roundabout home

isn't it obvious?

does it remove anything from this stunning photograph by harold cazneaux to observe the clear influence of japanese design?

cazneaux is known as one of australia's finest pictorialist photo- graphers, but in no online discussion that i could find is that influence ever mentioned.

interestingly, though, i did find a really convoluted but fascinating 20-year-old discussion of the travel of that influence.

it's from the new york times, a review of a photography exhibition of the work of japanese-american artists.

What is now known, usually derisively, as salon photography, once represented the medium's best hope of being taken seriously as an art form, and Stieglitz was one of its leading practitioners.

But by the 1920's, its refined sense of beauty and its restrictions on both subject matter and composition conspired to make it an artistic backwater.

It was into this backwater that the twenty-nine Japanese- American photographers represented in the show dived headfirst.

From the evi- dence, they readily adopted its compositional tropes and its attention to chiaroscuro and texture, producing images with affinities to Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints and sumi-e painting.

Ironically, the elements of Japanese style in these photographs come not from any inherent or native tradition, but from American Pictorialism's own Japonisme, which was largely inspired by the paintings of Whistler and the Post-Impressionists. 1

harold caz- neaux's work is being fea- tured this summer at the art gallery of new south wales.

i guess what must be happening is that all art is like jazz: people are always just riffing off each other. probably most never know where their influences come from because they're not analyzing, they're creating, being.

they're making art. and what do we care what pro- gres- sion got them there.

coincidentally, an exhibition coexisting with the cazneaux show is taisho chic.

only the wind comes

I INVITE THE ANGEL GABRIEL,
BUT ONLY THE WIND COMES

The wind again, this time wheeling
down from the northwest
and dumping rain, the wind-chimes in the yard
banging like hammers
and the gates slamming on their hinges.
And then it has passed
and it‘s time to go outside and
walk in the winter grass, the color now
of old celery and cardboard.
The yard is littered with tangerines,
hard and green.
Now it’s time to advance and gather them up. I am
not the chosen one to whom the Angel speaks.
I don’t mind. I don’t
believe I could bear up under that kind of pressure.
I don’t mind
speaking to the Magnificence,
night after night, without an answer.

Something was loose in the yard, that’s clear — something that asks
for a new way of speaking, which I haven’t figured out yet. Here
is a shingle gloved in moss and here is a branch in white fracture
recalling a human bone, and here is the sun breaking the cumulous
tower and here is the heart I abandon more or less regularly, lying in
a nest of wet leaves. I don’t mind. I pick them all up. I carry them.
I say a few words, but only in the eternal space in my head. It’s fine.
The sun keeps shouldering through, the crows are finding their wires,
the sparrows are eternal. The air is charged with incongrous smells,
clean linen, for instance, and sharp oxygen, and wet earth. I am
a presence among the scoured ruins. It’s time to stoop and collect.
It’s time to be quiet again, and poke and prod. It’s time to find
baskets for all this smitten fruit, round and perfect and shining.

Frank X. Gaspar


THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN
PLENTY AND THANKFULNESS

Today when I framed
two crows
in the notch of the ash tree,

I thought of order.
Rain
was in the forecast

and presto, rain. Then
three crows
in the field tilted the world

as if imbalance were
a blessing
dropped in the cup I keep

for blessings. Then
four crows
in the grass, five

on the wire, my plate
heaped up
with six crows.

And to give thanks,
to tell God
six crows were enough,

I lit prayer papers
in the garden—
their orange slippers,

their black, abstract
petals like
anti-confetti, like

hopeful ash, like
a thousand crows.
Then, a thousand crows.

Keith Ratzlaff



Colorado Review Volume XXX, Number 2 Summer 2003

What Is So Rare As A Day in June

AND what is so rare
as a day in June?

Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries earth
if it be in tune,
And over it softly
her warm ear lays;
Whether we look,
or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur,
or see it glisten;

Every clod feels a stir of might,
An instinct within it that
reaches and towers,
And, groping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;
The flush of life may well be seen
Thrilling back over hills and valleys;

The cowslip startles in meadows green,
The buttercup catches
the sun in its chalice,
And there's never a leaf
nor a blade too mean
To be some happy creature's palace;
The little bird sits at his door in the sun,
Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,

And lets his illumined
being o'errun
With the deluge of
summer it receives;
His mate feels the eggs
beneath her wings,
And the heart in her dumb breast
flutters and sings;
He sings to the wide world,

and she to her nest,-
In the nice ear of Nature
which song is the best?

