Art   Literature   Contemplation

Spring 2018 Leaping Clear

We’re filled with spring energy and happy to bring you the chance to enjoy another issue of accomplished artists, musicians, and writers. Their work invites us to look below the surfaces of our lives and the world, to contemplate what it means to be alive. We find ourselves enlivened as we perceive the images, hear the sounds, and apprehend the language in these works, created from intentional grounds of contemplative practice.

Yvonne Rand’s essay “On Seeing” is a profound account of what can happen when we engage deeply with an art form, in her case, a painting by Agnes Martin. Any art form, from literature to music, has this possibility, if the artist and the reader, listener, or viewer are completely present for the experience—of creating and of engaging.

“As I left the house I looked up into the early evening sky.

The sky was filled with layers of fog and clouds;
small patches of blue showed
and the last light of day lingered.
The grayness was incandescent and the color and light
mottled, layered, varied, changing.

The beauty of the evening sky elicited joy, and I knew that my seeing of that evening sky was a seeing directly made possible by my time seeing the Martin painting.”

We hope you enjoy the works in this issue, and that they enliven you in some way, perhaps even bring you joy.


Blog

2018 Spring Refreshing
As we continue into our second year of publication, we're reaching more and more people who tell us that Leaping Clear's celebration of the arts and meditative practices nourishes both their inner and outer lives. Thank you for joining us and for sharing the site.

We're delighted to feature one of our favorite poets, Jane Hirshfield, in this issue. The power, insight, and beauty of her poems and essays amplify the deep place poetry holds in human history. . . .

features

Poetry by Jane Hirshfield

Music from “Limbic Hymnal” by Roseminna Watson

Poetry by Robert Vivian

Video by Georg Koszulinski