poem moons

a while back i used an image of a piece of art by michigan artist jim pallas to complement an entry i wrote entitled “the red fish”.

here’s jim himself:


jim’s described as a kinetic artist and it is through his kinetic sculptures that he has garnered his well-deserved reputation as a receiver and transmitter of “zen lunacy”. “energy is what his work is about, both technically and spiritually.” (Tom Bloomer, Detroit Artists Monthly).

i decided to revisit jim’s website recently to have a closer look at what he is doing. to my great fortune, i discovered that he has magically brought together two artforms in such a way that they have entered that sanctified realm in which my insatiable and sometimes irresponsible need for objects overcomes the more responsible element of me which says food and shelter comes before everything else.

jim has taken some of the most exquisite poetry and inscribed each poem onto what appear to be pieces of metal formed to resemble a stylized moon.

the poems he has selected as worthy of inscribing onto his moon sculptures are beautiful, powerful works by the haiku poets basho and issa (not the artist formerly known as jane siberry by the way, but her namesake!), e.e. cummings, and carl sandburg.

each piece of writing, like the object they are stamped onto, is a symbolic representation of the experience they describe and so the pieces take on a multivalent quality as they reflect upon the reflection of the source of their light.

the sun.

so, while materially static, they take on a spiritually kinetic quality, dancing between the poem, the sculpture, and the object they describe. like jim’s other truly kinetic work, it requires the viewer to bring about the dance.

come on, take a look and see what i am talking about.


Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

(Carl Sandburg)



All my friends
viewing the moon –
an ugly bunch


Clouds appear
and bring to men a chance to rest
from looking at the moon.

(Basho)



crossing the river
taking a leak…
summer moon


 Left behind
 by the thief
 the moon in the window.
(Issa)



luminous tendril of celestial wish

(whying diminutive bright deathlessness
to these my not themselves believing eyes
adventuring, enormous nowhere from)

querying affirmation; virginal

immediacy of precision:more
and perfectly more most ethereal
silence through twilight's mystery made flesh-

dreamslender exquisite white firstful flame

-new moon!as(by the miracle of your
sweet innocence refuted)clumsy some
dull cowardice called a world vanishes,

teach disappearing also me the keen
illimitable secret of begin

  (e.e.cummings)

this last piece is not in jim’s “moon poem” series but i include it here because it is so simply beautiful. comprised of shards of mirror, “mirrored moon #1” captures the whole of its surroundings, shatters it into mirrored fragments and reassembles it into a new wholeness that compels the viewer to see the world in an entirely new way. without being truly holographic, in its rearranging of the world’s constituent parts, “mirrored moon #1” re-presents the world much as a shattered hologram affording the viewer the opportunity to more clearly and more fully see the whole in the part and the part in the whole.



i selected the following poem by the sufi poet jalal ad-din muhammad rumi as a textual accompaniment.

moon mirror

you’ve no idea how hard I’ve looked for a gift to bring you.
nothing seemed right.
what’s the point of bringing gold to the gold mine, or water to the ocean.
everything I came up with was like taking spices to the orient.
it’s no good giving my heart and my soul because you already have these.
so - i’ve brought you a mirror.
look at yourself and remember me.

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

here's the mirrored moon up close:


thanks very much to jim pallas for allowing me to reproduce images of his work here.
to visit more of jim's work go here: http://www.ylem.org/artists/jpallas/