for what is already lost

LETTER FROM CRANBERRY ISLAND

Today in a meadow beside the sea
I knelt among sea rocket
and lupine
as a deer I’d startled
flipped heels up

and bounded
into the spruce grove.
Prebbles cove,
the beach of stones
glistening and smooth from the pummel of waves.

And I, who understand pounding,
wanted to walk into the sea, to rock there.

At the far edge of my life
on an island four hundred miles
from home, I lean against
an uncurtained window,
and all my grief

for what is already lost,
for what it may get too late to find,
jostles up against how much
I continue anyway to love the world.

I am tired of wanting to sleep beyond waking —
tired of the numbing that is no better than death,

But here on the sill,
stones oval as eggs —

blue, gray, black,

a whole row of them —
glow in the afternoon light

and here, across the meadow,

light enfolds even the least

small running creature.

And here. And here. And here.

More light, great sheets of saving light

surge and flash — green, coral, cerulean —
off the turbulent
white-capped waters.

Patricia Fargnoli

from Necessary Light

st george & the dragonet

[Narrator:] The legend you are about to hear is true. Only the needle should be changed to protect the record.

[St. George:] This is the countryside. My name is St George. I'm a knight.

Saturday, July 10th, 8:05 pm-- I was working out of the castle on the nightwatch when a call came in from the Chief. A dragon had been devouring maidens. Homicide. My job, slay him.

[St. George:] You call me, Chief?

[Chief:] Yes, the dragon again, devouring maidens. The King's daughter may be next.

[St. George:] Mmm-hmm. You got a lead?

[Chief:] Oh, nothing much to go on. Say, did you take that .45 automatic into the lab to have them check on it?

[St. George:] Yeah, you were right.

[Chief:] I was right?

[St. George:] Yeah, it was a gun.

8:22 pm-- I talked to one of the maidens who had almost been devoured....

[St. George:] Could I talk to you, Ma'am?

[Maiden:] Who are you?

[St. George:] I'm St. George, Ma'am. Homicide, Ma'am. Want to ask you a few questions, Ma'am. I understand you were almost devoured by the dragon, Ma'am. Is that right? Dragon?

[Maiden:] It was terrible! He breathed fire on me! He burned me already!

[St. George:] How can I be sure of that, Ma'am?

[Maiden:] Believe me.I got it straight from the dragon's mouth.

11:45 pm-- I rode over the King's Highway. I saw a man. Stopped to talk to him.

[St. George:] Pardon me, Sir. Could I talk to you for just a minute, Sir?

[Knave:] Sure, I don't mind.

[St. George:] What do you do for a living?

[Knave:] I'm a knave.

[St. George:] Didn't I pick you up on a 903 last year for stealing tarts?

[Knave:] Yeah, so what do you wanna make a federal case out of it?

[St. George:] No, Sir. We heard there was a dragon operating in this neighborhood. We just want to know if you've seen him.

[Knave:] Sure, I've seen him.

[St. George:] Mmm-hmm. Could you describe him for me?

[Knave:] What's to describe? You see one dragon, you seen 'em all.

[St. George:] Would you try to remember, Sir? Just for the record. We just want to get the facts, Sir.

[Knave:] Well, he was, you know, he had orange polka dots...

[St. George:] Yes, Sir.

[Knave:] Purple feet, breathing fire and smoke...

[St. George:] Mmm-hmm.

[Knave:] And one big bloodshot eye right in the middle of his forehead and Uh, like that.

[St. George:] Notice anything unusual about him?

[Knave:] No, he's just your run-of-the-mill dragon, you know.

[St. George:] Mmm-hmm. Yes, Sir. You can go now.

[Knave:] Hey, by the way, how you gonna catch him?

[St. George:] I thought you'd never ask. A Dragonet.

3:05 pm-- I was riding back into the courtyard to make my report to the lab. Then it happened. It was the dragon.

[Dragon:] Hey, I'm the fire-breathin' Dragon! You must be St George, right?

[St. George:] Yes, Sir.

[Dragon:] I can see you got one of them new .45 caliber swords.

[St. George:] That's about the size of it.

[Dragon:] Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! You slay me.

[St. George:] That's what I wanted to talk to you about.

[Dragon:] What do you mean?

[St. George:] I'm taking you in on a 502. You figure it out.

[Dragon:] What's the charge?

[St. George:] Devouring maidens out of season.

[Dragon:] Out of season! You'll never pin that rap on me. Do you hear me, cop?

[St. George:] Yeah, I hear you. I got you on a 412 too.

[Dragon:] A 412? What's a 412?

[St. George:] Over-acting. Let's go.

