Poetry To Platonov… To Platonov... They said you liked simple people And complicated machines. They said that trains had sung Your lullabies for you and that You were afraid of women, Who could not think…or Were not enough manly. Your hands…Your hands were so Manly.
Poetry I envy the confidence of ignorance I envy the confidence of ignorance, The stillness of growing grass, The rustle of dead leaves. The majesty of trees succumbing To the changing seasons with No melancholia. I envy me too, if I look at myself as I look at things I cannot
Poetry I dance Flamenco in a Slavic dress I dance Flamenco in a Slavic dress, I say my prayers in languages that Prattle. Some say, never forget where you came from. Some say, know where you're going. Some say, do both. That's easy. Sometimes. The difficulty lies in how to be. Who
Essay On Faith Life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery. —Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek A ugustine didn’t say this, but somebody did and it is credited to the saint all over the internet: “The world is a book and those who
Poetry On the day the sadness hits my whole body is heavy carrying the weight of not being her life’s love. under my skin there is a racing of the heart which when distilled turns out to taste like adrenaline. imagine it was like this she was the person i
Artwork Art by Travis Payne 2022 | multimedia Artist’s Note I'm what you call a multimedia artist. I started out with physical media but have mostly gone full digital art though I do dip back into physical materials when I feel the call to. I tend to be inspired
Poetry MRI Let’s talk about, the giant tube, the ways & all the permutations to keep one’s cool. & by goes through & by cool I mean screaming until the lady I don't know where the idea originated, but turns out Or so says the lady & I
Poetry Time Capsule The shape of her hands is the shape of my longing as she digs into the earth. She finds the small toys that burrowed into the soil next to the vegetables. In her kitchen, she cradles the cut from the knife, her sister brought
Poetry the calculus of dusk it has been a problem of numbers in rows like sunflowers their sum differences the size of a space of a letter to be apart instead of a part in isolation we had to watch the unthinkable like tiger king and the deer walking
Artwork Self-Portrait This piece is a scan of a graphite self-portrait I completed in August of 2021. I’ve been interested in self-portraiture since I was very young—in recent years I’ve found the practice both healing and horrifying
Poetry equinox in big sur i. dawn under redwoods looks like deep night; any change of light is obscured by one thousand years of silent perseverance– burn marks slashed across maroon trunks, the patient stalwart
Cartoon Cartoons for Issue 4 by Brooke Bourgeois Artist’s Note Brooke is a cartoonist and illustrator who primarily finds inspiration at the intersection of unlikely themes. She is constantly ‘searching’ for jokes that are specifically suited to visual anchors, and this often involves re-imagining historical periods, fairy tale characters, and even
Photography Views from Concord Artist’s Note The images featured in this issue are from my series Transcendental Concord (Radius Books, 2018). The series is a visual interpretation of transcendentalism: a literary, philosophical, and social movement that developed from a community in Concord, Massachusetts. Through this project—which
Letter Letter to the Reader Dear Reader, Last December when we announced a new Editor-in-Chief, we also announced that instead of publishing Symposeum quarterly, we would publish twice a year: in the summer and in the winter. We would still experiment with form, explore new themes, and curate content
Essay Pathways to our Past The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and loitering. —Walt Whitman T he winter winds arrive late in November. The icy exhalation from the north barges into my yard, breaches the garden walls, and creeps ever so slightly
Essay Shapes of Love A s a teenager, love had been clearly laid out for me in church services and Bible studies. Love was sacrifice, it was sometimes difficult, it endured all burdens, it was outlined clearly in the Bible. Then there were the implicit definitions, too: love
Issue 3 - Searching Views from Walden Woods: A Triptych Left to Right: Autumn, View from the Emerson-Thoreau Amble (2018) | Autumn, View from Walden Woods (2018) | Concord Grape Vine, Ralph Waldo Emerson House (2018) Artist’s Note The images featured in this issue are from my series Transcendental Concord (Radius Books, 2018). The series
Issue 3 - Searching Reaching for the Stars Reaching for the Stars, micron pen on illustration board, 10" x 8", 2021American Dream, photograph, 10" x 8", 2021 Artist’s Note For so many people, America represents a place of new beginnings and new opportunities. That’s why in 2007, my family traveled
Issue 3 - Searching Series of paintings for Symposeum by Lucy Villeneuve Lemonade, acrylic on canvas, 20" x 24" (2021)Currently, acrylic on canvas, 20" x 24" (2021)Sunday, acrylic on canvas, 20" x 24" (2021)Marshmallow, acrylic on canvas, 20" x 24" (2021)Yurt, acrylic on canvas, 16" x 20" (2021) Artist’s Note I
Issue 3 - Searching Home is where you find it T he path to the summit of Scotts Bluff National Monument is Nebraska at its best. Morning walks among sweeping panoramas in the serenity of the prairie are treasured rituals for many of us who live nearby. So in 2015, when 25,000 tons
Issue 3 - Searching Searching for the Blue #1, acrylic on paper, 13" x 20" (2020)#2, acrylic on paper, 13" x 20" (2020)#3, acrylic on paper, 13" x 20" (2020)#4, acrylic on paper, 13" x 20" (2020)#5, acrylic on paper, 13" x 20" (2021)#6, acrylic on paper,
Issue 3 - Searching The Black Dogs of Enlightenment T he setting was old Tbilisi, a strange destination, fable-like. The rough brown bricks of the ancient baths, the second-story verandas, enclosed in the vernacular architectural style. The dry cliff faces and banks rising in random juts around the city. Scrub vegetation. In truth,
Issue 3 - Searching Jamais Poet’s Note I first realized that I was a multiracial person in kindergarten. When my mother came to eat lunch with me one day at school, her presence bewildered some of the other children. Many asked me afterwards if I was adopted. One
Issue 3 - Searching Letter to Readers Dear Reader, T he theme for this issue was chosen nearly half a year ago, before the delta variant, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and other unpredictable events. We are left searching now even more than we were then: for the right thing
Issue 3 - Searching Tracking Your Life A s a boy I spent every day in the South African bushveld apprenticing under some of the greatest Shangaan animal trackers in the world. I was taught to attune to a hidden world of stories and information etched faintly in the earth as