chinese dancers

i have been keeping something from you. but first... it's always wonderful to be discovered by someone with a blog that makes you, well, swoon. post after post in this woman's blog, poetic oneirism, somehow make you want to use the word utterly. then, when i came across this post, with this photo, i gasped.

for what i have been keeping from you is one of my favorite artists, elyse ashe lord. sure, her images feature all of the elements of japonisme, but, almost idiosyncratically, the people she features are chinese! sort of. from what i know, she never actually went to the orient, but there is something about her somewhat fantastical versions that delight me. and thus, when i saw that photo i thought immediately of this series of lord's.

ON THE COLD FOOD FESTIVAL,
ENTERTAINING AT THE SOUTHERN ESTATE:
the Guests Were Li Chiu-ho, Ma Nan-yeh, Wei Tung-kao, Li Hu-ch'uan, Huang K'ung-ts'un, Li Lung-t'ang, and Hu Hu-shan

Singing, dancing—handsome actors entertain;
guests have been invited to the courtyard.
The singers' mats hold the setting sun;
the dancers' sleeves flap in the east wind.

Lakeside willows—this smoky mist is hard to prohibit!
Flowering peach—a fire burning red by itself!
Village women come to ride the swing;
when they're done kicking, their hair is a mess!

Li K'ai-hsien. Translated by Jonathan Chaves

ting jen's post on dancing is so full, that i needn't come up with much
on my own.

QUIET SITTING

As I get older,
I like quiet sitting:
too many worries harm your soul.
My poems are not achieved by slaving at each word;
of all the emotions, serenity is best!

The perfumed steps are covered with flowers;
in blossoming trees: frequent songs of birds.
When the feeling comes, I dance and sing,
completely forgetting my head of white hair.

Wang Chiu-ssu. Translated by Jonathan Chaves.

ah yes.

dutchman in california?

just over a year ago i happened across a website for an artist who was new to me: arie zonneveld.

but i found the site incredibly frustrating because all you got were thumbnails, and most of those without the color.

then clive received a wonderful gift from gerrie in the netherlands -- larger zonneveld images! then i realized even more had been put on youtube! (also from gerrie?)

but the thing that struck me was so improbable i still don't understand it. why does this artist's work look like he came from california?!!

i had never even really considered the fact that there was a "california look," but somehow zonneveld's work reminded me of the work of three california artist of that same time: william rice, frances gearhart, and pedro de lemos.

this strikes me as so uncanny; even when painting in oils, there is a similarity. the choices of scene and the layout, the choices of manners of portraying trees, skies, shadows.

look at all of these flowers!

can you even pick out whose is whose?

even the choices of what flowers to paint; both places no doubt have poppies... but cactus flowers??!

gearhart and de lemos both studied with arthur wesley dow, and rice studied with howard pyle; i wouldn't be surprised if zonneveld had never heard of any of them.

are the landscapes similar, or the trees? was the look by then so ubiquitous that regional differences had evaporated?

no!

and thus we are left with another mystery. but what would life be without regular mystery?

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?)