[Narrator:] On September the 5th, the Dragon was tried and convicted. His fire was put out and his maiden-devouring license revoked. Maiden devouring out of season is punishable by a term of not less than 50 or more than 300 years.

[listen to the irrepressible stan freberg do this live!]

and thus our sojourn into the realities of george barbier, and back into the lap of the calendars!

california girls, et al

Well East coast girls are hip
I really dig those styles they wear
And the Southern girls
with the way they talk
They knock me out
when I'm down there

The Mid-West
farmer's daughters
really make you feel alright
And the Northern girls with
the way they kiss
They keep their boyfriends warm at night

I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California girls

The West coast has the sunshine
And the girls all get so tanned
I dig a french bikini
on Hawaii island
Dolls by a palm tree in the sand

I been all around
this great big world
And I seen all kinds of girls
Yeah, but I couldn't wait
to get back in the states
Back to the cutest girls
in the world

I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California girls

I wish they all could be California
(Girls, girls, girls yeah I dig the)
I wish they all could be California
(Girls, girls, girls yeah I dig the)
I wish they all could be California
(Girls, girls, girls yeah I dig the)
I wish they all could be California
(Girls, girls, girls yeah I dig the)

serie du barbier • (the calendars)

george barbier evidently favored the series form. where yesterday we saw seasons, today we have the continents. these and others we'll see in the future were from annual almanacs that he illustrated.

these came out annually, beginning in 1917, and featured, along with calendars (unadorned), of course, poetry, blank but bordered pages for writing your secret thoughts, vaguely erotic romance stories, and more. profusely illustrated, they were clearly the perfect item with which to begin the new year.

in the early 1910s, following on the heels of charles worth's 'invention' of haute couture, the fashion magazine was born. barbier, then about 30, had found his shangri la.

The concept of the fashion magazine as a tool for defining style was in its infancy. Through these publications, Barbier reached thousands of women. With free rein to draw his own designs, as well as illustrate the gowns of established couturiers, Barbier began to influence the look of the day. As women sought new freedom in the form of shorter and nonconstricting dresses, Barbier's designs kept step with them -- or stayed a step ahead. 1

the wave of freedom-seeking, self-defining, celebratory and love-hungry women that spread throughout europe after world war one found its collective vision fulfilled in barbier's designs.

so who was this visionary? all his bio decry the lack of much about that, for which this new york times serves as an illustration:

Contributing to his disappearance [from the public eye after his death] were his own reticence and a surprising sparseness of biographical information. Born into a prosperous bourgeois family in the provincial town of Nantes, he lived a clearly very different lifestyle in Paris, where he frequented unmistakably, if not exclusively, homosexual circles - he was, for example, an intimate of the dandy and poet Robert de Montesquiou, who introduced him to Marcel Proust....

.... His library, containing many rare editions, was auctioned off and his collection of Japanese and European erotica was donated to the Bibliothèque Nationale, where it was placed in the restricted "Enfer" section, reserved for works considered threatening to public decency....

From the outset an ardent admirer of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, he produced sumptuously colorful albums celebrating Nijinsky and Tamara Karsavina, and designed costumes for the ballerina Anna Pavlova. But he parted company with the Ballets Russes aesthetically and musically with the Cubist-style production "Parade" in 1917, which he condemned in print as "strange, noisy, eccentric" and "the apotheosis of the sneer."

A fashionable sapphic subtext is often present in Barbier's exquisitely composed fashion plates of highly feminine couples and trios, sometimes with companions in immaculate white-tie evening dress, who are either ambiguously epicene or clearly women in drag. "Real" males seldom appear in the artist's oeuvre....

His color plates for publications like the luxurious monthly "La Gazette de Bon Ton," published from 1912 to 1925, were produced using "pochoirs" or stencils, a technique criticized by some purists but vigorously defended by Barbier as a way to present "the artist's work in all its freshness without that often slightly cold transfer produced by mechanical means."

The hand printing process involved, inspired by the methods of the classical Japanese masters, produced a still-undimmed, jewel-like quality in the resulting images that testifies to Barbier's judgement in championing the pochoir technique. 2

the inventive arts • (the calendars)

MYA CALENDAR

Monks of the Years
for Zodiacal Ears

Actuary, Fritillary, Mush
Mandrill, Mace, Jejune,
Jelly, Aghast, Septic Ember,
Oak Toner, Remember, Distemper

Device to
Mesmerize the Monks

30 days hath septic ember
mandrill jejeune and remember
all the rest have 31 dyes
of different color:

Actuary: puce
Mush: buff
Mace: rose
Jelly: lime
Aghast: jade
Oak Toner: rust
Distemper: slush

except Fritillary which howls
28 cold tones of dust.

