females fake death to avoid nasty suitors,

a trick we could use for unwanted ardors.
You’ve …

Ed Ruscha

Jim Moore

Pure Nebraska

Just the two of us in a little motel room, surrounded on all sides by pure Nebraska.

***

After hitting my own ear on the car door at 10 P.M., fell asleep: stupid, hurting, …

It’s Oscar time again! Time to see what sterling examples of animation the ossified Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences considers the Best of the Best. Some enterprising company having released a program of the Oscar-nominated animated shorts, …

Cartoon by Phil Maish

Kim Kishbaugh

Buoyant

An octopus doesn’t have eight arms
rather six
plus two legs
the legs to crawl
the arms to swim
to eat
occasionally to be eaten

What we know
we do not know
we …

Art by Greg Dunn

One’s Obsessions

          —for Marvin Bell

Like gates to a labyrinth, they unlock
imagination to euphoric, mazed
brains, inflammatory wildernesses
of appreciation, magnetic sumps
of innuendo censored from belief.
Studies of blunt insurrection toward truths,
studies of …

In December 2016 my friend Emil handed me a book as part of our annual book gifting in the holidays, assuring me that it will leave a lasting impression. I had just read The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel …

True Confessions 1965 to Now
by John Guzlowski
Darkhouse Books, 2019

Reviewed by Kim Kishbaugh

Despite the fact that John Guzlowski’s poems have been featured more than once on Escape into Life, it was through Twitter that I …

The Memory Settled Over Her, linocut, 12″ x 12″, 2019

I Was in a Trance, linocut, 16″ x 16″, 2019

Traces of Home, linocut, 8″ x 12″, 2019

Afterglow, linocut, 12″ x 8″, 2019

High Up …

Gavin Hammond

One winter day when I was nine years old, the dulcet tones of an acoustic guitar came through the two-inch speaker of my green plastic transistor radio, accompanied by a man’s gentle, melancholy voice:

            Just yesterday morning, they …

Art by Michelle McKinney, Pieces of Me series

Four Lights

Each point lit its spot
in an arc that was easy
to sight across the dark sky.
At the west end bright, white
Venus descending, while rising
rust-orange in the …

As we “let go”of this year and “accept” the new one, there is nothing I can write that is remotely as eloquent and precise as Lord Alfred Tennyson’s poem “Ring Out, Wild Bells.” Published in 1850 in a different time …

Strength, acrylic on canvas, 100 cm x 85 cm, 2019

Harmony, acrylic on canvas, 75cm x 90cm, 2019

Memory 4, collage on canvas, 90cm …

…Someone You Should Listen To…

We have all shared this experience. You come across something exciting, refreshing, and beautiful and before you even fully digest it you get the urge to share it and spread it to all in your …

Evidence of V: a novel of fragments, facts, and fictions

by Sheila O’Connor

Rose Metal Press, 2019

reviewed by Seana Graham

Judging by the popularity of Henry Louis Gates’s PBS show Finding our Roots and genealogy websites like Ancestry.com, learning …

I sent the following two paragraphs to my local newspaper this morning: 

Today’s conservative “news” sources spread unfounded conspiracy theories and take character assassination to a new level. But it is nearly impossible to convince their viewers that what they

Kelly O’Connor, Wonder

Please join us in congratulating the poets listed below, who are nominated for a Pushcart Prize for their work published at Escape Into Life during the calendar year of 2019. Click each link to see the poem …

Several cartooning notables passed from the scene in the last few months. I wrote about Stan Lee about a year ago; this past August we lost Richard Williams, the genius animator responsible for A Christmas Carol, The Thief and …

What is it like to live in Iowa in the months prior to the “first in the nation caucus?” Busy. And this year with 20+ candidates trying to connect with Iowa Democrats, it can be dizzyingly busy. We start to …

Isabella Clara Eugenia as painted by Clara Peeters (Painted Ladies Series), acrylic on canvas, 40″ x 40″, 2019

The Ecstasy of Sister Plautilla Nelli (Painted Ladies Series), acrylic on paper, 24″ x 20″, 2019

Clara’s World: Clara Peeters  …

Art by Janet Rickus

Self-Portrait as Alexa, as Negative Capability

O for a life of sensations rather than of thoughts.  
O origin story, original myth. This is an ode

to prototype, to empyrean fire. For I was made—
yes. Manufactured …

The cartooning world is abuzz; apparently, Gary Larson is bringing back his seminal comic panel The Far Side over 24 years after laying down his pen. Visitors to his website are greeted with a cartoon of a man in a …

