returning to the source

there's a lot of talk on the print blogs about treasure found or envied on ebay and elsewhere. most of these fall into the general category i call japonisme, ie. drawn from the styles and methods of the newly found japanese prints that had made their way to the west.

what may sometimes be forgotten is that one may find treasures on ebay or elsewhere that is less the derivative and more the original. (by the way, the beak on the egret is color-added by me.)

now of course, these distinctions become hopelessly tangled when we talk about the era around 1900, give or take 20 years, when these were made. unquestionably, the influence had been felt in both directions. though to my eyes, it's easy to tell which is western and which is japanesse.

in any case, these can be a delight on their own standing. now, i've "prettified" them, and hope i haven't made them much worse, but i was only trying to compensate for the difficulties involved in photographing an item to list and not for any deficiencies in the art itself.

it's just amazing to me what's available for so little; treasures indeed. looking at the monkeys, the bunnies, the birds, from both cultures it can be very interesting to notice the differences and the similarities.

while there are numerous japanese print shops that offer these illustrated books, on ebay i've found only one. this seller, who goes by 'utagawa123,' offers a tremendous amount of these beautiful books, which seem to be in wonderful condition, and whose prices all start at $9.99

the prices do get bid up sometimes, but i found only 3 that had gone over the neighborhood of $300, and some end up selling for much less. all but one of the images here are from her ebay stock. the one is the top right, that gorgeous swan. it comes from Morra Japanese Art, who also offers many wonderful ehon, books.

of course, if you're like me, more inclined to look and learn than to collect, there are always the MFA in Boston, and the NYC Public Library Digital Collection. there are millions of other places -- enjoy finding them on your own!

only the wind comes

I INVITE THE ANGEL GABRIEL,
BUT ONLY THE WIND COMES

The wind again, this time wheeling
down from the northwest
and dumping rain, the wind-chimes in the yard
banging like hammers
and the gates slamming on their hinges.
And then it has passed
and it‘s time to go outside and
walk in the winter grass, the color now
of old celery and cardboard.
The yard is littered with tangerines,
hard and green.
Now it’s time to advance and gather them up. I am
not the chosen one to whom the Angel speaks.
I don’t mind. I don’t
believe I could bear up under that kind of pressure.
I don’t mind
speaking to the Magnificence,
night after night, without an answer.

Something was loose in the yard, that’s clear — something that asks
for a new way of speaking, which I haven’t figured out yet. Here
is a shingle gloved in moss and here is a branch in white fracture
recalling a human bone, and here is the sun breaking the cumulous
tower and here is the heart I abandon more or less regularly, lying in
a nest of wet leaves. I don’t mind. I pick them all up. I carry them.
I say a few words, but only in the eternal space in my head. It’s fine.
The sun keeps shouldering through, the crows are finding their wires,
the sparrows are eternal. The air is charged with incongrous smells,
clean linen, for instance, and sharp oxygen, and wet earth. I am
a presence among the scoured ruins. It’s time to stoop and collect.
It’s time to be quiet again, and poke and prod. It’s time to find
baskets for all this smitten fruit, round and perfect and shining.

Frank X. Gaspar


THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN
PLENTY AND THANKFULNESS

Today when I framed
two crows
in the notch of the ash tree,

I thought of order.
Rain
was in the forecast

and presto, rain. Then
three crows
in the field tilted the world

as if imbalance were
a blessing
dropped in the cup I keep

for blessings. Then
four crows
in the grass, five

on the wire, my plate
heaped up
with six crows.

And to give thanks,
to tell God
six crows were enough,

I lit prayer papers
in the garden—
their orange slippers,

their black, abstract
petals like
anti-confetti, like

hopeful ash, like
a thousand crows.
Then, a thousand crows.

Keith Ratzlaff



Colorado Review Volume XXX, Number 2 Summer 2003

cat moon

THE CAT AND THE MOON

The cat went here and there
And the moon spun round
like a top,

And the nearest kin of the moon,
The creeping cat, looked up.
Black Minnaloushe stared
at the moon,
For, wander and wail
as he would,
The pure cold light in the sky
Troubled his animal blood.
Minnaloushe runs in the grass
Lifting his delicate feet.

