Poetry Reading Canceled

This was the night for our poetry reading at the Arts Council, but Cookie called this morning and said it was canceled due to illness and other member business. I'm right disappointed. I had planned to read my Mother Teresa poem, and the one I wrote a long time ago about Andrea del Sarto's Madonna of the Harpies (above).

Somehow my blog has got messed up. It will no longer let me position pictures to left or right; they all come out centered, and I can't control the size. Jed and Ramey say they can't post to it sometimes. I hope everyone will keep posting--hit the Refresh button under View, if you get a "Service Unavailable" message.

I really appreciate Ruth's looking in and posting occasionally. New readers welcome!

I'm glad the picture enlarges when you click on it. I love this painting. The base is decorated with sphinxes, which have been misidentified as harpies, accounting for the popular name of the work. They look more like harpies than sphinxes, I guess.

Andrea was called "The Perfect Painter." Robert Browning wrote a wonderful poem about him and his unfaithful wife--Andrea's wife, not Browning's.