Clouds, light, memory

DSCN0582
Originally uploaded by jhhymas

The college class I took from him was called Oral Interpretation of Literature. I don't know if they would even offer such a class any more. It was a very interesting class and the preparation was not that difficult. I did well in it, since I enjoy speaking and love language. Once he complimented me on my "sincerity" which made me feel silly, because I had felt a little fakey. He used to sit in the rear, listening to our presentations with complete attention. It was impossible not to see that he was really quite beautiful. His hair was very dark, as were his eyes, his shoulders were very broad and his hips slender; his teeth were white and had sharp corners. When he lectured, tiny drops of spittle--propelled by his definitive plosives--sometimes struck a student in the front row.
I married that summer and didn't continue with school right away. Busy with two children, I changed my major to English, which did not require rehearsal time, as Drama had.
I thought of him last night and wished I had told him how much I enjoyed that class. By now, I thought he might be dead--1955 was a long time ago. But Lael J. Woodbury became a Dean and is still lecturing, recording spoken word records and so forth in Utah. Without Google, I never would have found out. Good night!

Redds on their Wedding day

Redds on their Wedding day
Originally uploaded by jhhymas

She was age 17. She was his first and, I think, only plural wife.They were the parents of my grandmother, Susan Elizabeth Redd Butler, who was born in 1880. I think of the 1880's as the magic generation because so many great artists and writers were born in the first half of that decade.
Take Antonio Porchia for instance, he was born in 1885 in Italy but moved with his mother to Argentina about 1900. Over his lifetime he wrote and published short epigrammatic poems of a particular distilled sensiblity in books he called Voces (Voices). About 250 of them were translated by W. S. Merwin into English and published by Big Table Press in a small book called Voices. They are really quite unlike anything else I know. Here is a small sample:
"I love you as you are, but do not tell me how that is."

"Everyone thinks that his things are not like all the things in the world. And that is why everyone keeps them."

"It is a long time now since I asked heaven for anything, and still my arms have not come down."

My writing group met tonight and had some fine discussions. I recommend you form a writing group if you can. It encourages and reminds one to write and revise.

All the unliving I had loved were flying overhead

Tangle
Originally uploaded by jhhymas

I entered another shelf of poetry books in Librarything today and reached the magic number of 3033. At least it seems magic. I think I am about half done. I've been putting some of the books into the storage locker, which means I might as well pass them on. But I want to enter them all first and see what I have. Working with my shelves today, I discovered some poets I had forgotten about. Miklos Radnoti is one I might mention. Here's a short sample in translation from the Hungarian:

Peace, Dread by Miklos Radnoti

I went out, closed the street door, and the clock struck ten,
on shining wheels the baker rustled by and hummed,
a plane droned in the sky, the sun shone, it struck ten,
I thought of my dead aunt and in a flash it seemed
all the unliving I had loved were flying overhead,
with hosts of silent dead the sky was darkened then
and suddenly across the wall a shadow fell.
Silence. The morning world stood still. The clock struck ten,
over the street peace floated: cold dread was its spell.

--translated by Zsuzsanna Ozsváth and Frederick Turner

The stories of his life and death are riveting.

Oak Leaves on the trail

Oak Leaves on the trail
Originally uploaded by jhhymas

I'm still working on the ten-best lists. It is really fun! Here's a quote about the past, which fascinated Joseph Cornell. And which fascinates me, too, although now that I have experienced refrigeration, indoor plumbing, light for reading at night and antibiotics, I wouldn't really want to go back.

I like the word "hyacinthine"

To conjure, even for a moment, the wistfulness which is the past is like trying to gather the hyacinthine color of the distance. The past is only the present become invisible and mute; and because it is invisible and mute, its memoried glances and its murmurs are infinitely precious. We are tomorrow's past. Even now we slip away like those pictures painted on the moving dials of antique clocks: a ship, a cottage, sun and moon, a nosegay. The dial turns, the ship rides up and sinks again, the yellow painted sun has set, and we, that were the new thing, gather magic as we go.

Mary Webb, from the foreword to Precious Bane,
as quoted in the Joseph Cornell Album by Dore Ashton

Studio window

Norton studio window
Originally uploaded by jhhymas

Before the sun came up, I lay awake and thought about the Mica Hand of the Hopewell Culture. I decided I wanted to make a list of the Ten Perfect Made Things.
So these are the two that I thought of first, in the order I thought of them. I thought of Picasso's Boy Leading a Horse in between them, but after I looked it up, it was not the picture I thought I remembered, and has been cut. There will be a Picasso, I just don't know which one yet. Then I could see that even ten things, all with links, is too long for one post.

It soon became clear that I had to think some things through. What is included in made things? Sculpture naturally came up for my, but I thought of many more paintings.

Don’t photographs need a list of their own? I decide to move the linocut reduction print I own and the Adams photo to 10 best lists of their own in later posts. And I am still working on the rest of the list, although I am pretty sure that one of (all of?)Whistler's pastels of Venice will make the cut.

1.The Mica Hand of the Hopewell Culture.
2. Pupil (a pear wood and ceramic figure) by Elizabeth King that I saw at a museum in the 1990s.
So this is it for tonight. There are some other views of Pupil at the same site. It took my breath away when I saw it in the Hirshhorn Museum more than 10 years ago. I think it is part of the permanent collection there.

Sepia oak structure

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Originally uploaded by jhhymas

More from the birdwalk. I love the twiggy grace of these oaks.

Yesterday we went to services for an aunt who lived 100 years and 25 days. She was the youngest of eleven children and the only surviving member of her family. She only had one child, but 5 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren. Not bad, from a standing start!

When people die, I always wish I had asked them more about the past. I tried with my grandmother, born in 1880, but she didn't want to talk about how they did the washing when they lived in Mexico, and I found it hard to long maintain my interest in the lime and lavendar gloves and purses she had to match her Sunday outfits.

America! God shed his grace on thee . . .

The lake squared

The lake squared
Originally uploaded by jhhymas

On a lovely early moring birdwalk today. This was before I had any lunch, so I cannot tell you about that! ;-)

January morning
gulls bathe
at the lake's center