yellow silk @ 30

thirty years ago today i came home with cartons and cartons of the first issue of my new magazine, yellow silk. cartons and cartons would be piled into my car then unloaded into the middle of my (fortunately large) second bedroom which served as my office. as would become a habit, we threw a fundraiser to pay the printer; harry the baker made a cake that looked like a magazine cover, and bunches of poets came to read their work from the magazine. since the first issue was all women (they responded to a cal for manuscripts more quickly than the guys did), we had the reading at a local women's bar, the long-gone bacchanal. the place has been called britt-marie's for years now, and they've kept the old 'stained glass' B over the door.

a funny thing happened last night. i was reading over the excerpts from the magazine that i had put online long ago, and an amazing thing happened -- i felt really proud. i hadn't read that poetry for years, i guess, and it was like it was all new to me, and i loved it, and i wanted to share it with you, despite the fact that i saw the million typos for the first time too!

so please enjoy some little bits from the 15 years that it lasted.

there are many stories, ask if you want. i just might answer you.

or go see more. Yellow Silk

by the way, please don't order anything on the website. also, to progress from page to page, the easiest way is to start on any given issue. click on any word that is underlined. this will take you to another page with work from the same issue. on that second page, in eensy tiny letters, it will say, 'go to next issue' (or something like that. if there is no underlined word, the 'go to next issue' will be on that table of contents page.

when i fall in love

(to set the mood,
i must first ask you to CLICK BELOW)
then close your eyes.)

why this, now? i finally found a friend,
from 40 years ago.

A LOVE SONG

What have I to say to you
When we shall meet?
Yet—
I lie here thinking of you.

The stain of love
Is upon the world.
Yellow, yellow, yellow,
It eats into the leaves,
Smears with saffron
The horned branches that lean
Heavily
Against a smooth purple sky.

There is no light—
Only a honey-thick stain
That drips from leaf to leaf
And limb to limb
Spoiling the colours
Of the whole world.

I am alone.
The weight of love
Has buoyed me up
Till my head
Knocks against the sky.

See me!
My hair is dripping with nectar—
Starlings carry it
On their black wings.
See, at last
My arms and my hands
Are lying idle.

How can I tell
If I shall ever love you again
As I do now?

William Carlos Williams

first published in Poems 1916.

and all i can say is how little we've learned,and yet too much,

interlude

In this world
love has no color --
yet how deeply
my body
is stained by yours.

Izami Shikibu
tran. Jane Hirshfield

interlude

i can't remember ever --
well, not for a long time, anyway --
feeling this way:
being offered, now,
what i may have wanted then,
but recognizing how
it was never what i thought.

and it's painful very deeply inside.
that his life, i think,
has been destroyed
by his unavoidable
misunderstandings.

the pain comes, of course,
witnessing his pain,
and knowing by osmosis
it once was mine.

tender buttons

BUTTON

It likes both to enter
and to leave,
actions it seems to feel as a kind of hide-and-seek.
It knows nothing of
what the cloth believes
of its magus-like powers.

If fastening and unfastening
are its nature,
it doesn’t care about its nature.

It likes the caress of two fingers
against its slightly
thickened edges.
It likes the scent and heat
of the proximate body.
The exhilaration of the washing
is its wild pleasure.

Amoralist, sensualist, dependent of cotton thread,
its sleep is curled like a cat to a patch of sun,
calico and round.

Its understanding is the understanding
of honey and jasmine, of letting what happens come.

A button envies no
neighboring button,
no snap, no knot, no polyester-braided toggle.
It rests on its red-checked shirt
in serene disregard.

It is its own story, completed.

Brevity and longevity mean nothing to a button carved of horn.

Nor do old dreams of passion
disturb it,
though once it wandered the
ten thousand grasses
with the musk-fragrance
caught in its nostrils;
though once it followed—it did, I tell you—that wind for miles.

Jane Hirshfield

Copyright © 2002 "Button" is from Jane Hirshfield's GIVEN SUGAR, GIVEN SALT

Satsuma-ware is classified in the "ceramics" category, that is, products made of fired clay. The original techniques were actually Korean, but after Japan’s invasion of Korea in 1598, Shimaza Yoshiro, lord of the Satsuma Province, brought back Korean artisans for the purpose of developing his own ceramic industry. Manufacture was continuous until the 1960s, with the secrets of the craft passed from generation to generation. However, the artisans became fewer, and their children moved away or lost interest in maintaining the family traditions, until the art became extinct.

