The Poetry of Sight

this is an online commonplace book as well as the home of ballast reviews

Wednesday, April 1, 2026

he paced the deck with his bantam swagger…

›
Digital Montage / Roy R. Behrens © 2012 John Dos Passos , The Best of Times: An Informal Memoir . New York: New American Library, 1966, p. 2...
Tuesday, March 31, 2026

cartoonist recalls meeting famous US generals

›
Sherman montage / © Roy R. Behrens Walt McDougall , This Is the Life! New York: Alfred Knopf, 1926— I was born in 1858, in Newark, NJ, and ...
Sunday, March 29, 2026

dream-like substitutions / Guiseppe Arcimboldo

›
Arcimboldo , Fruit Basket (upsidedown reversible) During all the years I taught university-level art and design (about 45 years), among the...
Thursday, March 5, 2026

the purposeful use of confusion / invention is

›
Hans Richter , Dada: Art and Anti-Art (New York: McGraw-Hill, n.d.), p. 145— One day [German Dadaist artist Kurt] Schwitters decided he wa...
Monday, March 2, 2026

plastic surgeon from Michigan meets the pope

›
Roy R. Behrens , Bus to Beijing , digital montage (©2004) Alec Guinness , Blessings in Disguise (Pleasantville NY: Akadine Press, 2001), p....

pus-tilence / the god of war is drunk with blood

›
Sherwood Anderson in H.H. Campbell, ed., The Sherwood Anderson Diaries , 1936-1941. Athens GA: University of Georgia Press, 1987— Went with...
Saturday, February 28, 2026

art prank / replacing old sockets with new ones

›
Roy R. Behrens , Deplorable Strikes ©2004 Jeffrey Vallance , quoted in Pranks , an edition of Re/Search (February 1988), p. 115— One day I...

have shriveled testicle from mumps / can't marry

›
Roy R. Behrens , Levitation © 2004 Danny Ballow, quoted in Elizabeth Stone , Black Sheep and Kissing Cousins: How Our Family Stories Shape...
Wednesday, February 4, 2026

William Blake, neuroscience, esthetics & sports

›
Above William Blake Poster (2011) © Roy R. Behrens . ••• Roy R. Behrens , Art, Design, and Brain Research: Non-Scientific Thoughts about N...
Tuesday, January 20, 2026

end of performative writing / writing for voice

›
Roy R. Behrens © 2005 Above Exhibition flyer for works by Mary Snyder Behrens (2005). ••• William H. Gass , interviewed in Tom LeClair and...

how do you like your blue-eyed bird, mr. death?

›
Roy R. Behrens , © digital montage Above One of my early digital montages (its title and date I can't recall). At the time I was intere...
Sunday, January 18, 2026

to catch a green lizard without its tail falling off

›
Above Roy R. Behrens , book cover design for Joseph Langland , The Sacrifice Poems . Cedar Falls IA: North American Review , 1975. ••• Lawr...
Saturday, January 17, 2026

Rainbow / machine-stitched appliqué and thread

›
Mary Snyder Behrens © 1986 Above Mary Snyder Behrens , Rainbow Sleeves (1986). Machine-stitched appliqué and thread on found fabric. 19...
Thursday, January 15, 2026

proof / the curse of whiskey undercuts longevity

›
Roy R. Behrens © 2011, digital montage (detail) Robert Kosmicki , quoted in Steven J. Zeitlin , et al., A Celebration of American Family Fo...
Wednesday, January 14, 2026

art is rare, sacred and hard work / no short cuts

›
Mary Snyder Behrens , Drawn Conclusions No. 14, Cleave 2005 Anthony Burgess , But Do Blondes Prefer Gentlemen?: Homage to Qwertyuiop and Oth...

slow art / deep-running skill and doggedness

›
Roy R. Behrens (©2011), Barbarian Seville . Digital book montage . Robert Hughes in "A Bastion Against Cultural Obscenity" [a spe...
Tuesday, January 13, 2026

Indian eyes / the role of ocular culture in high art

›
© Mary Snyder Behrens Above Mary Snyder Behrens , Title and current location unknown. Machine embroidered wall art / altered Brownie Scout ...
Sunday, January 11, 2026

not funny adults / do you know what happened

›
Above Roy R. Behrens , acrylic painting [title and whereabouts unknown], 1968. ••• Deborah Andersen , Dialogue: An Art Journal {March/Apri...

bush whacked / rhymes with porky, no offense

›
Above Roy R. Behrens , painting titled Homage to Arshile Gorky . © 1967. As an undergraduate art student, I had become greatly interested i...
Saturday, January 10, 2026

an anagram overkill / What's for repas, Eclat?

›
Nature Poster / Roy R. Behrens © 2019 W.V. Quine , The Time of My Life: An Autobiography (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), p. xii— At Oxfo...

the endangered practice of designing posters

›
Poster / Roy R. Behrens © 2019 Above Roy R. Behrens © 2019, Poster (a collection of twenty-five bird posters). There are few things I enjo...
Wednesday, January 7, 2026

the transition from man to gluttonous mongoose

›
Poster, Roy R. Behrens © 2011 Edmund Gosse [describing the British poet Algernon Charles Swinburne ]— I t was important, at meals, to keep...
Tuesday, January 6, 2026

I mean the thing you use to rub out mistakes

›
Altered book montages, Roy R. Behrens © 2004 Bessie Head [South African novelist], "Some Happy Memories of Iowa" in Paul Engle ,...

awaiting the shared use of a set of false teeth

›
Altered book montages, Roy R. Behrens © 2004 Kingsley Amis , Memoirs (New York: Summit Books, 1991), p. 1.— [My paternal grandfather] was ...

milkman comes up the walk and pauses to talk

›
Altered Book Montages / Roy R. Behrens © 2004 Susanah Mayberry , My Amicable Uncle: Recollections About Booth Tarkington (West Lafayette, ...
›
Home
View web version

About Me

Roy R. Behrens
View my complete profile
Powered by Blogger.