notes from the internets

You can't prevent poets and writers from comparing women to flowers in the same way that you can never tell designers to stop bombarding runways with floral maxi dresses when it is time to showcase their spring/summer collections -- considering the name of the season itself implies as such. 1

There is an awful lot of debate still ongoing about the running of the F1 in Bahrain. The pretty odious Bernie Eccelstone , whos hobbies include comparing women to domestic appliances and praising hitler has said that the raging battles for democracy in the state are nothing to do with him. 2

TOO MANY ASSHOLES ON MY FACEBOOK TONIGHT ARE COMPARING WOMEN TO APPLIANCES…

I JUST WANT TO SMACK THEM IN THE FACE!!!I AM NOT LIKE A FRIDGE OR A VACUUM CLEANER, OR A VENDING MACHINE. I AM A FUCKING HUMAN BEING WHO DESERVES MORE THAN YOU WRITING A WITTY CRITICISM OF HOW YOU WANT ‘YO WOMAN’ TO ACT. ESPECIALLY WHEN ONE OF THEM IS A FAMILY MEMBER.

I SOMETIMES WANT TO SCREAM 3

Here's a Georgia Repub, comparing women to pigs, cows, and sheep: "State Rep. Terry England was speaking in favor of HB 954, which makes it illegal to obtain an abortion after 20 weeks even if the woman is known to be carrying a stillborn fetus or the baby is otherwise not expected to live to term. 4

Preibus wasn't comparing women to caterpillars. He was pointing out how rediculous it is to point to poll numbers (rather than actions) as proof this 'war' exists. 5

The authors believe in wild oats and are full of advice for sowing them: comparing women to wines, for instance, they suggest trying "the mellowness of experience" as well as the "exuberance of youth," and the pleasures of oral sex are not neglected. 6

You can't prevent poets and writers from comparing women to flowers....

... a red red rose, maybe?....

(this all written, still, heart in my throat)

a poem as long as California

PSYCHOANALYSIS: AN ELEGY

What are you thinking about?

I am thinking of an early summer.
I am thinking of wet hills in the rain
Pouring water. Shedding it
Down empty acres of oak and manzanita
Down to the old green brush tangled
in the sun,
Greasewood, sage, and spring mustard.
Or the hot wind coming down
from Santa Ana
Driving the hills crazy,
A fast wind with a bit of dust in it
Bruising everything and making the seed sweet.
Or down in the city where the peach trees
Are awkward as young horses,
And there are kites caught on the wires
Up above the street lamps,
And the storm drains are all choked with dead branches.

What are you thinking?










I think that I would like to write a poem that is slow as a summer
As slow getting started
As 4th of July somewhere around the middle of the second stanza
After a lot of unusual rain
California seems long in the summer.
I would like to write a poem as long as California
And as slow as a summer.
Do you get me, Doctor? It would have to be as slow
As the very tip of summer.
As slow as the summer seems
On a hot day drinking beer outside Riverside
Or standing in the middle of a white-hot road
Between Bakersfield and Hell
Waiting for Santa Claus.

What are you thinking now?








I’m thinking that she is very much like California.
When she is still her dress is like a roadmap. Highways
Traveling up and down her skin
Long empty highways
With the moon chasing jackrabbits across them
On hot summer nights.
I am thinking that her body could be California
And I a rich Eastern tourist
Lost somewhere between Hell and Texas
Looking at a map of a long, wet, dancing California
That I have never seen.
Send me some penny picture-postcards, lady,
Send them.
One of each breast photographed looking
Like curious national monuments,
One of your body sweeping like a three-lane highway
Twenty-seven miles from a night’s lodging
In the world’s oldest hotel.

What are you thinking?










I am thinking of how many times this poem
Will be repeated.
How many summers
Will torture California
Until the damned maps burn
Until the mad cartographer
Falls to the ground and possesses
The sweet thick earth from which he has been hiding.

What are you thinking now?

I am thinking that a poem could go on forever.

Jack Spicer



Forthcoming from The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer
from Wesleyan University Press.

what does lola want?

why, i began to wonder, were depictions of sexuality so different, japan, france, new york, et al. so as usual i went to look it up, and there was an interesting variety of answers, some of which i was reminded that i already knew, and some were entirely new to me, and some disagreed with each other, and so what else is new.

we've talked about the censorship that happened and some effects on the ukiyo-e artists, but i hadn't realized the methods used to go behind the backs of the censors. when forbidden to portray kabuki actors they labeled actors' portraits as portraits of "loyal heros," or the "immortal poets"; they even put their faces on turtles, cats, and fish.

courtesans might be portrayed as wait- resses, but were still recognizable to all. instead of explicitly portraying seductive or overtly sexual images, the populace knew exactly what was being said when a maiden became completely wet while holding an umbrella. whereas if she's offering a cup, of tea maybe, or a clam- shell, to a gentleman, one would also know just what was being offered in fact.

but there's another whole perspective as well. "In Japan, a high degree of nudity was common in the daily life of most ordinary people (during the warm months, of course). Skin was no big deal, but splendid silk clothing was rare and expensive. In Tokugawa Japan, prostitutes, especially the elite courtesans, advertised their sexuality not by displaying skin but by parading through the streets in multiple layers of elegant clothing.

