Peter Adams

A Gary Snyder zen poem reads:
“In the shaping of the axe the model is close at hand.”
As a sculptor who uses axes, chisels, gouges, rasps and other tools-of-removal, I am fond of this poem, not only because of its multiple koan meanings, but because of literal wisdom in the notion that if one wants to [...]

Lifer
Hunched over hard white bread
and plastic soup bowl filled with gruel,
he looked like a stork, a silly angel,
all neck and bony shoulder-wings
and awkward beak.
His head lifted, then fell
in a slow deliberate dance,
three, four times, dough-skinned
in a gray room sickened by yellow light.
He kept his eyes shut tight.
Outside the prison dining hall,
a turnkey slammed and locked
the [...]

January 2, 2008. Here we all are at the start of another year. Each one of us on our individual journeys doing the best we can dealing with the winds and currents that buffet our boats as they course their way through life. May we all have a safe passage to whatever awaits us.

To represent [...]

In imagination is the preservation of wilderness. By this I mean one of two things. The first is that even while living deep within the confines of a city a person can close their eyes and imagine—quite vividly—the smells, visual details and tactile qualities of the green earth that they have in the past experienced. [...]