Do you dance, Minna- loushe, do you dance?
When two close kindred meet,
What better than call a dance?
Maybe the moon may learn,
Tired of that courtly fashion,
A new dance turn.

Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
From moonlit place to place,
The sacred moon overhead
Has taken a new phase.

Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils
Will pass from change to change,
And that from round to crescent,
From crescent to round they range?
Minna- loushe creeps through the grass
Alone, important and wise,
And lifts to the changing moon
His changing eyes.

-- W. B. Yeats, in 1919

the palace of the moon

In our day and age children no longer believe in rabbits on the moon. But all Japanese know the charming legend and still see in the shadows on the full moon a rabbit threshing his rice.

Once upon a time long ago, a monkey, a rabbit, and a fox lived together as friends. During the day they frolicked on the mountain; at night they went back to the forest. This went on for some years.

The Lord of Heaven heard about it and wanted to see if it were really true. He went to them disguised as an old wanderer. "I have travelled through mountains and valleys and I am tired out. Could you give me something to eat?", said he, laying down his staff in order to rest.

The monkey went off at once to gather nuts that he presented; the fox brought an offering from his fish trap in the river. The rabbit ran through the fields in every direction but came back with nothing.

The monkey and the fox made fun of him: "You are really good for nothing." The little rabbit was so discouraged that he asked the monkey to gather some thistles and the fox to set fire to them. They did so. Then the little rabbit said to the old man, "Please eat me", and threw himself into the flames.

The pilgrim was pierced to the heart by this sacrifice, and wept, saying, "Each one deserves praise; there are neither winners nor losers. But the little rabbit has given an exceptional proof of love."

So saying, he restored the rabbit to his original form and took the little body to heaven to be buried in the palace of the moon.1


(see also here)

the ver sacrum

Nothing Stays Put

by Amy Clampitt

In memory of Father Flye, 1884-1985


The strange and wonderful are too much with us.
The protea of the antipodes--a great,
globed, blazing honeybee of a bloom--
for sale in the supermarket! We are in
our decadence, we are not entitled.

What have we done to deserve
all the produce of the tropics--
this fiery trove, the largesse of it
heaped up like cannonballs, these pineapples, bossed
and crested, standing like troops at attention,
these tiers, these balconies of green, festoons
grown sumptuous with stoop labor?

The exotic is everywhere, it comes to us
before there is a yen or a need for it. The green-
grocers, uptown and down, are from South Korea.
Orchids, opulence by the pailful, just slightly
fatigued by the plane trip from Hawaii, are
disposed on the sidewalks; alstroemerias, freesias
fattened a bit in translation from overseas; gladioli
likewise estranged from their piercing ancestral crimson;
as well as, less altered from the original blue cornflower
of the roadsides and railway embankments of Europe, these
bachelor's buttons. But it isn't the railway embankments
their featherweight wheels of cobalt remind me of, it's

a row of them among prim colonnades of cosmos,
snapdragon, nasturtium, bloodsilk red poppies,
in my grandmother's garden: a prairie childhood,
the grassland shorn, overlaid with a grid,
unsealed, furrowed, harrowed and sown with immigrant grasses,
their massive corduroy, their wavering feltings embroidered
here and there by the scarlet shoulder patch of cannas
on a courthouse lawn, by a love knot, a cross stitch
of living matter, sown and tended by women,
nurturers everywhere of the strange and wonderful,
beneath whose hands what had been alien begins,
as it alters, to grow as though it were indigenous.

But at this remove what I think of as
strange and wonderful, strolling the side streets of Manhattan
on an April afternoon, seeing hybrid pear trees in blossom,
a tossing, vertiginous colonnade of foam, up above--
is the white petalfall, the warm snowdrift
of the indigenous wild plum of my childhood.

Nothing stays put. The world is a wheel.
All that we know, that we're
made of, is motion.


From The Collected Poems of Amy Clampitt, published by Alfred A. Knopf. Copyright © 1997