#239 - What I found in Amsterdam

An episode from 9/7/26: Tonight, I talk about a recent trip to Amsterdam. At the great art museums there I suddenly found myself wondering if the overcrowding in them didn’t suggest what I’ve been saying for a long time on this podcast: that great meaning and intensity is usually found in private experiences. In this case, in the memory of having seen so many great works in person, or actually just in reproduction, even on postcards or t-shirts. The paintings I mention are: Vermeer’s Milkmaid and Little Street, Rembrandt’s Jewish Bride and Old Woman Reading, Henrik Avercamp’s Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters, Van Gogh’s Yellow House and Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds, and Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Deijman. Finally, I mention visiting the Esnoga, or Portuguese Synagogue. I close the episode reading part of a letter that the American poet, Hart Crane, wrote when he was twenty four years old. It was written in response to his father’s offer of a job in the family business, and you can read more of it here, or in O My Land, My Friends: The Selected Letters of Hart Crane. The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts. Email me at [email protected].