Colette Inez

“Mya Calendar” from
Getting Under Way:
New and Selected Poems
by Colette Inez.
(Story Line Press, 1993)

roses in december

(One of Vera's first hits -- the beguiling girlishness in her voice is a charming contrast to her indomitable War performances.)

ROSES IN DECEMBER
(George Jessel, Herbert Magidson, Ben Oakland, 1937.)

Roses in December, for you.
Shall I take the stars from the blue?
Or would you like the moon upon a platter?
It doesn't matter. What can I do, for you?

If you'd like the spring in the fall,
It would be no trouble at all.
Give me your love and I can make the most impossible things come true:

Blue shadows never, sunshine forever,
Roses in December for you.

•

"God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December"

-- James M. Barrie 1

•

1807

.山吹に大宮人の薄着哉
yamabuki ni ômiyabito no usugi kana

in yellow roses
a great courtier's
thin kimono

1810

.古郷やよるも障るも茨の花
furusato ya yoru mo sawa[ru]
mo bara no hana

the closer I get
to my village, the more pain...
wild roses

In a pre- script to this haiku Issa reports that he entered his home village on the morning of Fifth Month, 19th day, 1810. First, he paid his respects at his father's gravesite, and then he met with the village headman.

While the content of their meeting is not revealed, it plainly had to do with the matter of the poet's inheritance that his stepmother and half brother had withheld from him for years.

He goes on to write, tersely, "After seeing the village elder, entered my house. As I expected they offered me not even a cup of tea so I left there soon." In another text dated that same year, he recopies this "wild roses" haiku and signs it, mamako issa: "Issa the Stepchild."

See Issa zenshû (Nagano: Shinano Mainichi Shimbunsha, 1976-79) 3.61; 1.424. Shinji Ogawa assisted with the above translation. 2

the panama-pacific, that is! • part 3

Aside from the construction of the $50,000 pipe organ, which, after the Exposition, will be placed permanently in the Civic Auditorium, the two most important musical items found on the schedule of Exposition enterprises are the engagements of Camille Saint-Saens and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

The former, who maintained that "Beethoven is the greatest, the only real, artist, because he upheld the idea of universal brotherhood," is perhaps better fitted than any living composer to write special music for the Exposition.

This he has done, -- writing two compositions in fact; and their presentation has been an outstanding feature. "Hail, California," was dedicated to the Exposition. Scored for an orchestra of eighty, a military band of sixty, a chorus of 300 voices, pipe organ and piano, its first presentation was an event.

The Saint-Saens Symphony in C minor (No. 3) Opus 78, composed many years ago, has become a classic during the life-time of its creator. It was one of the wonders of the Boston Symphony programmes played in Festival Hall. Its yield of immediate pleasure and its reassurance for the works of Saint-Saens to be heard later, grew from the fact that it was scored for orchestra and pipe organ, and in this massive tonal web the genius of the composer to write in magnificent size was overwhelm- ingly evident, thus forecasting the splendors of "Hail, California."

The French Pavilion is a dignified and impressive structure, as those who recall the Legion of Honor Palace in Paris will understand. The entrance to the court is a triumphal arch flanked by double rows of Ionic columns on either side, with figures of Fame as spandrels. The arch is connected by lateral peristyles with the wings of the pavilion, the attics of which are adorned with has reliefs.

Ionic colonnades extend along the sides of the court to the principal front of the building, which is decorated with six Corinthian columns, forming a portico for the main entrance. The portal opens on a stage, above which a great central hall, flanked by lesser halls, extends back through the palace.

More notable than the building itself, or its priceless contents, is the fact that these are here. That, in the midst of war and its demands, France should still find time for the ideal, and for this beautiful tribute to the long-standing friendship between the two countries, is a demonstration of French spirit and of French culture that will not escape the attention of any thoughtful American. For France herself, as it has well been said, her appearance here means as much as a victory on the battlefield.

But the glory of the building is in its exhibits. France poured out the treasures of the Louvre, the Luxembourg and the National Museum to adorn this pavilion. Fine as is the exhibit in the French section of the Palace of Fine Arts, the best pictures and Sculptures are shown here. In the Court of Honor stands the masterpiece of the master sculptor of modern times, "The Thinker," by Auguste Rodin. (p. 158.) In the galleries are his "John the Baptist" and other important bronzes.

Vast, unique and of the greatest interest is Theodore Riviere's wonderful group in bronze representing a triumphant band of desert soldiers dragging captive the Moroccan pretender, secured in an iron cage. There, too, are splendid paintings by Monet, Meissonier, Detaille, de Neuvilie, and many other French artists approved by time. **

(these all are actual pieces shown in that exhibit, accompanied by the music played there, described by someone who visited there. and this is just the teensiest fraction of just one country's offerings, just france. and the world was there. bibliography to follow.)