something fishy across the pond

i acknowledge readily that i leave out the commentary on most posts nowadays; despite the fact that i know there are new readers all the time, and that even those who have been reading this blog for a long time, and pretty regularly, are likely to have never read the whole thing, i get tired of repeating myself. i feel didactic. nevertheless, i think some exposition is now called for.

but first.... not since edward penfield playfully stole from many of the famous artists of his day have we seen the kind of trickery of v l danvers of the work of ohara koson. for example see above; where ohara koson called his image 'carp and fly,' (note the location of the flies) danvers reiterates the theme while punning on the word 'fly'! now before ed chides me again, i must admit to the ohara images, both of them, have been flipped for illustration purposes. the arc of each fish is even quite similar.

we see this same game recreated in danvers's second 'sporting' poster; the mallards. in an experiment i tried, i was able to prove to myself that the necks and heads of the male duck in both images is the identical angle.

i was interested to learn that both artists were active during the 1920s; danvers was following, in these posters and those in the previous post, as well as those of many japanese-influenced artists and illustrators of the age, many of the elements of the japanese prints, while dropping some others. you will still see the japanese-y signatures, asymmetry and background items, but more importantly, you will get the areas of flat color while losing the outlines.

in 'small town,' you can see this even more clearly than in the examples here, but studying that one will inform your viewing of this one. my argument falls apart entirely. the closest i could come, which isn't that close, is allen seaby's, though he was earlier. (toshi yoshida also did grouse, but his are not flying, and to me they look like babies, but what do i know?

danvers' cormorant is his most realized example of japonisme. there too i could find no 'original.' his mastery of the form is now obvious. perhaps he no longer had a need to borrow.

birds of a feather....

...can now

get married

in New York!

it just got better

falls apart in the perfume

THE LEMON TREES

Hear me a moment. Laureate poets
seem to wander among plants
no one knows: boxwood, acanthus,
where nothing is alive to touch.

I prefer small streets that falter
into grassy ditches where a boy,
searching in the sinking puddles,
might capture a struggling eel.

The little path that winds down
along the slope plunges
through cane-tufts
and opens suddenly
into the orchard
among the moss-green trunks
of the lemon trees.

Perhaps it is better
if the jubilee of small birds
dies down, swallowed in the sky,
yet more real to one who listens,
the murmur of tender leaves
in a breathless, unmoving air.

The senses are graced with an odor
filled with the earth.
It is like rain in a troubled breast,
sweet as an air that arrives
too suddenly and vanishes.

A miracle is hushed; all passions
are swept aside. Even the poor
know that richness,
the fragrance of the lemon trees.

You realize that in silences
things yield and almost betray
their ultimate secrets.

At times, one half expects
to discover an error in Nature,
the still point of reality,
the missing link
that will not hold,
the thread we cannot untangle
in order to get at the truth.

You look around. Your mind seeks,
makes harmonies, falls apart
in the perfume, expands
when the day wearies away.
There are silences in which one watches
in every fading human shadow
something divine let go.

The illusion wanes,
and in time we return
to our noisy cities where the blue
appears only in fragments
high up
among the towering shapes.
Then rain leaching the earth.
Tedious,
winter burdens the roofs,
and light is a miser, the soul bitter.

Yet, one day
through an open gate,
among the green luxuriance
of a yard,
the yellow lemons fire
and the heart melts,
and golden songs pour
into the breast
from the raised cornets of the sun.

Eugenio Montale

translated by Lee Gerlach

Copyright © 2002, 2004 Harry Thomas, Handsel Books (an imprint of Other Press LLC).

boobs a lot

BOOBS A LOT

Do you like boobs a lot?
(Yes, I like boobs a lot.)
Boobs a lot, boobs a lot.
(You gotta like boobs a lot.)
Really like boobs a lot.
(You gotta like boobs a lot.)
Boobs a lot, boobs a lot.
(You gotta like boobs a lot.)

Down in the locker room,
Just three boys,
Beatin' down the locker room
With all that noise,

Singin' do you like boobs a lot?
(You gotta like boobs a lot.)
Boobs a lot, boobs a lot.
(You gotta like boobs a lot.)

Do you wear your jock a lot?
(Yes, I wear my jock a lot.)
Got to wear your jock a lot.
(Got to wear your jock a lot.)
Jock a lot, jock a lot.
(You gotta wear your jock a lot.)
Got to wear your jock a lot.
(You gotta wear your jock a lot.)

