hanging

i'd been considering this post for a good while now, smart and politically savvy, with videos that make today's washing machines look like miraculous sea creatures, and doing laundry appear similar to dancing the ballet. oh give me a break, i'd think. a chore is a chore. etc. then i saw this poem, and my vision was changed.

THE WASH

A round white troll with a black, greasy
heart shuddered and hummed "Diogenes,
Diogenes," while it sloshed the wash.
It stayed in the basement, a cave-dank
place I could only like on Mondays,
helping mother. My job was stirring
the rinse. The troll hummed.
Its wringer stuck
out each piece of laundry like a tongue--

socks, aprons, Daddy's shirts, my brother's
funny (I see London) underpants.
The whole family came past, mashed flat
as Bugs Bunny pancaked by a train.
They flopped into the rinse tub and learned
to swim, relaxing, almost arms and legs
again. I helped the transformation
with a stick we picked up one summer

at the lake. Wave-peeled,
worn to gray, inch
thick, it was a first rate stirring stick.
Apprenticed on my stool, I sang a rhyme
of Simple Simon gone afishing
and poked the clothes around the cauldron
and around. The wringer was risky.
Touch it with just your fingertip,
it would pull you in and spit you out

flat as a dishrag. It grabbed Mother
once--rolled her arm right to the elbow.
But she kept her head, flipped the lever
to reverse, and got her arm back, pretty
and round as new. This was a story
from Before. Still, I seemed to see it--
my mother brave as a movie star,
the flattened arm pumping up again,

like Popeye's. I fished out the rinsing
swimmers, one by one. Mother fed them
back to the wringer and they flopped, flat,
into baskets. Then the machine peed
right on the floor; the foamy water
curled around the drain and gurgled down.
Mother, under the slanting basement
doors, where it was darkest,
reached up that

miraculous arm and raised the lid.
Sunlight fell down the stairs, shouting
"This way out!" There was the day, an Easter
egg cut-out of grass and trees and sky.
Mother lugged the baskets up. Too short
to reach the clothesline, I would slide down
the bulkhead or sit and drum my heels
to aggravate the troll (Who's that trit-

trotting...) and watch.
Thus I learned the rules
of hanging clothes: Shirts went upside down,
pinned at the placket and seams. Sheets hung
like hammocks; socks were a toe-bitten
row. Underpants, indecently mixed,
flapped chainwise, cheek to cheek. Mother
took hold of the clothespole like a knight
couching his lance and propped the sagging

line up high, to catch the wind. We all
were airborne then, sleeves puffed out round
as sausages, bottoms billowing,
legs in arabesque. Our heaviness
was scattered into air, our secrets
bleached back to white. Mother stood easing
her back and smiled, queen of the backyard
and all that flapping crowd. For a week

now, each day, we'd put on this jubilee,
walk inside it, wash with it, and sleep
in its sweetness. At night, best of all,
I'd see with closed eyes the sheets aloft,
pajamas dancing, pillow cases
shaking out white signals in the sun,
and my mother with the basket, bent
and then rising, stretching up her arms.

Sarah Getty

From The Land of Milk and Honey, by Sarah Getty,
published by the University of South Carolina Press, 1996.
Copyright © 1996 by Sarah Getty. All rights reserved.

hohenstein: father of the italian poster

The rise of the Italian poster is intimately tied to the opera, the only national cultural institution in Italy at the turn of the century. Ricordi, the music publisher of Verdi and Puccini, decided in 1874 to create an in-house printing operation to promote its music. It began by installing the most advanced German lithographic presses and hiring a brilliant German Art Nouveau master, Adolfo Hohenstein, to train a staff of Italian artists.

Though born in Russia of German parents, Hohenstein (1854-1928) understood the Italian spirit so thoroughly that he is often called the "Father of the Italian Poster." Hohenstein’s charming La Boheme of 1895 was his first great Italian opera poster. It revealed the artist’s absorption of French poster art, particularly Cheret, in its playful and carefree depiction of Bohemian life in Paris. Yet in its classically rich color harmonies and use of strong diagonals to build dramatic impact [ital mine], the poster showed traits which would increasingly distinguish Italian poster art from other national traditions.1

Adolfo Hohenstein was a set designer at La Scala before being engaged by the Ricordi Publishing company in 1889 as a poster and frontispiece designer. His Edgar [not found] poster was his first known work in that capacity. Opera was a national past time in Italy and Ricordi published hundreds of opera-themed postcards that the public collected and mailed with fervor. The best of their efforts were postcards from the designs of Hohenstein and Metlicovitz. The La Bohème set, attributed to Hohenstein, no doubt coincided with the premiere of Puccini's piece. One of his other postcard sets is of Mascagni's neglected masterpiece, Iris. 2

Ricordi opened an in-house lithography shop to promote its operas and sheet music business. Ricordi quickly became the leading lithographer in Italy and by 1895 was creating posters for other clients such as Campari, the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera, and the Mele Department store of Naples. Under the tutelage of Adolfo Hohenstein, a brilliant stable of artists emerged at Ricordi. Artists including Cappiello, Caldanzano, Cavaleri, Dudovich, Laskoff, Metlicovitz and Mataloni brought Art Nouveau, known as Stile Liberty in Italy, to a world class level.3,4

(i know these little stories contradict each other and are not somehow chronological, but this is how legend is built, i'm finding. only occasionally am i willing to come up with an official version all on my own. all of the artwork is by hohenstein except for the giulio marchetti, which is by leopoldo metlicovitz, an obvious student of the master.)