Devon Balwit: “Recently, my daughter visited and said she couldn’t sleep due to the sound of helicopters overhead all night. We were mystified. Last night, we were woken up to the same sound—not a small news helicopter or an emergency copter, but the large army copters I remember from my time in SoCal living near military bases. However, the internet/newspaper couldn’t enlighten me as to what they were doing or even whether they had been there at all. Like so much in life, there’s a background of menace, but the foreground is our comfortable habit and the beauty of whatever season.” (web)
A squat, bald Jew … had stepped suddenly out of nowhere, wanting something, because that was the sort he was. He thought himself urbane and thought he had stepped away from his heritage as nimbly as he had skipped out of a doorway, whereas in fact everything he did, everything he wore or carried, and each affectation, revealed his nature, his background, and his ideals.
—Evan S. Connell, Mr. Bridge
Devon Balwit: “On the same day of the Tree of Life Synagogue attack I read an anti-semitic passage in the lovely novel, Mr. Bridge. It made me think: Media vita in morte sumus—In the midst of life we are in death—we Jews, always a hair’s breadth away from being scapegoated for something. But we’ve survived a long while. We’re tenacious.” (web)
“Beer, Buoy, Boat, Board” by Devon BalwitPosted by Rattle
Ekphrastic Challenge, September 2018: Artist’s Choice
Image: “Back of the Beach” by Karen Kraco. “Beer, Buoy, Boat, Board” was written by Devon Balwit for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, September 2018, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.
Comment from the artist, Karen Kraco: “Reading through these poems reminded me of the individual lenses through which we each view the world. Poets took this in so many different directions, with compelling voices. Picking just one was hard. I think I wound up choosing ‘Beer, Buoy, Boat, Board’ because it captures the otherness and separateness in the scene that led me to make ‘Back of the Beach.’ Although I had race in mind when I took the shot, the poem feels more universal, examining our discomfort in the presence of those who are different from or set apart from us, and our tendency to turn away from that discomfort.”
“Cinderella Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” by Devon BalwitPosted by Rattle
Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2017: Artist’s Choice
Image: “Cinderella Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” by Barbara Graff. “Cinderella Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” was written by Devon Balwit for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2017, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.
Comment from the artist, Barbara Graff: “Of all of the wonderful poems I read, I was drawn to Devon Balwit’s ‘Cinderella Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.’ This poem with its lovely imagery, gently touches the soul of what I tried to bring forth in the painting.”
Image: “Agnes Was Here” by Jody Kennedy. “Saved or Spared” was written by Devon Balwit for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, September 2017, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.
Comment from the artist, Jody Kennedy, on this selection: “I really appreciated all of the poems I read (thank you poets), but in the end this writer’s interpretation of the image won me over. It was one of several poems with, surprisingly, a Catholic theme, which I loved. There is a beautiful back and forth tension and in the end we aren’t quite sure, as the title implies, ‘if we’d been saved or merely spared.’”
