Every Riven thing

OK so I'm going to grab a few minutes to share with you some images that struck me from a recent trip to the MFA that was between an MD visit & an Alexander lesson. I especially liked the new "Allure of Japan" show that explores the influence of Japanese art American artists around the turn of the 20th century. I'd hoped there would be images available on the MFA website to include here, but found only this:



And I never seem to stop finding little crooks & nannies in the museum that I hadn't seen before - or at least don't remember noticing. In one hallway on the way to my favorite galleries of works from the "American Renaissance" I happened upon a work by Alma-Tadema (who knew he was Dutch?) that I loved:



And in those wonderful AR galleries looked closely for the first time @ the photo at the top of this entry, Orpheus by George de Forest Brush, 1855–1941 & to one by another lesser known American artist Elizabeth Lyman Boott, 1846–1888.



I also wanted to share a wonderful poem "Every riven thing" by Christian Wiman, who was interviewed by Krista TIppett recently.

God goes, belonging to every riven thing he's made
sing his being simply by being
the thing it is:
stone and tree and sky,
man who sees and sings and wonders why

God goes. Belonging, to every riven thing he's made,
means a storm of peace.
Think of the atoms inside the stone.
Think of the man who sits alone
trying to will himself into a stillness where

God goes belonging. To every riven thing he's made
there is given one shade
shaped exactly to the thing itself:
under the tree a darker tree;
under the man the only man to see

God goes belonging to every riven thing. He's made
the things that bring him near,
made the mind that makes him go.
A part of what man knows,
apart from what man knows,

God goes belonging to every riven thing he's made.

You can here him explain the origin of & read the poem here:


The transcript of the entire interview, as well as some of his other poems are here.