russe

DUST LIGHT, LEAVES

Above autumn's burgundy
and rust,
beyond the orange groves
chafing and ruddy in the frost,
a cloud lifts into blue . . .

the west goes up all haydust, flame,
and the flat land glimmers
out to it on the day-stream--
it is Millet's sky of "The Angelus,"

that nine- teenth century sky
we have only in paintings
and in these few still moments
in their rose and amber rags.

As a child, I remember this . . .
standing on the creek stones,
dusk moving over the fields
like a ship's hull pulling away

with that first sense of loss
and release; I saw it was
all about the beginning of dust
rising into the long sky's seam.
into my own two eyes and hands.

A chalk-white moon overhead
and to the right, umber waves
of sparrows back and through
the empty trees . . .

Soon, stars will draw analogies
in the dark, but now the world
is simple as the dead leaves
glowing in this late hour,

simple as our desire
to rise lucent as clouds
in their camisoles of dust,
the cool air burning though us

over leaves drifting on a pond,
over the last memory
of ourselves looking up,
stunned as a carp blinking at the light.

Christopher Buckley

(this whole exploration in hue began when i noticed, in the metropolitan museum's collection, the oddly matching color schemes of the (at top) dagobert peche textile and the callot soeurs gown. i am not sophisticated in color theory, but i poked around until sense seemed to begun being made. the ballet russe had a tremendous influence on design in the first quarter of the twentieth century. how those became the colors of the ballet russe, and how these same colors came to become circulated around the western world, i do not know. but know that matisse as well as bakst designed their costumes, then carried the language of their colors into the world.)

paper wonder cloth wonder

what
frivolous
important
joy.

another cornucopia of treasures have opened their doors much wider than they'd done before -- the metropolitan museum of art. it just occurred to me that one no longer is required to say 'the metropolitan museum of new york' because the great museums of the world are no longer fixed in one place.

you cannot imagine how much this thrills me. for example, one of the first things i did in paris was to go to the museum of decorative arts (i'm not sure if that's what it was called then, then being 1989), go into the back rooms where the glassware wasn't so much displayed as stored in cabinets with labels on them. and i was so enthralled that i took notes so i would never forget:

"daum-- pink fleurs, silver a nuit; albert louis dammouse-- les colours l'art nouveau et iris verre; alphonse georges rayen-- red wheat a blend & lotus; galle-- very pale blue & green; pannier freres-- red carp & lotus; george despret-- les colours...." of course i remember none of these and am not even sure that i am reading my own writing correctly. what you are reading is ecstasy by glass.

having the newly increased access to the met's collections feels like that too. one (me) can spend all day viewing french clothing from the 20th century, taking sidetrips at coco chanel, callot soeurs, madeline vionnet, and the house of worth. while i wish the timeline searches were more, the whole set of fine-tuning possibilities can make finding your particular interests easy.

and look at these colors; it might as well be spring. after the first world war, design was bursting out all over, nature, color, and the drift towards abstraction had become normalized to the western eye, and there was reason to celebrate.

"after the austerity of the war years there was a move towards strong colors and a touch of the exotic." 1

these styles, these artists, are not new to this blog; chinoiserie is more mentioned in that book than japonisme, but it's traces are evident.

designers from the silver studio "show their interest in the formal clarity of japanese designs. particularly influential were the beautifully rhythmic, conventionalized patterns of woodblocks and stencils. arthur silver himself was deeply interested in japanese art, subscribing to bing's artistic japan, and collecting japanese prints and stencil sheets."

the book is quite clear in reminding us that these scrumptious designs were available only to the rich. the rich had more a taste for them; the rich could afford them. i had a similar realization in perusing the 1920s fashions on the met's site. had i been there, i might have worked where i helped design them, but i would never ever wear one. i would never hang these papers on my walls.

fortunately that ache can be assuaged with glory: that one may now devour the riches of the past, almost up close and personal, is incredibly satisfying, and takes up much less room in the closets.

will we ever really know kimono at all?

THE WOMAN WHO LOVED WORMS

(from a Japanese legend)

Disdaining butterflies
as frivolous,
she puttered with caterpillars,
and wore a coarse kimono,
crinkled and loose at the neck.

Refused to tweeze her brows
to crescents,
and scowled beneath dark bands
of caterpillar fur.

Even the stationery
on which she scrawled
unkempt calligraphy,
startled the jade-inlaid
indolent ladies,
whom she despised
like the butterflies
wafting kimono sleeves
through senseless poems
about moonsets and peonies;
popular rot of the times.