Now is the high-tide of the year,
And whatever of life hath ebbed away
Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer,
Into every bare inlet and creek and bay;
Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it,
We are happy now because God wills it;

No matter how barren
the past may have been,
'Tis enough for us now
that the leaves are green;
We sit in the warm shade and feel right well
How the sap creeps up and
the blossoms swell;
We may shut our eyes but
we cannot help knowing
That skies are clear and grass is growing;

The breeze comes whispering in our ear,
That dandelions are blossoming near,
That maize has sprouted,
that streams are flowing,
That the river is bluer than the sky,
That the robin is plastering
his house hard by;
And if the breeze kept the good news back,

For our couriers

we should not lack;
We could guess it all
by yon heifer's lowing,-
And hark! How clear bold chanticleer,
Warmed with the new wine of the year,
Tells all in his lusty crowing!

Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how;
Everything is happy now,
Everything is upward striving;
'Tis as easy now for the heart to be true
As for grass to be green or skies to be blue,-
'Tis for the natural way of living:

Who knows whither the clouds have fled?
In the unscarred heaven they leave not wake,
And the eyes forget the tears they have shed,
The heart forgets its sorrow and ache;
The soul partakes the season's youth,
And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe

Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth,
Like burnt-out craters healed with snow.

James Russell Lowell

reflection

A FEW WORDS ON THE SOUL

We have a soul at times.
No one's got it non-stop,
for keeps.

Day after day,
year after year
may pass without it.

Sometimes
it will settle for awhile
only in childhood's fears and raptures.
Sometimes only in astonishment
that we are old.

It rarely lends a hand
in uphill tasks,
like moving furniture,
or lifting luggage,
or going miles in shoes that pinch.

It usually steps out
whenever meat needs chopping
or forms have to be filled.

For every thousand conversations
it participates in one,
if even that,
since it prefers silence.

Just when our body goes from ache to pain,
it slips off-duty.

It's picky:
it doesn't like seeing us in crowds,
our hustling for a dubious advantage
and creaky machinations make it sick.

Joy and sorrow
aren't two different feelings for it.
It attends us
only when the two are joined.

We can count on it
when we're sure of nothing
and curious about everything.

Among the material objects
it favors clocks with pendulums
and mirrors, which keep on working
even when no one is looking.

It won't say where it comes from
or when it's taking off again,
though it's clearly expecting such questions.

We need it
but apparently
it needs us
for some reason too.

Wislawa Szymborska

Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

green hair

I know you wonder why I wear
The hat which I have called Green Hair
And why I cover up my own

Which has a tawny chestnut tone

Warm, when all its lights are lit,
As a swarm of bees with the sun on it.

You say bronze hair is prettier

Than this strange green of feathery fur;

But there's a charm in
this strange green
Which is so nearly blue; I've seen

A comb of coral set with pearls
Drawn through lengths of such green curls

In the green gloom of a chilly cave
Down, far down in a hollow wave;

And under ancient forest trees
Long green tresses such as these
Shadow like a falling veil

Shy secret faces, dusky pale;
And I have seen green locks like those
Deep in a glacier, under snows.
I have seen such green hair tossed

From the brows of a creature wandering lost
On the other side of
a waning moon,
And in the golden sun at noon

I have seen young April plait
Flowers in showery hair like that,
And wring the rain from it in drops,
And spread it to dry on green hill-tops.

Now do you wonder that I wear
The hat which I have called Green Hair?
Thus with witchcraft I am crowned
And wrapped in marvels round and round;

There's sorcery in it, and surprise;

Believe your own dark-amber eyes
When mine of hazel look at you
Turned to incredible turquoise blue.

© 2008 Elinor Wylie

(the beautiful fouquet brooch
will be seen in
the boston museum of fine art's
Imperishable Beauty: Art Nouveau Jewelry, Wednesday, July 23, 2008 - Sunday, November 9, 2008)