Half-Lives

"Half-life" is an odd term since it emanates from the elements. Humans have short half-lives. Here today gone tomorrow. It's stunning how quickly people pickup their things and leave the consciousness of other human beings forever. What’s the rush? Sorry to inform you, life goes on very nicely without you. No need to fret, thank you. One good thing is that most people are like Miss Havisham, cloaked in clutter. However, a quick exit from the stage, enables the minions to get rid of remains. Oh yes, now and then you will come to mind,  say when the word “soup” is mentioned. You like your soup "hot!"

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Fountain

"Fountain" by Marcel Duchamp (1917)

You have the found object or “objet Trouvé” epitomized most famously by Duchamp’s "Fountain." Then there are the the lost objects that people try to recover. Are you someone who is always crying out “where’s my phone?” There are those who would lose their heads if they weren't attached to their necks and some who routinely lose their minds. There are valued items that are stolen as is the case with the bike in De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves. But what about those things that disappear of their own volition? You can’t find  them anywhere. If you leave your cellphone in your freezer, you may want to discuss it in therapy. Are the things that refuse to show up part of an unconscious deaccessioning project that has yet to reveal itself. No sooner had you purchased Dan Simmon’s Hyperion at the advice of a friend than that piece of sci-fi went into outer space, into an orbit comprising space/time coordinates that were no longer part of your universe.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

En Plein Air

 

South Fork Poetry: ‘En Plein Air’

“En Plein Air,” mixed media, 2026, by Hallie Cohen.

Courtesy of the Artist

By Francis Levy

April 2, 2026 

I am standing by my

easel en plein air

right here on Main

 

usually there is a group of us down by the inlet

but I don’t see any of those

“No painting from life” signs

the source of the trepidation is:

am I getting things right?

am I exploiting their pain?

is this a justification for art?

 

solitary figure under street lamp

go blank

dark light to draw the figure

 

Nardy Pest Control

Yardley & Pino Funeral Home

 

Valhalla is where everybody who is anybody’s going

the L.I.E. is one those conversations that goes on forever

 

You’re all

over town

without spreading yourself thin

or being unfaithful

and the ripples of the current,

Swann’s Way on Circle Beach

always the mad honking

flocks of geese over Georgica Pond

country cousin of herds of yellow cabs

I started in the sad light

when everyone was still sleeping

the houses were

tombstones in my mind

shadow dancing is what I call these kinds of strokes it’s nothing new

for me

 

I could have just taken a shot with my cell

but it’s not the same

it’s complex

 

I’m the town crier

he finally died is where my art begins

but it’s a tale of estrangement, and love

this one loved him

that one not

then there’ll be the church

I won’t be able to paint the service

and how this one was or was not talking

to whom

---

Francis Levy is a Wainscott resident. “En Plein Air” is part of a recently completed poetry collection, “The Unavoidable Imminence of the Inexplicable.”

 

Taste

Focus groups are used by advertisers and purveyors to psyche out the desires of populations. Vance Packard the author of books like The Status Seekers epitomized the world of 50s advertising. His version of popularized sociology epitomized the  post-war consumer culture. Dwight McDonald famously wrote Mass Cult and Mid Cult. Mad Men presented another look at the attempt to survey and profit from consumerism. Taste is the common phenomenon. Lionel Trilling ‘s The Liberal Imagination is an attempt to help readers of literature examine good from bad. The Dow and The Pulitzer are both forms of measurement and certain bestsellers represent the meeting point between commerce and art.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

A Connecticut Yankee

Alignment refers to celestial bodies. Human wishes often mimic the movement of planets and moons. Lunar and solar eclipses, interplanetary and stellar movements are the essence of cosmology and also astrology but they also function as metaphors in an imaginative context. When you have your chart read, you're looking into a crystal ball. On the other hand heavenly bodies can be used to obfuscate.  Remember how Hank Morgan uses a solar eclipse in Connecticut Yankee to convince Arthur of his magical powers.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Andrenalin

Karl Marx

Controversy produces Adrenalin. Adrenalin is an antidote to priapism, which can create necrotic tissue. It’s also the chemical cause for impotence. You get anxious and lose your erection. Or if you’re a Hegelian "world-historical figure," adrenalin produces the antithesis that facilitates The Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

read "Current Affairs" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Brave New World

Scarcity produces demand and hence cost. You have to pay a lot for those things that are in short supply. Can emotion be commodified? Imagine a commissary where one comes for states of mind. You might reply “go to a rave.” There you can acquire MDMA, LSD, cannabis, psilocybin, Bennie’s etc. remember Brave New World and Soma? The price of authenticity is the awareness of death. Unfortunately life’s ending has produced its own meme in which you're not turned into ashes but rather a piece of data. Will Costco sell suicidal thoughts or a perfume named Happiness?

read "Current Affairs" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star