travelling along the contours

THE SHAPES OF LEAVES

Ginkgo, cottonwood, pin oak,
sweet gum, tulip tree:
our emotions resemble leaves and alive
to their shapes we are nourished.

Have you felt the ex- panse and contours of grief
along the edges of
a big Norway maple?
Have you winced at
the orange flare

searing the curves of a curling dogwood?
I have seen from the air logged islands,
each with a network of branching
gravel roads,

and felt a moment of
pure anger, aspen gold.
I have seen sandhill cranes moving in an open field,
a single white whooping crane in the flock.

And I have traveled along the contours
of leaves that have no name. Here
where the air is wet and the light is cool,

I feel what others are thinking and do not speak,
I know pleasure in the veins of a sugar maple,
I am living at the edge of a new leaf.

Arthur Sze

From The Redshifting Web:
Poems 1970-1998,
published by Copper Canyon Press, 1998. Copyright © 1998 by Arthur Sze.


i discovered a cool blog today; its author and i sometimes think alike.

•pattern • design • color •

Japonisme might have had a limited effect except that it attracted the serious attention of superior artists and critics, including Théophile and Judith Gautier, Edmonde and Jules de Goncourt, José-Maria de Heredia, and Henri de Regnier.

Through them, ukiyo-e permanently altered European conventions of color, perspective, empty space, symmetry, form, composition, and subject matter.

In parti- cular, these artists came to under- stand the appeal of irregularity and to appreciate the Japanese sensibility for the evanescence of nature.

Japanese influence had a major role in inspiring the Impres- sionist movement in France, which caused perhaps the most profound change in the aesthetic of modern Europe.

from
Japan Invents the Future

by Daniel Pipes
Society
March-April 1992

(top left: jean-philippe worth; hearn title page: emil orlik; third from top left: also worth; bottom left: candace wheeler. the rest are unknown, but i could do some research if anyone wants.)