by Natascha Holenstein
Picture me not as I am now, but as a young girl, sucking the stems of sour grass and weaving the bitten stems in my hair. Continue reading “On Having a Body”
On Having a Body
After the Art – Issue 30 – December 2025
Welcome to After the Art’s thirtieth issue.
We hope you enjoy these five essays:
“Phantasmagoria: A Gathering of Spirits” by Matthew T Phillips
“Stone Hymn” by Sally Miles
“The Sleep of Reason” by Kimmo Rosenthal
“What Van Gogh Teaches Us about Writing Poetry” by Ginger Hanchey
“Orange and Other Adventures” by Dian Parker
Phantasmagoria: A gathering of spirits
by Matthew T Phillips
Hands splayed over a cave wall. Their fingers traced by clay dust sprayed through a hollowed bone pipe. A people speaking through negative space. Unseen for a thousand years. Continue reading “Phantasmagoria: A gathering of spirits”
The Sleep of Reason
by Kimmo Rosenthal
I was fortunate several years ago to see Francisco Goya’s series of etchings, Los Caprichos, in person at the Hyde Museum in Glens Fall, New York. Continue reading “The Sleep of Reason”
What Van Gogh Teaches Us about Writing Poetry
by Ginger Hanchey
“The figure of a labourer — some furrows in a ploughed field — a bit of sand, sea and sky — are serious subjects, so difficult, but at the same time so beautiful, that it is indeed worthwhile to devote one’s life to the task of expressing the poetry within them.”
— Vincent Van Gogh
Continue reading “What Van Gogh Teaches Us about Writing Poetry”
Orange and Other Adventures
by Dian Parker
When I was a senior in high school, I ate an entire bag of oranges while lying in the dark talking to my best friend on the telephone. Continue reading “Orange and Other Adventures”
After the Art – Issue 29 – September 2025
Welcome to After the Art’s twenty-ninth issue.
We hope you enjoy these three essays:
“What Returns” by Jehanne Dubrow
“Where to Go” by Kennedy Phillips
“Time’s Arrow (Flies in Only One Direction)” by Jenny Apostol
Continue reading “After the Art – Issue 29 – September 2025”
What Returns
by Jehanne Dubrow
In The Return, a recent cinematic retelling of The Odyssey, the opening shot shows us Telamachus who stares out at a violent ocean, perhaps thinking of the father he can’t remember. Continue reading “What Returns”
Where to Go
by Kennedy Phillips
No stopping. No sinking down. Like a branch
floats on water, the body does not go under.
Like a tree seeded among dark rocks, the body
leans where it must. Or fails.
– excerpt from Camille Dungy’s poem “Survival”
Do these four feel welcomed on the levee, do they feel they belong by the river’s side? Continue reading “Where to Go”
After the Art 