Alev Lenz: Soul to Soul

By Dan Ursini © 2019

Alev Lenz is a German-Turkish pop singer-songwriter with a huge gift for orchestrating  connections—among musicians, within the music itself, and between the composer and the listener. She has surfaced through …

Betrayal
By Harold Pinter
Directed by Jamie Lloyd
Broadway—Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, 242 W. 45^th St., New York, NY

Reviewed by Scott Klavan – October 17, 2019

Betrayal, by Harold Pinter, opened on Broadway in January …

DuZinc, digital image with Photoshop manipulation, finished archival print, 48″ x 32″, 2018

The Sweater, digital image with Photoshop manipulation, finished archival print, 48″ x 32″, 2018

Fire Cat, digital image with Photoshop manipulation, finished archival print, …

I recently lost a dear friend, Frank Lettiere, who by any measure was the most colorful, spontaneous, and unconventional character I have ever encountered. This past Saturday at his favorite bar on Chicago’s south side, family and friends gathered to …

One day Scott Poole the poet discovered he was an also artist. Since then has created an art chapbook called Vacancy. Here are selections from it—poems and paintings, both by Scott Poole.

Spring

Perhaps all of us want to …

Art by Andrea Offermann

Poets Rob Carney and Scott Poole have collaborated on a book of poems based on the news. It’s called The Last Tiger is Somewhere and is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in 2020. Here are a few …

Greg Mort

Rob Carney

King Midas

I get that the guy’s an idiot,
but how is this the cat’s fault?

From claws and purring
to a golden coma,

from eyes full of lightning
to an object lesson in greed;

not …

Duy Huynh, Metamorphosis of a Metaphor

2019 Best of the Net Nominations

for work published between July 1, 2018 and June 30, 2019

Please join us in congratulating Escape Into Life’s poetry nominees for Best of the Net. Click the …

There There

by Tommy Orange

Knopf 2018, Vintage Books 2019

reviewed by Seana Graham

I happened to start reading this book on my way home to Santa Cruz from the greater Bay Area. My sister had dropped me off at …

Art by Maggie Taylor, Dream Pool

A Thin Space

“But a love poet must somehow make love/if only to language…”
                                            —Dennis O’Driscoll, “To a Love Poet”

I’m having a moment, you say

as we sit at a table by …

Alexis Rockman

To support Greta Thunberg, 350.org, and the students who began a push for more climate awareness on this particular day, Friday, September 20, 2019, and all through the week to follow, we offer these artists/works of art and …

Outlaud, acrylic on silk organza, 39.5″ x 79.5″, 2018-2019

Our Wall, acrylic on silk organza, 39.5″ x 22″, 2018-2019

Swallow, acrylic on silk organza (double painting*), 79.5″ x 22″, 2018-2019

Glazing (Veladura), acrylic on silk organza …

This Is Bric-a-Brac!

by Dan Ursini ©2019

The history of popular music is, to a point, a chronicle of remakes. There can be all kinds of reasons for re-doing a big hit from the past—most of them on the safe …

If Indiana Jones was investigating locked secrets of old civilizations, mine involved glaciers that predated them by thousands of years. I alluded to some of the natural Alaskan wilderness with all its magnificence in my last post in July. It …

Stefano Unterthiner, Albatrosses

Karen Craigo

Ex Ornithomancer

He thinks one time he spotted
a frigate bird by the cove, way 
off course, but maritime winds
might pull anything his way. 
He shows me where he saw 
the mandarin duck, …

Art by Drew Tyndall

It’s Labor Day, when many of us, ironically, have the day off work…to read poetry and admire art! Many others celebrate International Workers day on May 1.  Whenever and however you celebrate, thanks to us all …

Bulletproof by Matthew Murrey
Jacar Press, 2019
Book Cover Design by Daniel Krawiec             

Reviewed by Kathleen Kirk, EIL Poetry Editor

Matthew Murrey, whose poems I have read for many years, is a really sweet guy. That he has written …

Review of The Inheritance by Justin Hamm
Poems and Photographs
Blue Horse Press, 2019

Reviewed by Kathleen Kirk, EIL Poetry Editor

The Inheritance is divided in two: Poems in the first half, Photographs in the second. I count myself …

Chi Chi, mixed media, 34″ x 30″, 2019

Bullie for You,  mixed media, 41″ x 41″, 2019

American Idol, mixed media, 48″ x 76″, 2017

Dasch of Taste, mixed media, 24″ x 35″, 2016

Dasching Red…

A strange thing happened to me after I wrote a blog piece about green birds. I discovered a bright metallic green bee species! Have you ever seen a green bee? Me neither!

