Posted in Books I Love, Branches, Inspiration, Nature Notes, tagged cloth, Inspiration, Japan, Japanese maple, nature, Noh robes, patterns, Photography, photos, pictures, sunlight, trees on August 27, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Here are a few of the things inspiring me of late:
Sunlight shining through Japanese Maple leaves.
Japanese Noh robes as described in the book, Patterns and Poetry.
And always, always, always, trees – their green leaves, bare branches and beautiful barks.
Posted in Books I Love, Inspiration, tagged art, hands, Patti Smith, Photography, Robert Mappelthorpre, whimsy on April 2, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Here’s a whimsical project inspired by the Robert Mappelthorpe images in Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids. Interspersed throughout the book are images taken by Mapplethorpe of Patti, of himself, and of the two of them together. What stands out for me in each of the images, reproduced as black and white in the book, are their hands. Long-fingered, pale, thin hands. Willowy. I’ve always been drawn to hands, and so after completing the book, I decided to engage in a quick photo project with friends and coworkers today. Let me photograph your hands. Thankfully, they complied.
Dixie the Archaeologist
Meredith the Musician
Steve, the Physicist, Peeling an Orange
Steve Pollinating His Pepper Plant
Posted in Books I Love, Kitchen Inspirations, Nature Notes, tagged birdsong, poetry, Shadow of Sirius, W. S. Merwin on April 1, 2011| Leave a Comment »
There is no more selfish act, no more powerful gift I give to myself, then when I find a quiet corner to read a book of poetry. Through the author’s words — and the images evoked by those words — my experiences of this life are deepened. I especially felt that way today as I found a moment to read W. S. Merwin’s The Shadow of Sirius. You see, for days now, each morning as night gives way to morning, I have lain awake in bed listening to birdsong. I have struggled with how to capture the experience on paper. And then I read Merwin’s poem The Laughing Thrush, and I thought, “Well, one day the words may come about my bird and his song. But for now let me enjoy another’s.”
The Laughing Thrush
by W. S. Merwin
O nameless joy of the morning
tumbling upward note by note out of the night
and the hush of the dark valley
and out of whatever has not been there
song unquestioning and unbounded
yes this is the place and the one time
in the whole of before and after
with all of memory waking into it
and the lost visages that hover
around the edge of sleep
constant and clear
and the words that lately have fallen silent
to surface along the phrases of some future
if there is a future
here is where they all sing the first daylight
whether or not there is anyone listening
* from The Shadow of Sirius
Posted in Books I Love, Guest Contributor, Inspiration, tagged Cynthia Rylant, Inspiration, magic, The Van Gogh Cafe on March 26, 2011| Leave a Comment »
“Magic is in the Van Gogh Cafe in Flowers, Kansas, and sometimes the magic wakes itself up, and people and animals and things notice it. They notice it and are affected by it and pretty soon word spreads that there is a cafe — the Van Gogh Cafe — that is wonderful, like a dream, like a mystery, like a painting and you ought to go …”
* Words from Cynthia Rylant’s The Van Gogh Cafe
* Image by Lorraine
Posted in Books I Love, Inspiration, Nature Notes, Photography, Publication Updates, tagged colors, nature, photography book, pink, visual art on January 26, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Just in time for Valentine’s Day. 😉
Pink , a little book bursting with color. Check it out. There’s a full preview available online.
Posted in Books I Love, Branches, Inspiration, Nature Notes, tagged Blexbolex, colors, graphic design, Mary Oliver, seasons, Swan, visual art on January 23, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Well, one benefit of three major snowstorms in a row is that I’ve spent a lot of time indoors catching up on my reading.
One of my favorite finds is Seasons by French artist Blexbolex. The interior of the book is lovely, but it is in the exterior cover image that I lose myself.
It is categorized as a picture book for children, of silkscreen art depicting life and nature throughout the seasons, but I think many adults would find it fascinating as well. Given the pink font inside, and the pink on the cover, maybe Blexbolex’s book spurred my current interest in pink!
“The leaf has a song in it.” For that line alone, from the poem What Can I say, I am grateful to Mary Oliver.
Each poem in the slim volume is thought-provoking and insightful about Oliver as an individual, as well as about humanity. She inspires the writer in me as well as the photographer.
One day I’d like to do a series of photographs inspired by her poetry. This is what I wrote about my first encounter with Mary Oliver back in 2006.
Posted in Books I Love, Inspiration, tagged books, bookshelves, Eudora Welty, family, memories, nostalgia on December 1, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Steve's Bookcase
Books are on my mind today in part because I sit in Steve’s living room surrounded by his floor to ceiling bookshelves. Handmade out of a dark wood, the shelves are asymmetric and stuffed with books, maps, correspondence and all sorts of object d’art from throughout his life. If you were to walk around that room — please try to avoid tripping over the books piled in various corners — and scan those bookshelves, you’d have a sense of who he is and the journey of his life.