Well, down on the football,
Football field,
You never can tell
What a heel can wield,

So you gotta wear your jock a lot.
(You gotta wear your jock a lot.)
Jock a lot, jock a lot.
(You gotta wear your jock a lot.)

If I had a flag-a-long,
(If I had a flag-a-long.)
If I had a long flag-a-long,
If I had a long flag-a-long,
If you like boobs a lot, tag along

Bee beep, bop, de boob a lot.
(You gotta like boobs a lot.)
Boobs a lot, boobs a lot.
(You gotta like boobs a lot.)

They're big and round,
They're all around.
They're big and round,
They're all around.

REPEAT

The Fugs

The Fugs First Album, ESP 1018, 1966

blue iris

RIPENESS

Ripeness is
what falls away with ease.
Not only the heavy apple,
the pear,
but also the dried brown strands
of autumn iris from their core.

To let your body
love this world
that gave itself to your care
in all of its ripeness,
with ease,
and will take itself from you
in equal ripeness and ease,
is also harvest.


And however sharply
you are tested –
this sorrow, that great love –
it too will leave on that clean knife.

--ⓒ 2009 Jane Hirshfield

WILD GEESE


You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk
on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are,
no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

--ⓒ 2009 Mary Oliver


BLUE IRIS

Now that I'm free to be myself, who am I?

Can't fly, can't run and
see how slowly I walk.

Well, I think, I can read books.

"What's that you're doing?"
the green-headed fly shouts
as it buzzes past.

I close the book.

Well, I can write down words,
like these, softly.

"What's that you're doing?" whispers the wind,
pausing in a heap
just outside the window.

Give me a little time, I say back to its staring, silver face.
It doesn't happen all of a sudden, you know.

"Doesn't it?" says the wind, and breaks open, releasing
distillation of blue iris.

And my heart panics not to be,
as I long to be,
the empty, waiting, pure, speechless receptacle.

--ⓒ 2009 Mary Oliver

a thesis of weaves and hallows

Beware of gnawing
the ideogram of nothingness:
Your teeth will crack. Swallow it whole, and you’ve a treasure
Beyond the hope of Buddha and the Mind. The east breeze
Fondles the horse’s ears:
how sweet the smell of plum.

Karasumaru-Mitsuhiro (1579-1638) 1

PINE

The first night at the monastery,
a moth lit on my sleeve by firelight,
long after the first frost.

A short stick of incense burns
thirty minutes, fresh thread of pine
rising through the old pine of the hours.

Summer is trapped under the thin
glass on the brook, making
the sound of an emptying bottle.

Before the long silence,
the monks make a long soft rustling,
adjusting their robes.

The deer are safe now. Their tracks
are made of snow. The wind has dragged
its branches over their history.

Chase Twichell

“Pine” by Chase Twichell from The Snow Watcher published by Ontario Review Press. © 1998 by Chase Twichell.

THIS LITTLE GLADE, REMEMBER

When lying beneath a ponderosa
pine, looking up through layers
of branches, mazes of leaf-spikes

and cones—contemplation grows
receptive to complexity,
the pleasant temptation of pine-
scented tangle. Sky as proposition
is willingly divided and spliced
into a thesis of weaves and hallows.

Name them something else
if you wish, but needled shadow
and substance are, in this hour,
an architecture of philosophy.

And a rising wind, called ”a rough
and bawdy wind“ by a rough and bawdy
voice, is that wind and that voice
transformed. The structure of words
sways and bends in the blow.

Looking away into the clear sky, expectation shifts. Vision becomes/ a welcome to guests
of crows in new/ dimensions who themselves become/ not only depth and horizon
in a circus/ of wings but old vision’s startling visitors.

Not soul alone, but soul consumed
by a single bee descending into the center
of a purple mountain lily is soul
to a soul suckled in sleep.

Earth and human together
form a unique being. A brief era
of immortality is lent to each
by the other. Move momentarily
now—with hovering granite cliff,
with sun-stripe flick of perhaps
vagrant shrew, with raised tack
of mightly larkspur—into this company.

Pattiann Rogers

“This Little Glade, Remember” from Generations.
Copyright © 2004 by Pattiann Rogers.