flooded with moonlight

you might wonder or even assume that i continue to print poems by pound and williams and lorca and dickinson et al because they've always been my favorites, but i'd barely read any of them before (and i did read poetry; i edited a literary magazine for fifteen years). no, it's because this imagist movement of poetry was the english language version of japonisme.

"In America in 1912, the most common and popular poetry was called genteel because it was very well-behaved. Take, for example, this poem by Richard Watson Gilder.

The Woods that Bring the Sunset Near

The wind from out of the west is blowing
The homeward-wandering cows are lowing,
Dark grow the pine woods, dark and drear, —
The woods that bring the sunset near.

Around 1912 in London, some British and American poets led by Ezra Pound started a poetic movement called imagism. These poets reacted against genteel poetry, which they saw as sentimental, soft-edged, and emotionally dishonest. Instead, they advised, in Ezra Pound's formulation,

1. Direct treatment of the ‘thing,
’ whether subjective or objective.
2. To use absolutely no word that did not contribute to the presentation.
3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome.

In 1913, Pound added the following advice for aspiring imagist poets:

4. An 'Image' is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex
in an instant of time.
5. It is the presentation of such a 'complex' instantaneously which gives the sense of sudden liberation; that sense of freedom from time limits and space limits; that sense of sudden growth, which we experience
in the greatest works of art.
6. It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works.
7. Use no superfluous word,
no adjective which does not reveal something.

8. Don't use such an expression as 'dim lands of peace.' It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer's not realizing that the natural object is always
the adequate symbol.
9. Go in fear of abstractions. Do not retell in mediocre verse what has already been done in good prose.

Imagist poems were influenced by Japanese haiku, poems of 17 syllables which usually present only two juxtaposed images. This poetry strives to suggests more than its literal meaning, yet avoids overt figurative devices like allegory and even metaphor." 1

see what you think:

"Mañana", dated 7 August 1918 in Fuente Vaqueros,
from Libro de Poemas:

But the song of water
is an eternal thing.
It is light turned into song
of romantic illusions.
It is firm and soft,
mild and full of heaven.
It is mist and it is rose
of the eternal morning.
Honey of the moon which flows
from buried stars.
What is the holy baptism
but God turned into water
to anoint our foreheads
with the blood of his mercy?
For some good reason Jesus
was confirmed in water.

For some good reason the stars
repose upon its waves.
For some good reason Venus
in its breast was engendered

Federico Garcia Lorca (1898–1936) 2

Midnight. No waves,
no wind, the empty boat
is flooded with moonlight.

Eihei Dogen (1200-1253) 3

(and in case you were wondering if lorca could be a reincarnation of dogen, i have provided a helpful aide.)

whatever you can

WALKING THE MARSHLAND

It was no place for the faithless,
so I felt a little odd
walking the marshland with my daughters,


Canada geese all around and the blue
herons just standing there;
safe, and the abundance of swans.



The girls liked saying the words,
gosling,
egret, whooping crane, and they liked

when I agreed. The casinos were a few miles
to the east.
I liked saying craps and croupier


and sometimes I wanted to be lost
in those bright
windowless ruins. It was April,

the gnats and black flies
weren't out yet.
The mosquitoes hadn't risen

from their stagnant pools to trouble
paradise and to give us
the great right to complain.

I loved these girls. The world
beyond Brigantine
awaited their beauty and beauty

is what others want to own.
I'd keep that
to myself. The obvious




was so sufficient just then.
Sandpiper. Red-wing
Blackbird. "Yes," I said.

But already we were near the end.
Praise refuge,
I thought. Praise whatever you can.

Stephen Dunn

(reprinted from Between Angels, Poems by Stephen Dunn, by permission of the author and WW Norton & Company Inc. Copyright © 1989 Stephen Dunn.)

The Japanese regard the crane as a symbol of good fortune and longevity because of its fabled life span of a thousand years. It also represents fidelity, as Japanese cranes are known to mate for life.

blanche can wait

it all began because i found a poster by blanche mcmanus in one of my books, and so i had to explore. there will be way more another day (maybe tomorrow), but in the meantime, perhaps you can see why this poster of hers provoked today's post. (i already had the ohara koson, which is also inspiring.)

katsu- shika hoku- sai did his manga in 1821, and jules- auguste habert-dys gave us this gorgeous illustration, inspired by the japanese work, some 80 years later.

hiroshige's birds flew cross the moon some time around 1800, and h. charles tomlinson's birds had to wait 100 years before they could gather up this girl's palm of crumbs.



and the same time frame occurred before the book's flock was set free (unknown designer); they waited 100 years after hiroshige's work.

nakamura hochu worked even earlier, circa 1700, but hoytema, dutch, was painting birds 150 years before he was born.

(for more birds, check out some of our earlier posts here, and here, and here. and be sure not to miss the charming post here.)

one more reminder of what went not so long before

flowers every spring

isn't this just amazing? it's from the met's coverage of the Barcelona and Modernity: Gaudi to Dali exhibition.

"The first comprehensive survey of its type ever mounted in America, this exhibition explores the diverse and innovative work of Barcelona's artists, architects, and designers in the years between the Barcelona Universal Exposition of 1888 and the imposition of the Fascist regime of Francisco Franco in 1939."

and thanks to lazyrobots for the link.

i also want to introduce y'all to someone whose work has been part of my life for more than 30 years, because he is such a fixture here in berkeley. david lance goines has been making posters for longer than that, and many of them, for a local bike shop, or a restaurant, or the public library, hang on walls all over town.

yes, i know that he's known nationally now, but still, most of his posters are for places around here. i post this one here, now, because of the similarity of the flowers here and at the top of the "sofa-display case" (made by Gaspar Homar and Josep Pey), and i see clearly in both gifts from japan, gifts that once given never stop.

and then this is from around 1800 (nakamura hochu), before the japanese had ever heard of us. personally, though i'm horrified by the methods, i'm grateful that they finally did.