No moustache in one. No glasses in the other. Still they look alike.
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| Illustration of Harry Duncan by Jack McMaster — Parenthesis 31 | Photograph of Northrop Frye by Fred Phipps — Toronto Star, July 13, 2012 |
I first came across a portion of the illustration by Wesley Bates in a Gaspereau Press catalogue.
I hope I've played down Shylock's villainy, but played up the pro-Caucasian Christian Capitalist‡ (Apartheid-like) bias of the Venetian Republic.George Elliott Clarke. The Merchant of Venice (Retried).
‡This Trumpist "CCC" is the prelude to the KKK?
Curononsky died in 1956. This bit comes from a volume edited by Jeni Wright published in English in 1989.
A menu, however, is not an abstract exercise. Its composition is based on whatever shopping has been done. A chef or a housewife with an eye for the quality of produce does not shop according to preconceived ideas, after first listing the ingredients needed for some arbitrarily chosen recipe. It is undoubtedly useful, however, to have some general plan in mind for the meal [...] All the great chefs and "cordons-blues" confirm that obvious advantage of "cuisine du marché" (cooking according to the market), which gives preference to seasonal or early produce and allows the best relationship between quality and price.Curnonsky, Larousse Traditional French Cooking (1989, French 1987)
And so for day 2356
Mary Cornish
from "The Laws of Japanese Painting"
in Red Studio
If a mountain is ten feet high, the treesThe image of the bean brings to mind for me those primary school projects where a bean is sprouted in a glass and we could see the hairs on the roots and the leaves unfold from the cotyledon. Without proper soil of course they perished. Of course any plant eventually perishes. Such are the thoughts that grow from contemplating man as bean.
should be one foot, the horse one inch, and a man
the size of a bean.
Richard Ronan. A Lamp of Small Sorrow: Four Fu Poems.
But what impresses me most about A Lamp of Small Sorrow is not so much its closeness to Taoism or Zen, though the closeness is palpable and altogether present in each section. Rather it is the feeling that the sequence had to be written, and that the poet, seemingly lost and overwhelmed in a harsh impoverished landscape, rises above it through meeting it directly, honestly and with great sensitivity. Richard Ronan in this lovely book tells the story of a spirit encountering its absolute context.A note of abstraction that would seem amiss were it not for the exergue on the facing page.
of sorrow let oil be madeAnd glowing in this body of work are illustrations by Bill Rancitelli each as suggestive as this one capturing the feel of spring: eyes shielded from the light and scanning the skies and an armful of pussy willows, dog sniffing the damp earth — all bespeak of anticipation.
let rags of sorrow
be made into wicks
mark out the stars
for each season
make of these
a lamp of small sorrow
be brave, old friend, be brief
Word and image moving the mind to contemplation.
Two lines from #121 in Daryl Hine &: A Serial Poem
[…]Two lines that bring to mind for me the subtle art of Jeff Hill who did the decorations and lettering for Peter Pauper Press's Cherry-Blossoms: Japanese Haiku Series III (1960)
As if each moment were a monument
[…]
Not every happening qualifies as an event.
I treasure the finesse of the block like elements of the houses or huts on the left. Some just over the window-like frame. Some overlapping red on black.
Four Ages of Man: The Classical Myths by Jay Macpherson is a tour through Greek and Roman mythology for high school students. The last chapter is devoted to "The Passing and Afterlife of the Gods" and ends thus — almost as an invitation to study nursery rhymes.
The Pied Piper who can draw rats by his piping is ony one of many magical musicians whose gifts recall those of Orpheus. Psyche's task of sorting a heap of seeds occurs in many familiar stories, and she herself and her mysterious lover meet us again in the tale of Beauty and the Beast. And where was it that we first met Endymion, the sleeping shepherd?The disposition of the lines is a bit different in the example collected by Iona and Peter Opie in The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book illustrated by Joan Hassall.Little boy blue, come blow your horn,
The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn.
Where is the boy who looks after the sheep?
He's under the haystack, fast asleep.
Will you wake him? No, not I;
For if I do, he's sure to cry.
With a magnifying glass one can make our the cow on the right in the corn (grain) and on the left foreground the sheep and behind on the left the little boy asleep near a haystack.
In her notes she explains: "The sleeping shepherd (illustration): this is actually a French mediaeval illustration to the tale of Hermes and Argus. Both are dressed as peasants, and Hermes plays, instead of the classical shepherd's pipe, a simple form of bagpipe." These two different visual treatments of the same poem remind me of emblem books where there is also much borrowing and lasting life.
