I am convinced that the Gospel is for all of life and ought to fuel the soul as well as the imagination. To that end, I regularly try to set aside some time and space each Friday to encourage the pursuit of creativity. I try to do this in a couple of different ways. I regularly link to Joe Kennedy, Will Turner, Timmy Brister, Steve McCoy, Joe Thorn, who post photographs on Fridays, along with the Friday Flickr Group in which they participate. I also often highlight a poet (who may or may not be Christian, but who above all, uses words well) and I highlight a musical artist who makes at least one track available for free and legal download.

This week’s featured poet is Robert Frost (1874-1963). Frost was an American poet frequently drawing inspiration from life in the New England states. Unlike many poets who only find acclaim posthumously, Frost was highly honored in his own lifetime, even receiving the Pulitzer Prize. Today’s poem is Mending Wall:

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,

But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father’s saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

• Visit Wikipedia’s page dedicated to Robert Frost
• Read Frost for yourself

Continuing with the tradition begun last week, this week’s featured artist/work of art is Jackson Pollock (1912-1956). Pollock was an American painter. Many consider him to be one of the forerunners and at the forefront of the abstract expressionist movement. Pollock is perhaps best known for his unorthodox “painting” style in which he would often fling or drip the paint rather than applying it with a smooth brushstroke. A struggling alcoholic for much of his life, Pollock’s life was cut short by an aclohol-related car accident on August 11, 1956. In November of 2006, Pollock’s ” No. 5, 1948″ (pictured) became the world’s most expensive, selling to an undisclosed private bidder for the amount of $140,000,000. Pollock continually and continues to challenge many’s notions about what truly constitutes painting.

• Visit Wikipedia’s Jackson Pollock page
• Visit Wikipedia’s list of the world’s most expensive paintings
• Browse Jackson Pollock books

Today’s featured musician is one of my new favorite composers. I admit that I actually know precious little about music. I don’t fully understand things like microtonal composition and just intonation, but Lou Harrison (1917-2003) is known for working within these structures. Part of what many call “new music,” on the New Albion label, and associated with the Other Minds music festival, Harrison worked at combining many Western and Eastern elements into his compositions. The most notable was the presence of gamelan in pieces paired with “traditional” instruments such as violin and cello. Harrison is broadly associated with minimalism, though he works with less repetition than some others.

• Download “Threnody for Carlos Chavez” (excerpt)
• Download “Gigue & Musette”
• Visit the Wikipedia page dedicated to Lou Harrison
• Purchase Lou Harrison’s music for yourself