To touch and feel such exquisite cloth was something only the rich could do on a regular basis. For most Japanese, the fondling of such cloth might take place only in their fantasies. Thus, elegant, finely-woven, brightly colored cloth, not skin, became sexually charged in Tokugawa-era erotic art."

furthermore, "Because Tokugawa-period Japanese tended to regard the overall body shapes of men and women as nearly the same, the only significant physical marker of difference were the sex organs themselves.

In Europe at this time, by contrast, the bodily shapes resulting from secondary sexual characteristics were thought to be so distinctive in marking gender that no man could pass as a woman or vice versa, and attempts to to so usually took place only within the context of comedy or farce. Indeed, depictions of men, and, especially, women often exaggerated these secondary characteristics unreal- istically. Probably the most common example was exaggerating the width of the pelvic bone and hips."

i think i am beginning to understand my original question. "The main point of con- trast here is that in the Western world, at least by the nineteenth century, gender differences were regarded as hard-wired products of biology first and foremost, and social markers of gender were typically regarded as following "naturally" from these biological differences. In Tokugawa Japan, it was the social markers of gender that were most prominent in people's imaginations." 1

"Prints were a form of commun- ication about current political or social situations, especially in Edo (present-day Tokyo). Although the shogunate would not permit any military incident, military or governmental figure, or current event to be shown in a print, artists circumvented these limits by hiding taboo subject matter under layers of parody. Print designers were constantly subject to government restrictions, the policies of which tried to impede townspeople from spending their time and money on frivolous or salacious entertainments.

Because prints often promoted these types of enter- tainment and because all prints designs had to be approved by government censors prior to manufacture, prints became a focus for these government constraints. Publishers were limited in the quality of paper, the number of color blocks used on a single print, and the types of pigments. At times, they were even forbidden to portray actors or courtesans. As a result, print artists were constantly inventing creative solutions to maintain their customer base." 2

we've already looked at what happened to utamaro (his version is from 1804); is kunisada's 1865 version a tribute, or merely a celebration that the restrictions had by then begin to be released. (oh and you know, i had to put in lola! she walks like an egyptian!)

i was talking to someone about this blog yesterday. she was quite knowledgeable about asian art, and about photography as well. when i mentioned the influence of japanese prints on stieglitz's photos, she asked, sceptically, did

stieglitz say that directly?
well who wasn't sceptical when they first started learning about japonisme? i know i was. but i did some research anyway, and here is what i found. no, i could not find one quote by steiglitz about

japanese prints.
but, he did have an enormous collection of them. and his wife talked about her work being strongly influenced by them. and the man who first gave him a

camera, post, admitted to being strongly influenced by them. and, lastly, all of the protegés who stieglitz featured in his groundbreaking magazine camera work, or in his equally groundbreaking gallery, credit japanese art for having had strong influences on their own.


so in the end, at least at this point, one can only infer. but stronger than any found quote is the ability to believe one's own eyes.

here are some of the things that my eyes see, that weren't found in western art before the mid-1800s when the contact with japan was reestablished: i see (starting at the top) the center of the image not being the essential focus.

i see diagonal paths leading the eye to far-off distances. i see entire pieces where the frame is split almost perfectly diagonally, with one-half being nearly empty. and again, i see the diagonals.

to study hiroshige, for example, is to study diagonal construction. to study stieglitz is the same thing.

other things i see are the large foreground elements, often diagonal themselves. among other things, these serve as frames.

they may keep things in a perspective through which the artist wishes to communicate something.



it is one of the ele- ments that was strongly picked up in the graphic arts of the period as well.

some- times the fore- ground ele-


ment can act as a contrast to shapes in the background, straight lines to rolling hillocks, to domes.






sometimes it is tone playing upon tone, shape upon shape. note how the background trees in sadanobu's image serve much the same purpose as do the background buildings in stieglitz's; even the shapes have resonance.

and some- times it is mere- ly the love of beauty, and the abandonment of the need to make the image seem 'flawless,' while at the same time revealing its perfection.

in the end, we must admit that not all artists who were strenuously influenced by the 'new ways of seeing' (which occurred as a result of the fresh vision from a culture that had developed for over 200 years with no outside influence), admitted it. who knows if they were even aware. some were, obviously, but when perception shifts, it's all too easy to assume it's an internal shift rather than an external one.

but an outsider with a century's perspective can see it plain as day, and can see the process still, to this day, unfolding.