do you see yourself here?

SLOWLY: a plainsong from an older woman to a younger woman

am I not....olden olden olden
it is unwanted.

wanting,..wanting
am I not....broken
stolen....common

am I not crinkled cranky poison
am I not glinty-eyed and frozen

am I not....aged
shaky....glazing
am I not....hazy
guarded....craven

am I not....only
stingy....little
am I not....simple
brittle....spitting

was I not....over
over....ridden?

it is a long story
will you be proud to be my version?

it is unwritten.

writing,..writing
am I not....ancient
raging....patient

am I not....able
charming....stable
was I not....building
forming....braving

was I not....ruling
guiding....naming
was I not....brazen
crazy....chosen

even the stones would do my bidding?

it is a long story
am I not proud to be your version?

it is unspoken.

speaking, speaking
am I not....elder
berry
brandy

are you not wine before you find me
in your own beaker?

Judy Grahn

“Slowly: a plainsong from an older woman to a younger woman” from love belongs to those who do the feeling: New & Selected Poems (1966-2006). Copyright © 2008 by Judy Grahn.

when i was a young feminist judy grahn was at every poetry reading reading her common woman poems (see some here). i once painted the text of one onto my kitchen wall.

falling into spring

since i started paying attention, i've realized that museums and galleries repeat shows, and this fall at least two museums will do just that -- to the world's benefit.

in japan, at the new otani art museum, the show inspired by hokusai and hiroshige's '36 views' series, henri riviere's '36 views of the eiffel tower.'

i know this was seen in japan in 1996, but surely before that too, and in 2006 too.

dis- played with the riviere works, are other artists of the time, including works by georges auriol.

i found these images so evocative of so many other artists: zecchin, gauld, rhead, mathews....

that the shows should be coming now, as we in the northern hemisphere stride rapidly toward autumn, must be for the benefit of the southern hemisphere, where spring now looms. sadly, the 'california muse' exhibition of the work of arthur and lucia mathews closed at its last venue last week. now it goes back to the oakland museum where it will be packed away for the cold, damp winter.

david gauld and the other 'glasgow boys' are displayed at the kelvingrove gallery & museum. under the theme of 'impressionism & scotland,' the restored space will continue to promote the brilliant scottish artists.

and the other re- peating exhibition, last held in 1999, is at the hirschl & adler gallery in new york.

louis rhead and other american illustrators, contemporaries of his, travelled similar grounds; 'our women are all so lovely and cultured, and they like long flowered dresses.' or, to be said in another way, they all, costume-wise, anyway, were inspired by their newly discovered kimono.

and to bring this full circle, again,
henri riviere.

bliss

I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD

I WANDERED lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Wordsworth 1804

the zen of montmartre

one thing that really appeals to me in this era's work is what i think of as a 'loose hand.' as i've said here before, i think the influences, japanese to the west, were many and varied, subtle and not. and it's impossible to say what was imitation, what inspiration, what conscious, what not. but to my eyes, we in the west were learning 'imperfection,' or rather perhaps the perfection that comes from a lack of conscious control. we in a culture in which all language was written in straight lines were experiencing one where it was not.

i want to excerpt a bit of an interesting article i found that looks at this in terms of martial arts:

A spontaneous creative gesture that has much in common with abstract expressionism, Shodo [Japanese calligraphy] is more than mere writing, and its skilled practitioners believe that the "visible rhythm" created by the brush is a "picture of the mind" which reveals the calligrapher's physical and mental condition.

Martial arts author Michel Random writes, "It is said that internal serenity drives the brush. The brush in effect interprets the deepest part of the subconscious. The 'wisdom of the eye' is what relates the characters to each other as though assembling the movable and the immutable, the ego to the 10,000 things in the universe, the present to the timeless...

"For is not the ability to make the stroke flow naturally, to let the brush move freely across a thin piece of paper, also a superior struggle of the most testing kind? The spontaneous stroke of the brush is reminiscent of the quick free thrust of the sword or the freedom of the arrow fired effortlessly. Wherever there is distress, worry or uneasiness, there can be no perfect freedom or swiftness of action."

In Japanese painting and calligraphy, a strongly concentrated mind must control the brush, and a relaxed body must allow the brush to act as an exact reflection of the mind's movement.

Just as Judo begins by gripping the opponent, and Iaido begins by gripping the sword, so too does Shodo start with the student's hold on the brush. Unless the proper method of holding is mastered, no real progress is possible. Some teachers in the past tried to suddenly pull the brush from the student's hand as a means of testing the grip. An ink-covered hand would reveal an improperly held brush. However, squeezing tightly is not the answer, because this does not produce flowing, dynamic characters. Limply gripping, on the other hand, results only in a loss of brush control. It was, and is, therefore essential to learn to hold the fude in a way that is neither tense nor limp, with a kind of "alive" grip in which one's Ki is projected from downward-pointing fingers through the brush, out of the tip, and into the paper. This same supple, yet firm grip, is vital in most forms of Budo, and it has been characterized as "Ki de toru," that is, holding with Ki.