The journey of one’s life is what comes across in the pages of Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings, a thin lovely little book based on a series of lectures she gave at Harvard University in the 1980’s. And that is the book next to me this morning which, along with Steve’s bookcase, makes me nostalgic about the place of books in my life. The passage currently lingering with me is where Welty describes how her parents sacrificed to buy her and her brothers books. I was reminded of my own parents who did the exact same thing for my brother and I.
Of course, not every book was bought. My father worked for the sanitation department and so on trash days he would find all sorts of things that people would throw out. He always brought home the books. Some things he kept separate from us kids like the Joy of Sex which my younger brother and I did eventually discover in a bureau drawer. After we were caught my parents placed that book high on top of the refrigerator with my dad chuckling and my mother hushing him. But all other books were fair game for viewing from onion-skinned bibles to old encyclopedias and modern biographies of movie stars.
I rarely remember my father picking up any of these books though he read the daily newspaper religiously. My mother read all the time. Together they encouraged our love of books and reading and so when our elementary school sent home a book order form for the Weekly Reader Book Club, my parents found the money to allow us to order a book. We must have selected more than one but the first book that comes to mind is Gus the Friendly Ghost. It was a small purple book, about a shy ghost who makes friends with a wily mouse in an empty house. My brother had me read that book to him many nights in our early years. It was his comfort food, especially the time after having a bad dream in which he got mad at me and pulled my head off! I crawled into bed beside him as he cried and read him the book. The whole time he patted my shoulder to make sure that I was there.
Anyway … that’s me and my early morning memories of books. What first books do you remember and why? 😉
Posted in Books I Love, Inspiration, tagged books, Botany for the Artist, color, design, imagery, Inspiration, reflection, The Great Life Photographers, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating on November 18, 2010| 1 Comment »
Did you know that snails have teeth? I didn’t until I started reading The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elizabeth Tova Bailey. The book recounts the author’s interaction, while bedridden, with a relocated woodland snail. The language is quiet, beautiful and colorful. “While the snail slept I explored the terrarium from my bed … the variety of mosses was so satisfying … Their hues ranged from bright grass greens to deep dark greens and from sharp lemon greens to light blue greens.”
As someone who spends a great deal of time snapping photos of plants, it was very helpful stumbling upon Sarah Simblet’s Botany for the Artist. A beautiful book in and of itself, its contents reminded me to look more closely at the things I photograph and to better understand the different parts that make up a whole. I found this blog post that actually shows the behind-the-scenes creation of the book in the artist’s studio.
And finally …
A gift from a friend, and what a source of inspiration. I’ve been carrying it in my backpack so that whenever I am on the bus or needing a moment’s respite at work, out it comes.
Any other book recommendations you’d like to share?
Posted in Books I Love, Inspiration, tagged human condition, mushrooms, nature, poetry, W. S. Merwin on July 22, 2010| Leave a Comment »
I received an e-update today from poets.org that included news about W. S. Merwin, one of my favorite poets. He is succeeding Kay Ryan as the 2010-2011 U.S. Poet Laureate. His is a poetry that makes one pause. Maybe all poetry does that. 😉 In any case, in the bookstore where I work, in the quiet moments, I pull Merwin’s Shadow of Sirius from the shelf. I recently discovered that he’d written a famous poem about mushrooms. As someone who has habitually avoided mushrooms I am amazed at how often mushrooms are appearing in my life this summer!
Looking for Mushrooms at Sunrise
When it is not yet day
I am walking on centuries of dead chestnut leaves
In a place without grief
Though the oriole
Out of another life warns me
That I am awake
In the dark while the rain fell
The gold chanterelles pushed through a sleep that was not mine
Waking me
So that I came up the mountain to find them
Where they appear it seems I have been before
I recognize their haunts as though remembering
Another life
Where else am I walking even now
Looking for me
— W. S. Merwin
Posted in Books I Love, tagged Aesop's fables, ants, Chris Raschka, Grasshopper, Nikki Giovanni on March 29, 2010| 1 Comment »
Not quite as heady as Godel, Escher and Bach, but still thought-provoking. The cover art (of course) drew me in, and the name of the author. I have always loved the poetry of Nikki Giovanni and wondered what she would do with a children’s tale.
The Grasshopper's Song
The story twists and turns from the original Aesop fable, and Giovanni certainly adds a jazzy blues feel through the language and behavior of the parties involved in the conflict. The short of it: the grasshopper wants some R-E-S-P-E-C-T and he’s taking the ants to court to get it. Not for the littlest of kids, but teens and adults will get a kick out of this one.
Words + Images 