This bee, actually two of them, must …

Art by Judith Mullen

Rob Carney

Why We Have Rain

One day, tired of a changeless sky,
a river and a raven

had a shapeshifting contest, each one
chasing the other’s idea downstream.

When the river thought about mist rising …

 Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations

Broadway—The Imperial Theatre, 249 W. 45^th Street, New York, NY

Written by Dominique Morrisseau

Directed by Des McAnuff

Reviewed by Scott Klavan on August 2, 2019

I’ll start …

Art by Mario Soria

The ecstasy now
 
is simply my hand scratching my head
underneath what is left of my hair
and noticing the rolled cuffs–plaid–
of the man exiting the parking lot.
Or “the man existing the parking lot,”…

On July 16th I was in the midst of a week long rafting adventure on the mighty Copper river in Alaska, which is fed from 26 glaciers and is about half a mile wide in some areas. In this wilderness, …

Grab a Snake by the Tail
by Leonardo Paduro
Translated by Peter Bush
Bitter Lemon Press, 2019

Reviewed by Kim Kishbaugh

I’m a bit of a sucker for mysteries and police procedurals. Doesn’t matter in what format: novel, short story, …

By Dan Ursini ©2019

Usually I provide YouTube video links to songs I write about. But in this article I am also providing links to the album versions of the same songs at Bandcamp. They provide a much better …

dancing with myself, mobile digital art, 2019

broken-free, mobile digital art, 2019

at the end of a dream, mobile digital art, 2019

keeping touch, mobile digital art, 2019

reach, mobile digital art, 2019

emerge, …

Art by Heidi Lender

Elizabeth Kerper

Old Yeller

I said I would not, could not, listen to a book where the dog
died and my mother said okay, slotting the last cassette 
of Anne of Green Gables back into place …

It seems I’ve reached a time in my life when I am doomed to revisit issues previously addressed. Last time it was the reaction to that dumb Trump/Netanyahu cartoon. Today’s regurgitation regards dead refugee kids and editorial cartoonists’ reaction to …

I’ve been thinking about Eliza Doolittle lately. That scene in “My Fair Lady” where she’s supposed to speak more clearly with a mouth full of marbles. Which never made any sense—a mouth full of marbles makes it impossible to say …

Jeff Felker

In this collaboration between poets Jennifer Finstrom and Elizabeth Kerper, Jennifer confides in literary figures about her divorce, and Elizabeth writes poems about female characters who are not the protagonist of a literary work. In the last …

Angels on the Block, collage and acrylic on paper, 18″ x 24″, 2017

Divine Fertility #1, acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 48″ x 60″, 2017

Knowledge and Power, diptych, acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 36″ …

Toon Musings: The Grey Lady Shoots the Messenger

When last I graced these pages, I wrote about a botched political cartoon: a ham-handed attempt to criticize the fraught relationship between Bibi Netanyahu and our own grifting, dim-witted, wannabe fascist president. …

Passing Through Humansville by Karen Craigo
Sundress Publications, 2018

Cover art by Charli Barnes at Charcoal Studio 
Image credit Peter Bagi

Reviewed by Kathleen Kirk, EIL Poetry Editor

I met Karen Craigo once, briefly, at an AWP Conference. (She probably …

The Big House in Baghdad, Part 3

The descent of the afternoon summer sun goes on simultaneously with the rise of the people in the Big house. A beehive of activity again, after being dormant for awhile, working adults …

Alexander Landerman

Richard Jones

Notre Dame

My daughter and I traveled without our family,
visiting the week before the church burned.
We stayed in a good hotel on the Left Bank
and walked everywhere—Deyrolle, Ladurée —
all the places a …

The After-Normal: Brief Alphabetical Essays on a Changing Planet

By David Carlin and Nicole Walker

Rose Metal Press, 2019

reviewed by Seana Graham

In this latest Rose Metal Press offering, two friends who are writers—or writers who are friends–and live …