Shodo has a "visible rhythm"; in other words, the kanji sit in repose on the paper, but they must look and feel as if they are moving. (This is the state of dochu no sei, or "stillness in motion," that is often alluded to in esoteric densho, or manuals containing a school's most profound teachings. Its converse is "motion in stillness." It is the unity of these two conditions that results in skilled Shodo and Budo.) To create this dynamic, yet balanced feeling, the brush must flow in a free and easy manner.

Both Budo and Shodo have been characterized as forms of "moving meditation." Michel Random eloquently describes this unique method of meditation with the brush: "The sign is repeated until total spontaneity is achieved, completely free from thought . . . spontaneity and not automatism of movement which is contrary to the object of the exercise. In calligraphy (as in the martial arts), the space between the lines is what matters. It is this space which gives the signs their beauty. In Zen painting, we find the same need for pressure and spontaneity.

"Here, we see the result of the movement of the brush and ink on the paper. The brush is dipped in encre de chine. The special quality paper is very fine and absorbent. The brush hardly needs to touch the paper to make a large blob. Therefore, the hand must skim or fly across the paper without stopping. Thought is free."

gakiku for haiku

inspired & informed by the luminous princess haiku, i bring note of a chrysanthemum exhibition happening for the next month at the new york botanical garden. (watch the video)

The chrysanthemum, the flower loved by Tao Yuan-ming (365-427), a distinguished Chinese poet of the East-Chin dynasty, was brought to

Japan around the beginning of the Heian Period (794-1192). It took root in Japan and was called by many different names such as "Katami-gusa (memory flower)" and "Chigiri-gusa (promise flower)."

In the Edo Period (1603-1868), there were several hundred varieties of chrysanthe- mum in Japan. Gakiku is a picture book dating from 1519 and published in this form in 1691, which introduces one hundred kinds of chrysanthemums with beautiful illustrations. The flower's name and a Chinese-style poem is also written for each of the flowers. The preface was written in 1519 by Eikin (1447-1537), a priest of the Rin'zai Zen Sect in Japan, which says that the pictures were the work of Junpo (1504-1549), the second son of a feudal lord of that time. We can also find the postface and the imprint at the end of this book, from which we learn that the book was published in 1691, and that the Chinese-style poems and the postface were added in that year.

Gakiku is the first picture book of chry- santhe- mums produced in Japan, possibly modeled on the Kikufu Hyakueizu, a translation of a Chinese book of the same kind published in 1686. The writing and lines are wood-block printed in black, and the illustrations are hand-painted in yellow, white, red, purple etc. according to the colors of the flowers. The book was once owned by Yokoyama Shigeru (1896-1980), a scholar of Japanese literature.

Following the publication of Gakiku, books on chrysanthemum cultivation were published one after another. There was a chrysanthemum boom and chrysanthemum shows were held in Kyoto every year. In the middle of the 18th century, the Kikukyo, a learned work on chrysanthemums, was written by Matsudaira Yorihiro (1702-1763), a feudal lord of Mutsu-Moriyama (now part of Fukushima prefecture, located to the north of Tokyo). In the first half of the 19th century, chrysanthemum craftwork became popular in the Komagome and Sugamo area of Edo (now part of Tokyo), and later on, at the end of the Edo Period, chrysanthemum dolls in Dango-zaka (now Bunkyo ward of Tokyo) became an attraction in autumn.

Throughout the Edo Period, the chrysanthemum attracted people of all classes. 1

(Digital images of all the pages of Gakiku are available here.
Please note that this is a different link from the one in the newsletter.)

text/textile

while doing some research for this post, i came across a fascinating statement. armond fields, in his 1983 book henri riviere, says, 'in 1879 there appeared a weekly magazine which was unlike any other of the time: la vie moderne. what make it so extraordinary were its illustrations, which were not black and white wood engravings like the other journals, but were color gillotypes, -- color photoengravings.

charles gillot had invented the process to faith- fully reproduce drawings and sketches. it involved making color separations for each color to be printed. it required technical mastery of both photography and engraving, as the separations were prepared by a skilled engraver and the plates were made by a photographer. interestingly enough, this process, which altered the course of color printing, was invented by an ardent collector of japanese prints, who was perhaps influenced by them in his invention.'

in doing some research on this intriguing suggestion i stumbled across a blog showcasing much of what was being done in publishing (on a letterpress level?) during this period. one can find fascinating examples tracing the development of trends in design, illustration and typography during this exciting transitional phase.

the increasing influence of the japanese work on all three elements is obvious (including in some places where it seems completely gratuitous), and one can feel the excitement building as possibilities continue to open before the artists.

from georges auriol to sarah bernhardt, from the arts magazine cocorico to madame bovary, the presentation is beautifully simple and all in french. will someone please tell me what he is saying?

auriol

many people know the name auriol from the font, a font that perhaps typifies art nouveau in the minds of many, that even more typifies japonisme, in it's clear debt to brush calligraphy. but behind the font is the man, the designer of the font, and of much of the japonisme legacy with us today.

when auriol arrived in paris, he was quickly enthralled by the japanese influences everywhere, and set off to study with riviere, who had begun to teach printmaking in the japanese style.

some of auriol's designs were nearly strict reproductions of japanese designs, but others flowered forth from his own creative spirit into his typography, book design, and illustration.

(bottom left from utamaro's series of birds in a song competition with each other.)