Saturday Sharing (My Finds Are Yours)

This edition of Saturday Sharing dabbles in lists, banned authors and their books, Cincinnati murals, roadside haiku in Atlanta, gorgeous artwork to "mend the world", and the art of electronic poetry generation that is based on the I Ching and a bit out of this world.

✭ The City of Cincinnati now boasts 28 murals in 24 different neighborhoods. Through MuralWorks, artists young and old work with communities' residents to create murals that inform, transform, and instill pride. A map to completed murals is here.

✭ List-making is nothing new. We all need, make, and use lists. Still, the lists at the twice-monthly online List Magazine are anything but prosaic. Want to know how to say a few words in 10 languages about to go extinct? List has the answer; it even footnotes it. Stay up to date with List on Twitter.

✭ Banned Books Week has passed but a list of censored, challenged, or banned authors lives on. Some of my favorite authors are on it. Writers' names are entered alphabetically for ease of reference, and the list is updated as need arises. You may cross-reference as well to an alphabetized list of banned books. The top censors and bookbanners in the United States are also collected into a handy list. After a few minutes with these lists, you'll be left wondering if maybe we'd be better off listing who is NOT censored, challenged, or banned.

✭ Working off prompts can yield some unexpected and delightful results. Poets who happen to be familiar with the I Ching or Book of Changes ought to experience at least once the I Ching Poetry Engine, which generates "visual poetry. . . narrated in an object-oriented graphic environment": five lines and approximately 30 words. Rather than try to describe this "6-bit state machine" in my own words, I urge you to visit the site and try it on your own. But first take a look at the explanation and examples of visual poems generated through the site and shown here. Go here to view some additional exhibitions. (My thanks go to Poets Online for highlighting this most unusual site. A compilation of online resources about the ancient Chinese text and its symbolism is found here.)

✭ The site Quilt will leave you exclaiming over the work of Kate Ransohoff, an artist who seeks to create Art to Mend the World™. This pdf contains the verses for the beautiful 36-page artwork "Sign of the Ribbons". Other artworks, including "A Letter to Artists", may be viewed as slideshows. 

✭ Atlanta artist John Morse has been accused of creating "litter on a stick", a rather unkind description of his "bandit haiku". Go here for a description of Morse's roadside poems and then take a peek at the brief video below.  Even The New Yorker had a little piece about the Morse dust-up.

Flux Film 001 | Morse from Proper Medium on Vimeo.