the longest day!

MIRACLES

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of
nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs
of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,

Or look at strangers opposite me
riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness
of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light
and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior
swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—
the ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?

Walt Whitman

MIRACLE FAIR

Commonplace miracle:
that so many commonplace miracles happen.

An ordinary miracle:
in the dead of night
the barking of invisible dogs.

One miracle out of many:
a small, airy cloud
yet it can block a large and heavy moon.

Several miracles in one:
an alder tree reflected in the water,
and that it's backwards left to right
and that it grows there, crown down
and never reaches the bottom,
even though the water is shallow.

An everyday miracle:
winds weak to moderate
turning gusty in storms.

First among equal miracles:
cows are cows.

Second to none:
just this orchard
from just that seed.

A miracle without a cape and top hat:
scattering white doves.

A miracle, for what else could you call it:
today the sun rose at three-fourteen
and will set at eight-o-one.

A miracle, less surprising than it should be:
even though the hand has fewer
than six fingers,
it still has more than four.

A miracle, just take a look around:
the world is everywhere.

An additional miracle,
as everything is additional:
the unthinkable is thinkable.

Wislawa Szymborska
translated by Joanna Trzeciak

oops... almost forgot

what breaks

listen... you can hear it now....

THE WAVE

As when far off
in the middle of the ocean
A breast-shaped curve of wave begins to whiten
And rise above the surface,
then rolling on
Gathers and gathers until
it reaches land
Huge as a mountain and crashes among the rocks
With a prodigious roar, and what was deep
Comes churning up from the bottom in mighty swirls
Of sunken sand and living things and water —

So in the springtime
every race of people
And all the creatures on earth
or in the water,
Wild animals and flocks
and all the birds
In all their painted colors,
all rush to charge
Into the fire that burns them: love moves them all.

Virgil, translated by Robert Pinsky
The Threepenny Review

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 ge 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

song of ducks

STUDY IN ORANGE AND WHITE

I knew that James Whistler was part of the Paris scene,
but I was still surprised when I found the painting
of his mother
at the Musée d'Orsay
among all the colored dots and mobile brushstrokes
of the French Impressionists.
•
And I was surprised to notice
after a few minutes of benign staring,
how that woman, stark in profile
and fixed forever in her chair,
began to resemble
my own ancient mother
who was now fixed forever in the stars, the air, the earth.
•
You can understand why he titled
the painting
"Arrangement in Gray and Black"
instead of what everyone naturally calls it,
but afterward, as I walked along the river bank,
I imagined how it might have broken
the woman's heart to be demoted from mother
to a mere composition, a study in colorlessness.
•
As the summer couples leaned
into each other
along the quay and the wide,
low-slung boats
full of spectators slid
up and down the Seine
between the carved stone bridges
and their watery reflections,
I thought: how ridiculous, how off-base.
•
It would be like Botticelli calling "The Birth of Venus"
"Composition in Blue, Ochre, Green, and Pink,"
or the other way around
like Rothko titling one of his sandwiches of color
"Fishing Boats Leaving Falmouth Harbor at Dawn."
•
Or, as I scanned the menu at the cafe
where I now had come to rest,
it would be like painting something laughable,
like a chef turning on a spit
over a blazing fire in front of
an audience of ducks
and calling it
"Study in Orange and White."
•
But by that time, a waiter had appeared
with my glass of Pernod and a clear
pitcher of water,
and I sat there thinking of nothing
but the women and men passing by—
mothers and sons walking their small fragile dogs—
and about myself,
a kind of composition in blue and khaki,
and, now that I had poured
some water into the glass, milky-green.

Billy Collins

Poetry (January 1999)

on the wings of a big orange fish

ATAVISM


I was always afraid of Somes's Pond:
Not the little pond, by which the willow stands,
Where laughing boys catch alewives in their hands
In brown, bright shallows; but the one beyond.
There, when the frost makes all the birches burn
Yellow as cow-lilies, and the pale sky shines
Like a polished shell between black spruce and pines,
Some strange thing tracks us, turning where we turn.

You'll say I dream it, being the true daughter
Of those who in old times endured this dread.
Look! Where the lily-stems are showing red
A silent paddle moves below the water,
A sliding shape has stirred them like a breath;
Tall plumes surmount a painted mask of death.

Elinor Wylie

I think it would help to understand the common theme that runs throughout all the art and figurines that we are posting. To do that I think we need to appreciate the culture and legends that produce a universial image of carp, and by extension, the image of koi. As westerners, it is our tendency to look at koi and then look deeper into carp and then come to an impass as to why some things in koi are the way they are? If we start at the 'other end' that is, within the fabic of the culture that created the nishikigoi, we can begin to understand more about the symbolic aspects of koi and how subjective judging includes power, strength, grace and 'presence'.