Since the Japanese wore no buttons, none were made until export trade with the West was established. This occurred by treaty in 1868, fifteen years after Admiral Perry was allowed to anchor his ship in Tokyo harbor and begin negotiations. Japanese ceramics became popularized at the Vienna Exposition in 1873, and it was probably not until this time or shortly thereafter that the first Satsuma buttons were made. In fact, many were probably made not in Satsuma Province, but in Kyoto, from whence they were sent to Tokyo for hand-decorating and export. 1

(note: since i regularly decide to make-over some piece of clothing by replacing the buttons, it was time for a visit to the button shop -- see here and here and here and here. i found the top two buttons, the dragonfly and the geisha, photographed them, and came home to google their story. i did not find those stories -- though there were some similar to the dragonfly -- but i sure learned a lot about buttons.)

MORE RESOURCES:

the british button society

bowerbirdz

webshells competition buttons

bead-fx

& lots of ebay: here and here and many more.

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 happy interdependence day to us all

  Stars, still pond —
all night the white geese cry out
in your hand.

Coming, my eyes open.
How suddenly black
the tree trunks look in the rain.

Night quiets, cools.
Even now,
two boats on a single mooring,
we rise and fall on one breath, going on.

JANE HIRSHFIELD

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 organs themselves.

By the 1660s, the first mass- produced woodblock prints began to appear, often in the form of pages illustrating of handbooks on .... We should bear in mind that these illustrated manuals were perfectly legitimate books in their day.

As has been pointed out, "these spring painting must be regarded in the light of seventeenth-century Japanese life and mores. --was considered a very natural function, and ways of increasing enjoyment of this function were felt to be more commendable than censurable."

Unlike the case in Europe, Japanese artists did not celebrate the figure in their work in any medium until the late Meiji period. Japanese popular art of the eighteenth century, detailed polychrome prints of famous beautiful women -- usually courtesans -- were much in demand. These prints emphasized the subtle, often elaborate facial features, gestures, long hair, and richly decorated clothing of these women to convey a sense of  beauty and power.

Its beak caught firmly
in the clam's shell
The snipe cannot fly away
On an autumn eveningUNKNOWN JAPANESE POET

"Few peoples," says Lane, "have ever pursued the cult of artistic spring painting as assiduously as the Japanese." (Images from the Floating World)

Tokugawa-period woodblock prints are generally called ukiyo-e 浮世絵, meaning "images of the floating world." Many people incorrectly think that the term ukiyo-e means spring painting images, probably because so many ukiyo-e were spring painting. But ukiyo-e encompass landscape scenes and a wide variety of non-spring painting themes.

Spring painting woodblock prints were most commonly known as spring painting春画, meaning "spring pictures." The word "spring" often means "youthful beauty" or "youthful vigor" in Japanese usage then or now. The sale of services, for example, is baishun 売春, "selling spring," which has a different emotive sense than the English term "prostitution." Similarly, the word "color" (iro 色 by itself, -shoku -色 in many compound words) often means spring painting or spring painting. (more)

By that fallen house the pear-tree stands
full- blooming... an ancient battle site.

Shiki


The Groundfall Pear

It is the one he chooses,
Yellow, plump, a little bruised
On one side from falling.
That place he takes first.

Jane Hirshfield


Study of Two Pears

I
Opusculum paedagogum.
The pears are not viols,
Nudes or bottles.
They resemble nothing else.

II
They are yellow forms
Composed of curves
Bulging toward the base.
They are touched red.

III
They are not flat surfaces
Having curved outlines.
They are round
Tapering toward the top.

Wallace Stevens


May Day

A delicate fabric of bird song
Floats in the air,
The smell of wet wild earth
Is everywhere.

Red small leaves of the maple
Are clenched like a hand,
Like girls at their first communion
The pear trees stand.

Oh I must pass nothing by
Without loving it much,
The raindrop try with my lips,
The grass with my touch;

For how can I be sure
I shall see again
The world on the first of May
Shining after the rain?

Sarah Teasdale