art ~ spirit ~ transformation
e*lix*ir

e*lix*ir   #2
spring 2016
 

TABLE OF CONTENTS


Editorial

  • Art at the Intersection of the Worlds

  • Poetry

  • Michael Fitzgerald
  • YoungIn Doe (in English and Korean)
  • Arlette George

  • Fiction

  • The Munich Girl
    by Phyllis Ring

  • Memoir

  • Birds
    by Holiday Reinhorn

  • Writing Life

  • Notes on the Poetic Process
    by Michael Fitzgerald

  • Essays

  • The Art of Ecstasy in the Poetry of Stanley Kunitz
    by Sandra Lynn Hutchison

  • Looking Back on Books

  • Fiction: Big Cats
    by Holiday Reinhorn
  • Nonfiction: Chinese Brushstrokes
    by Sandra Lynn Hutchison

  • Art

  • Paintings
    by Jean Reece
  • Photographs
    by Bev Rennie


  • ← Previous       Next →


    Photo by Bev Rennie

    MICHAEL FITZGERALD

    The Uses of Art

    What use art? A stretcher
    to wheel in the wounded —

    a monument of blossoms —
    a bit of latticework on the temple —

    each painting, a record of a psychic diver —
    each poem, an artifact —

    life to be lived as a symphony or
    maybe just some chamber music for the few —

    each breath, a brush stroke —
    each day, a dance.


    Concert Zen

    You lean into your part
              in life’s symphony

    with Concert Zen — acute,
              focused, engaged —

    you anticipate, obey
              the conductor’s baton —

    you listen for your part
              in the ensemble —

    as Dizzy Gillespie said
              of be-bop, you play

    so everybody else sounds good —
              no matter how minor

    the part, the playing needs to be
              musical — you demand of yourself

    an attentiveness that is prayer —
              rehearsal sense in the every day —
              solo or not, to make music is worship.


    Song of the Planet

    I sing of the planet
    rimmed with light

    the Untrammeled, the Unconditioned,
    and a horizon of possibility.

    A classical Indian sitar
    player improvises for hours

    and the Native American flute
    and West African drum players

    celebrate the coming and
    going of day.

    Deep into the evening
    I listen to Chopin Nocturnes

    or Bach keyboard suites
    and reflect on the day

    as the music pours over me,
    and lean toward the auburn dawn.



    Bio:   Michael Fitzgerald is the author of numerous volumes of poetry, nonfiction, and children’s literature and the winner of several awards. He is a Pulitzer Prize nominee and has studied at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. He has edited two anthologies on the arts, Creative Circle and Where Art and Faith Converge. He has worked on projects for the American Jazz Museum, the Association for Bahá’í Studies, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the National Endowment for the Arts, Sarah Lawrence College, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the University of Michigan and others.