The Poetry of Sight

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

Wednesday, November 26, 2025

Arthur Koestler / not in his most admirable state

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Koestler on creativity Sidney Hook , Out of Step: An Unquiet Life in the 20th Century . New York: Harper and Row, 1987, pp. 441-444— The out...
Saturday, November 22, 2025

the professor cannot meet with his asses today

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Digital Montage [detail] / Roy R. Behrens Ralph Oesper [referring to the 19th century Scottish physicist Sir William Thomson ] in The Huma...

Einstein's visitors / a conspiratorial bowl of soup

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Digital Montage [detail] / Roy R. Behrens Lancelot Law Whyte (recalling a visit to Albert Einstein's home), quoted in G.J. Whitrow, Ei...
Friday, November 21, 2025

pungently pointed puns best punished promptly

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Anon / visual pun Puns, pungently pointed and perpetrated promptly are productive of a proruption of a pretty proportion of piquant pleasure...
Tuesday, November 11, 2025

BALLAST Quarterly Review / all issues online

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At the moment I am preparing an online class session on the experience of founding a magazine in 1985. The magazine was BALLAST Quarterly Re...
Sunday, November 9, 2025

Simultaneous contrast / its role in art and design

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In a popular online video talk , there is an overview of the function and importance of simultaneous contrast in art and design. Its releva...
Sunday, September 28, 2025

sight unseen talk coming to Burlington Iowa

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RELATED LINKS   Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work? /  Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflag...
Thursday, September 11, 2025

Expatriate: from Iowa to the heart of France

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Janet Hulstrand (Brooklyn Bridge) I was initially drawn to this book simply because of its title. I grew up in the American Midwest, wandere...
Sunday, September 7, 2025

Independence IA / episodes in its colorful past

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There are twenty-five essays in a new book by Roy R. Behrens about American Midwest history, titled DREAMS OF FIELDS: MEMORY TRACES OF IOWA...

Webster City, Iowa / author witnesses atrocities

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Near the end of WWII, [Iowa-born novelist Mackinlay] Kantor was serving in Europe as an American war correspondent. Embedded with the US Ar...
Wednesday, September 3, 2025

is he related to German architect Peter Behrens

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Tuesday, August 26, 2025

Iowa / past and future new book public events

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Just posted on LinkedIn. For details, see online link to new book at DREAMS OF FIELDS: Memory Traces of Iowa’s Past (Ice Cube Press 2025). ...

Famous modern photographer from Des Moines

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More Info [ Gertrude] Käsebier (née Gertrude Stanton) had a photographic studio on Fifth Avenue in New York…Her career had taken off late i...

from Tipton, Iowa, to the California gold fields

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more info In early 1849, Sarah Royce and her husband were living in a small community about three miles from Tipton, Iowa , 60 miles west o...
Saturday, August 23, 2025

Buffalo Bill's riotous night in Prairie du Chien

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To be truthful, not all the midwestern engagements of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West were free of controversy. The most egregious example occurr...
Friday, August 22, 2025

Fort Atkinson IA: a sad Machine Age sacrifice

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Fort Atkinson, Iowa What can we do? Probably nothing, one suspects, as we witness individual lives daily impaired (while others of course ar...

Mt Ayr IA / Corn Parade WPA Mural Featured

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There is lots of interest in the WPA ( Works Progress Administration ) murals that were funded by the government during the Depression . A ...
Monday, April 21, 2025

he and i sat down together and became friends

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Roy R. Behrens, Montage (detail) Kurt Vonnegut , in William Rodney Allen, ed., Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut (Jackson: University Press ...
Wednesday, April 9, 2025

ART / DESIGN TALKS begin Wednesday, May 7

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NEW SERIES of talks on art and design, beginning Wednesday, May 7, 2025, at the HEARST CENTER FOR THE ARTS in Cedar Falls IA. Presenter: Ro...
Saturday, April 5, 2025

Mary Snyder Behrens / currently exhibited work

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Mary Snyder Behrens / 2025 Tomorrow afternoon marks the opening "artists' reception" for an exhibition (12:00-2:00 pm), title...
Wednesday, March 26, 2025

book design and when work is truly meaningful

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Above Merle Armitage cover design for his book, George Gershwin, Man and Legend. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1958. ••• Bernard Wol...

Chap-Book Style Poster for Bicycle Club / 1895

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Above Will H. Bradley , Bicycle Poster (1895). ••• Billie Holiday— They think they can make fuel from horse manure…Now, I don’t know if yo...

title slide / what have you to share with us today

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Speaking of class meetings and education, while they still exist, I am currently preparing a series of three online talks (for OLLI Drake ) ...
Saturday, March 8, 2025

dreams of fields / book of essays coming soon

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An advance announcement has just been made by Ice Cube Press (North Liberty IA) of my soon to be published book, titled DREAMS OF FIELDS: M...
Tuesday, February 11, 2025

metamorphosis / shape-shifting and animation

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Of late we’ve been exploring the workings of metamorphosis , the transition of a single form from one shape to another. A phenomenon not unr...
Monday, February 3, 2025

Buffalo Bill look-alike becomes an airborne hero

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Wherever I’ve lived, I think I’ve always been interested in what has happened in the past in that state, region or location. South, East, We...
Thursday, January 30, 2025

dinner scraps of great horned owls and others

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Wikipedia article : A pellet , in ornithology, is the mass of undigested parts of a bird's food that some bird species occasionally regu...
Saturday, December 28, 2024

an ill-fated way to celebrate war's end in 1945

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Digital Montage © Roy R. Behrens 2024 Above One of a series of in-process montages having to do with the Ballets Russes (the Russian Balle...
Wednesday, December 25, 2024

Einstein steals tobacco from unsuspecting Bohr

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Above One of a series of in process montages having to do with the Ballets Russes (the Russian Ballet). Copyright © Roy R. Behrens, 2024. ...
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