a gift for issa

POEM
After the Gentle Poet Kobayashi Issa

New Year’s morning—
everything is in blossom!
I feel about average.

A huge frog and I
staring at each other,
neither of us moves.

This moth saw brightness
in a woman’s chamber—
burned to a crisp.

Asked how old he was
the boy in the new kimono
stretched out all five fingers.

Blossoms at night,
like people
moved by music

Napped half the day;
no one
punished me!



Fiftieth birthday:

From now on,
It’s all clear profit,
every sky.

Don’t worry, spiders,
I keep house
casually.

These sea slugs,
they just don’t seem
Japanese.

Hell:

Bright autumn moon;
pond snails crying
in the saucepan.

Robert Hass

“After the Gentle Poet Kobayashi Issa” from Field Guide.
Copyright © 1973 by Robert Hass.
costume museum @ the met
happy anniversary, issa and haiku guy

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

just one more

AT THE ZOO

First I saw the white bear, then I saw the black;

Then I saw the camel with a hump upon his back;

Then I saw the grey wolf, with mutton in his maw;

Then I saw the wombat waddle in the straw;

Then I saw the elephant a-waving of his trunk;

Then I saw the monkeys—mercy, how unpleasantly they smelt!

William Makepeace Thackeray

early- to mid- 1800s
images from the same book

an unfamiliar, silent place

but i must interrupt myself to introduce you to quite an amazing, and growing, image source. in keeping with our exploration of turn-of-the-century vienna, wiener werkstatte, ver sacrum, et al, i tried to find some of the poetry that had been published in that magazine. but i failed. so here we have poems from poets who were in ver sacrum, if not necessarily with these poems.

LOVESONG

How shall I withhold my soul so that
it does not touch on yours? How shall I
uplift it over yours to other things?
Ah, willingly would I by some
lost thing in the dark give it harbor
in an unfamiliar, silent place
that does not vibrate on when your depths vibrate.
Yet, everything that touches us, you and me,
Takes us together as a bow's stroke does,
That out of two strings draws a single voice.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what player has us in his hand?
O sweet song.

Rainer Maria Rilke
trans. M.D. Herter Norton, from Translations from the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1938, 1966. 1

AN EXPERIENCE

What wondrous flowers had bloomed there,
cups of colors darkly glowing! And a thicket
Amidst which a flame like topaz rushed, Now
surging, now gleaming in its molten course.
All of it seemed filled with the deep swell
Of a mournful music. This much I knew,
Though I cannot understand it – I knew
That this was Death, transmuted into music,
Violently yearning, sweet, dark, burning,
Akin to deepest sadness.

Hugo von Hofmannsthal
translation. D. McClatchy? 3

HUNTING LASSES

My soul is sick to-day;
my soul is sick with absence;
my soul has the sickness of silence;
and my eyes light it with tedium.

I catch sight of hunts at a standstill,
under the blue lashes of my memories;
and the hidden hounds of my desires
follow the outworn scents.

I see the packs of my dreams
threading the warm forests,
and the yellow arrows of regret
seeking the white deer of lies.

Ah, God! my breathless longings,
the warm longings of my eyes,
have clouded with breaths too blue
the moon which fills my soul.

Maurice Maeterlinck 3

no. i don't really love those last two poems, but i think i'm a translation snob. but it doesn't take snobbery to recognize treasure.

all of these images are but a particle of what awaits you at mattia moretti's photosets on flickr.

included are not only two complete volumes of ver sacrum, which is 40% of the total run, but stunning secessionist buildings throughout europe (mostly), decorative objects, and much more. don't miss his blog, either: http://www.szecesszio.com/.

allegories • (the calendars)

(for evan et al!)

a sad little piece

so i came across this lovely set by franz karl devilla in a book. since i have a less-than-stellar scanner that i finally got off craigslist, and i'm not all that stellar at scanning myself, i went off to see if it existed online. and lo and behold -- someone seems to be scanning in that
very book (for a class, i think).

A SAD LITTLE PIECE

A LITTLE GOAT

a little goat was bought by the little father.
then came the little fox and ate the little goat,

then came the little dog and bit the little fox,
then came the little stick and beat the little dog,

then came the little ox and drank the little water,
then came the little butcher and slaughtered the little ox,

then came the little fire and burnt the little stick,
then came the little water and put out the little fire.

(huh?)

for the children? • (the calendars)

UNTIL TODAY, ALL of the calendars i've posted have been, quite unintentionally, for adults. today we begin a break from that,
though who will ever agree as to where that line really falls?

THE STORIES OF hans christian andersen have been discussed here before. notably, an entire storybook was featured, with illustrations by theo van hoytema. numerous others, also illustrators of andersen's tales, have been mentioned, including harry clarke, edmund dulac, arthur rackham, w heath robinson, maxwell armfield, mable lucie attwell, charles robinson, and many, many more.

THIS TIME WE have carl otto czeschka, member of the wiener werkstatte. though these images are drawn from andersen's tales,
i think we might question who the expected audience might be.

BUT WHO WAS this master storyteller that inspired all of the
brightest lights of the golden age of book illustration?
was he this, as danny kaye portrayed him?

uhhh...., no.

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN was the ugly duckling, and he was also the little mermaid. reports ubiquitously describe his unhappy childhood, with his huge beak of a nose, he was usually alone. even as an adult, his state remained solitary.

WHAT IS THE first thing you always wonder about mermaids?
is it,"how do they do it?"? yeah, i thought so; me too.
well, neither did mr andersen. biographies describe instead
a lonely man burned with a continual series of unrequited passions,
for both women and men. virginity as syrup to sweeten
children's stories. little mermaid, indeed. imagine really seeing
yourself as that creature with her legs fused together.

SO THAT LEADS one to wonder at the grand, lasting popularity of the stories. need for love, of course. basic for everyone. so what else is new? well, there is one other thing that to me fills in some of the remaining gaps, to question.

IN ADDITION TO andersen's unconsummated bisexuality, there is common speculation to his condition of asperger's syndrome, more difficult to prove from a nearly 200-year remove than those things
love letters can prove. but it would make sense.

WHILE ASPERGER'S IS perhaps best known for 'being on the autism spectrum,' few know what even that means, let alone all of the very important specifics. writers with asperger's have shown clearly that it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with curtailment of language skills. in fact the 'aspie's' ability to concentrate on minutiae endlessly reminds me of a poet i once knew who told me of the hundreds
of times she'd rewritten her ten-line poem.

BUT THERE'S ANOTHER thing: you may not know it, but you have
a gene that teaches you the rules of being a member of a group,
large, or even just two people. for aspies, that gene is different.
they, we, just do not hear conversation in the same way non-aspies do.
social interactions are also experienced differently.
they may, however, notice whole dimensions of things that go
unnoticed in the everyday for most people.
think temple grandin/ dr doolittle.

IMAGINE BEING AN ugly duckling who grows up still not getting much of the human interaction going on around you, and at the same time have a mind addicted to wonder. what better recipe for fairy tales, to fill up the gaps with the fancy? the happy ending is always better than the unanswered question; how much of all creativity is the simple act of 'filling holes,' answering one's own questions? and everyone else's?

are you still ready to say that andersen wrote stories for children?

but who better to inspire calendars?! another one next.

a man for all seasons • 1915

click to hear the song of a wild parrot

click to hear the song of a toucan

click to hear the song of a rooster

click to hear the song of a stork

click to hear the song of a peacock

click to hear the song of baby chicks

click to hear the song of an oyster catcher

click to hear the song of a swan

click to hear the song of a pheasant

click to hear the song of a kestral

click to hear the song of a penguin