As a little boy I was so happy I believed this must be the paradise adults talk about: I could roam the Big House at will, find secret rooms, explore dark closets, and unlock strange old chests. There was even …

King Lear by William Shakespeare

Directed by Sam Gold

Broadway: Cort Theatre, 138 W. 48^th St., New York, NY

Reviewed by Scott Klavan on May 17, 2019

The expression “He who yells is wrong” came to mind more …

Fog Is Pouring Over History, hand-embroidered cotton on cotton, 25.5″ x 19.5″, 2018

You Confused My Heart, hand-embroidered cotton on cotton, 12″ x 34″, 2018

Far Over the Sea, hand-embroidered cotton on cotton, 19″ x 22″, 2018…

Pauchi Sasaki, photo by Edi Hirose

Pauchi Sasaki: One-Person Micro-Culture

Part 3 of Classical:NEXT Series

By Dan Ursini © 2019

Pauchi Sasaki is a deeply gifted Peruvian-Japanese composer from Lima. In 2016 she was selected to apprentice under American …

Amanda Gookin & the Forward Music Project

Part 2 of Classical:NEXT Series

By Dan Ursini © 2019

Cellist Amanda Gookin was disturbed because in the classical music culture, social issues are seen as appropriate content for a private chat among …

This morning I saw a female goldfinch in a yellow tree. They matched. That got me wondering: Why aren’t there more green birds?

Okay Google: Why aren’t there more green birds?

Google: There is a lot of green in nature …

Abigail Reynolds, Double Cube Room

Because I Want to Give Them More Than the Small, Gray Stone

of my sorrow, I take them to see the traveling exhibit,
the girl with the pearl on her ear.

I say, Look—the painted …

The Lark

by E. Nesbit

Hutchinson and Co, 1922, Penguin, 2018

reviewed by Seana Graham

Oh, Pallas, take your owl away,

And let us have a lark instead

                    –Thomas Hood  (epigraph)

Although Gore Vidal wrote in a 1964 …

The Energy of Discovery: Composer Emma O’Halloran

By Dan Ursini © 2019

Recently, I was contacted by Classical:NEXT, a big  annual networking event in Europe for Classical/Art/New Music. It is held in the Netherlands in Rotterdam, a great music …

Adam Hunter Caldwell

John Guzlowski

My Mother’s First Winter in Germany

a sonnet

My mother never thought she’d survive
that first winter in the slave labor camps.
She had no coat, no hat, no gloves,
just what she was wearing …

Henny Youngman was the comedian who memorialized the phrase, “take my wife… please!” Come to find out, his wife would laugh along with the crowd at his jokes, even though he made her look, well, not as smart as the …

I love a good political cartoon—always have. I used to read my dad’s Bill Mauldin collections in my youth, and have fairly extensive collections of my own of cartoons by Jeff MacNelly, Pat Oliphant, and Tom Toles. I like the …

Via Basel: The Big House in Baghdad

In the early 1930s my maternal grandfather, Abdul-Ahad, a successful merchant, moved his family from Mosul, his ancestral city, to Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, to expand his business. They lived in …

Dwayne Butcher

A continuation of our celebration of National Poetry Month 2019 with poems about poetry, here by Jennifer Finstrom, who uses them to write about divorce…..

I Confide in the Lady of Shalott about My Divorce

And …

What ails the hemlocks?, copperplate etching, 12.5″ x 12.5″, 2019

What is being eroded?, multiplate copperplate etching, 12.5″ x 12.5″, 2019

What are we stripping away?, zinc etching, 12.5″ x 12.5″, 2019

Is this ‘stabilizing’?, multiplate …

L’Animal dans la decoration

Erica Goss

Inexact

                               An Evening With Marvin Bell, 6/28/16, Eugene, Oregon

The man sitting next to me
wears a pink shirt. His smile
is like a sleek rangy animal.
It makes me greedy and grateful
 
at …

Roxane Elfasci

Music for Music: Clair de Lune and The Enigma

By Dan Ursini ©2019

On YouTube there is a music video of Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” which is spellbinding, a rendition of exquisite tenderness.

The number of views is …

Back before the world was surrounded by satellites, back before the internet, back before color television–can you even imagine that far back? There were phones and there was hot-and-cold running water, but there wasn’t television everywhere, especially in rural areas …