Nancy Huntting, Aesthetic Realism consultant, writes:

We all have both lightness and seriousness—but often in ways that trouble us. Can we make sense of these opposites in ourselves? Art shows we can! Read “Always with Us: Lightness & Weight,” the great new issue of The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known.

The commentary by Ellen Reiss begins:

Dear Unknown Friends:

In this issue we publish two very different works by Eli Siegel. First, a poem of 1961, in which he writes about words, sounds, that have taken on a certain new meaning in our own time—tweet and twitter. Second, we reprint a work that is ever so literary, rich in culture, philosophy, kindness (also playfulness): “Death by Various Hands,” first published in the August 1930 issue of Poetry World. It is composed of short essays on the subject of death, written in the manner, and from the viewpoint of five different authors. And Eli Siegel is able to convey the quality of each of these writers, be within their various ways of seeing and expression. He doesn’t necessarily agree with what he has these persons say; but in each instance, what he has written is beautiful.

There is Max Beerbohm, much better known then than now. (He lived from 1872 to 1956.) In “Max Beerbohm: Somewhat, Anyway” his style is represented in prose that meanders, is graceful, has a chattiness that somehow becomes also grand.

Then there is Samuel Johnson (1709-84), represented by prose that is nobly, magnificently sensible in the 18th-century manner. Mr. Siegel has Johnson tell us that some thoughts about death are a means we have of chiding ourselves for making less of life. And he has Johnson write, at the end of that second essay, about the ugliness of death even as Johnson honors the mysterious bigness of the universe.

Next there is Walter Pater (1839-94). Mr. Siegel presents him as saying that death is an element of reality itself: death is an aspect of the fact that reality is rest and motion—with death an utter form of rest. And Eli Siegel gives us the quiet nuance and precision of the Pater prose style—its delicacy inseparable from majesty, power, life.  >> Read more