No, she loved worms,
blackening the moon of her nails
with mud and slugs,
root gnawing grubs,
and the wing case of beetles.

And crouched in the garden,
tugging at her unpinned hair,
weevils queuing across her bare
and unbound feet.

Swift as wasps, the years.
Midge, tick and maggot words
crowded her haikus
and lines on her skin turned her old,
thin as a spinster cricket.

Noon in the snow pavilion,
gulping heated sake
she recalled Lord Unamuro,
preposterous toad
squatting by the teatray,
proposing with conditions
a suitable marriage.

Ha! She stoned imaginary butterflies,
and pinching dirt,
crawled to death’s cocoon
dragging a moth to inspect
in the long afternoon.

Colette Inez


“The Woman Who Loved Worms” from Getting Under Way:
New and Selected Poems by Colette Inez.
(Story Line Press, 1993)

dedicated to janejohn

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

evolution of a rose

we have looked at roses before, mackintosh, hunter, but the 20s saw some strange new develop- ments in the portrayal of flowers. they went all crazy, all wiggley, and more abstracted than ever! trace the change to mackintosh, to poiret (both of whom had stylistic ties to vienna), or the new guys, ruhlmann, brandt, or dufet? why did this happen??!!

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose
Loveliness extreme.
Extra gaiters,
Loveliness extreme.
Sweetest ice-cream.
Pages ages page ages page ages.

•

Do we suppose that all she knows is that a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

•

...she would carve on the tree Rose is a Rose is a Rose is a Rose is a Rose until it went all the way around.

•

A rose tree may be a rose tree may be a rosy rose tree if watered.

•

Indeed a rose is a rose makes a pretty plate.

collected from gertrude stein 1

•

JULIET:
'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.

What's Montague?
it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face,
nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!

What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

WASTEFUL GESTURE ONLY NOT

Ruth visits her mother’s grave in
the California hills.
She knows her mother isn’t there but the rectangle of grass
marks off the place where the memories are kept,

like a library book named Dorothy.
Some of the chapters might be: Dorothy:
Better Bird-Watcher Than Cook;

Dorothy, Wife and Atheist;
Passionate Recycler Dorothy,
Here Lies But Not.
In the summer hills,
where the tall tough grass

reminds you of persistence
and the endless wind
reminds you of indifference,

Ruth brings batches of
white roses,
extravagant gesture
not entirely wasteful
because as soon as she is gone she knows
the deer come out of the woods to eat them.

What was made for the eye
goes into the mouth,
thinks Ruth to herself as she drives away,
and in bed when she tries to remember her mother,

she drifts instead to the roses,
and when she thinks about
the roses she
sees instead the deer
chewing them—

pale petals of the roses in the dark
warm bellies
of the sleeping deer—
that’s what going to sleep is like.

Tony Hoagland

from What Narcissism Means to Me.
Copyright © 2003 by Tony Hoagland.

scheherazade

the story in diaghilev's ballet scheher- azade is found nowhere (and, perhaps, everywhere, in bits and pieces) in the collection of stories called the arabian nights. there are stories which include the characters named in the ballet, including, of course, scheherazade, who is the 'featured player' of the book, but beyond this, it's sketchy, but who cares? one view of that backbend is all the reason one needs.

as you can see, the production of the ballet has remained remarkably similar, including the costumes by bakst and the choreography by fokine. then, as now, the designs have had a great power in influencing fashion and style.

george barbier was so moved by the ballet that he created a series of drawings illuminating the performance, and paul poiret openly attributed his inspiration to bakst.

even now, i can easily see bakst as further motivation to galliano in his fall 2009 rtw collection. and not only galliano, but the whole world celebrates the ballets russes this year because, as of this month, it reaches its hundredth year.

much has been written, and much of that fascinating, about the simultaneous appearances of scheherazade, salome, salammbo, and other very sexual, very dangerous, women during the terrifyingly liberating time of the fin-de-ciecle. it will not be added to here.

instead we will simply exalt and congratulate the multitude of wondrous artists who came together at that time: diaghilev, nijinsky, cocteau and matisse, bakst, and balanchine, and rimsky-korsakoff, and stravinsky. there were chanel and braque and leger and derain and miro and rouault and picasso and utrillo and gontcharova and pavlova, and redon.

or better yet, go celebrate them yourselves:
in boston, london, stockholm, amsterdam, salt lake city, hamburg, paris, and many many more.

or read more in the new york times, from harvard, or everywhere in the world! the universe! or even further out! start here! or here.

if we want to analyse, i'm sure there'll be time. for now, dance.

addenda: • Ballets Russes and Western Couture