Great statement about the power of art

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From a recent New Yorker review of the Henry Taylor show at the Whitney:

“. . .art has no obligation to behave itself. There are no purely moral ways of looking, nor purely immoral ones. There is only looking, and the artists who do it because they’d rather die than not.”

Jackson Arn, The New Yorker, Oct. 30, 2023

My poem “Sell Your Soul to the Devil at the Crossroads” just got published on FERAL!

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I’m so pleased–Feral is such a handsome publication, and I’m especially honored to have my poem paired there with art by K.C. Ricci. The poem appears in the June 2023 Music issue. Click on the “Continue reading” link below to see my poem in the issue, and the great piece of art, then go on to read (and see! and savor!) the entire issue. (My poem is a sonnet, so–a common problem online–I see the lineation one way on my phone’s tiny screen and another way on my ipad, and then still another way on my desktop computer. If you want to see the line breaks, I’ve attached a pdf.)

‘Sell your soul to the Devil at the crossroads’ by Jane Wiseman

Here’s a scan of the pdf:

The whole idea of selling your soul to the Devil (or a god!) at a crossroads in exchange for great music goes back to antiquity. My favorite instance is the bluesman Tommy Johnson, who supposedly made just such an exchange. Most people mistakenly ascribe this story to Robert Johnson, yet another even more famous bluesman. Although Johnson sang a song about such a transaction, he apparently never made a pact with the Dark Lord himself. You can read about this on my speculative fiction blog if you want to know more.