A carp is a symbol of struggle and endurance. And that symbolism leads to success and reward of life. The Chinese and later the Japanese, who adopted much of Chinese culture as their own over the centuries, observed that carp struggle up stream and never seem to give up that drive. From this a very wide spread fable of the carp that , against all odds, swims up the mighty river of China to the dragon’s gate. The Dragon gate is the area where the river ends and the mountain’s heavy water flow begins. The carp struggles and never gives up and eventually transcends the head waters and reaches his goal. The reward is to become the dragon, a very wise and all powerful creature.

You can see how this worked in the minds of ancient people. The carp is scaled ( like the dragon) fish and seems on a mission as it swims against the current. Dragon myth are common and well loved figures in Asian cultures, from India to Japan. They symbolize many things to the different cultures but always wisdom and power are included in the image.

Carp not only scaled like a dragon, they are also scaled like armor. And this is why Samurai loved keeping wild carp and why carp flags are a symbol of manhood and man’s struggle for success in life.


By the way, this is how and why the serious Japanese keeper sees large , really feminine full bodied koi, as powerful and more of the male image than the female.

So who are these riders on these giant koi? A monk, a boy, a scholar and a warrior. Each is a fable. Mostly from Chinese religions and most are folklore or parables. The monk is on a quest for enlightenment and is taken to the bottom of the sea by a giant carp and shown the wonders of a magical underwater city . The warrior is symbolism of the armored warrior who will not give of the struggle and win by endurance. The scholar is an Chinese figure of several fables that flies on the ‘wings’ of a flying carp in search of wisdom. And the boy, is on a journey to manhood and success in life. This then ties into ‘Boy’s day’ in Japan , the release of live carp into the waters as a symbol of the young boy becoming a man and reaching his goals in life- success, riches, good health etc. 1

poet of the belle epoque

(marcello dudovich was born with the right skills and the right interests at the right time. it was a moment when color printing was booming and when the middle class had grown large enough to support things like department stores, the mele stores in particular. he also has the opportunities to meet and study under mucha, penfield, and hohenstein.)

In 1897 with the help of Leopoldo Metlicovitz, painter, poster artist, illustrator and stage designer, Antonio Dudovich sends his son Marcello to the Officine Grafiche Ricordi (Ricordi Printing Works) in Milan, in order to learn the job of “colourist”.

Giulio Ricordi, director of the Works, doesn’t take long to notice the young Dudovich’s talent. From simple copier and colourist he is promoted to designer and regular collaborator. It is necessary to stress how important this compact and numerous group, which includes the best “signatures” of Italian poster art, is for Ricordi.

The inter- na- tion- al char- act- er of the Officine Grafiche Ricordi manifests itself also in the presence of artists coming from other countries (Adolfo Hohenstein, Leopoldo Metlicovitz, F. Laskoff, Aleardo Villa, Giovanni Mataloni): endowed with strong personalities, they create a fertile breeding ground in which the new European modernist developments can take root, and, even within the consolidated 19th century tradition of poster art, they succeed in elaborating innovative communication formulas in the field of visual advertising art.

The Officine Ricordi are in these years the best Italian lithographic printing works, with several branches both in Italy (Milan, Naples, Florence, Rome) and abroad (London, Paris, Leipzig, New York). The constant contact of the Officine Ricordi with foreign countries represents an inexhaustible source of information and visual stimulation for Dudovich, who can thus keep up-to-date with the new artistic and publishing developments, mixing the most disparate international artistic influences.

Dudovich settles down in Milan and works for the advertising campaigns of the Grandi Magazzini Mele, an important department store in Naples (1906-1914). These years are happy and characterised by an abundant and justly acclaimed output: he realizes some of the best posters of his long career. Milan will acknowledge Dudovich as “the poet of the Belle Epoque”, a refined illustrator of human life, and an acute portraitist.

The Officine Grafiche Ricordi become in Italy what the Imprimerie Chaix, created by Jules Chéret, is in France: a stimulating breeding ground for artists capable of following all the stages of their work step by step, from the sketching phase to chromolithographic reproduction on stone, zinc, or aluminium plate – collaborating with the printers, supervising directly the work in all its phases, refining and adding further touches. 1

(the mele stores, like paul poiret -- french clothing designer --, seized the opportunity this "golden age of posters" afforded them by hiring the best and the brightest of the up-and-coming new artists of this new field to promote their goods.

clearly, the influences of japonisme have become part of the language; the dark outlines and flat areas of pure color, and the often-appearing diagonal structure are hard to miss.)