You May Leave a Memory, or You Can Be Feted by Crows, poem by Dick Allen

YOU MAY LEAVE A MEMORY, OR YOU CAN BE FETED BY CROWS
by Dick Allen

Three years, Huang Gongwang
worked on his famous handscroll,
Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains.

As he put successive applications of ink to paper
over the “one burst of creation,” his original design,
it is said he often sang like a tree frog
and danced on his old bare feet.

One day, he adds one hemp fiber stroke,
the next a moss dot.

What patience he had,
like a cat who comes back season after season to a mole’s tunnel.

Honors may go to others.
Riches may go to others.
Huang Gongwang has one great job to do.

And he sings like a tree frog,
and he dances on old bare feet.

SOURCE: Poetry (December 2011)

IMAGE:  Portion of “Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains” by Huang Gongwang (1269 – 1354), Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368), ink on paper hand scroll. The work is currently kept in the Zhejiang Provincial Museum in Hangzhou.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dick Allen received his BA from Syracuse University and his MA from Brown University. His numerous poetry collections include Present Vanishing: Poems (2008) and Ode to the Cold War: Poems New and Selected (1997). He has won the Robert Frost Prize for Poetry, the Hart Crane Poetry Prize, the Union League Civic & Arts Foundation Poetry Prize, the May Caroline Davis Poetry Prize from the Poetry Society of America, the San Jose Bicentennial Poetry Prize, and a Pushcart Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has also received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ingram Merrill Foundation. His poetry has been included in several Best American Poetry and Best American Spiritual Writing anthologies, and he has co-edited several science fiction anthologies, including Science Fiction: The Future (1971) and Looking Ahead (1975). He was the Director of Creative Writing and Charles A. Dana Endowed Chair Professor at the University of Bridgeport until his retirement in September 2001. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, poet and fiction writer L.N. Allen. In 2010, he was named poet laureate of Connecticut and will serve in that position through 2015.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I’m particularly taken by how he [Huang Gongwang] did his best work in his seventies, and spent long years working on a given painting, only adding to it when it felt right to do so, which is very Zen. As a shan shui (mountain waters) painter, he was most interested in capturing emotion in his landscapes. His subjects were mainly nature and light. People may be present in his great landscapes, but you have to look hard. That doesn’t mean people are insignificant . . or maybe it does. From what we know of Huang Gongwang, he wasn’t prolific—some sixty paintings left, and most likely some attributed to him weren’t his. In my poem, I’m picking up on how he’s been described at work: like others in his school, he’d start with an original inspiration or design, and then over sometimes very long periods would let his brush elaborate—or on some days simply touch—the work here and there . . .I’d call this painter, who was also a poet, a good role model, at least for the kinds of poems I try to write. He’s both a figure of fun and a figure intent on having fun. Watching him paint, you feel both his delight and his intense purpose. When I think of him, I also think of the William Carlos Williams poem “Danse Russe,” with its much younger but still equally lonely and wild and proud poet dancing around the room.

Dogs think humans are nuts, quote by John Steinbeck

“I’ve seen a look in dogs’ eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.”

JOHN STEINBECK

PAINTING: “Green Dog No. 10″ by Zhou Chunya

Editor’s Note: Several years ago, I saw the above painting from Zhou Chunya’s Green Dog series at a Chicago art exhibition, and was awestruck by the huge canvas (18 feet wide by 23 feet high — no, that’s not a typo!). Most of the canvas was blank and the image of the dog appeared in the lower right. As I recall, this painting’s price was over $200,000. Thinking this was a typo, I asked the woman in charge of the booth the cost of the painting, and she confirmed the price. Since that time, I’ve learned more about Zhou’s Green Dog paintings and his touching relationship with his dog Hei Gen (Black Root), who died in 1999. Find out more about this fascinating artist and series of paintings here.

Wildflower, poem by Stanley Plumly

WILDFLOWER
poem by Stanley Plumly

Some—the ones with fish names—grow so north
they last a month, six weeks at most.
Some others, named for the fields they look like,
last longer, smaller.
 
And these, in particular, whether trout or corn lily,
onion or bellwort, just cut
this morning and standing open in tapwater in the kitchen,
will close with the sun.
 
It is June, wildflowers on the table.
They are fresh an hour ago, like sliced lemons,
with the whole day ahead of them.
They could be common mayflower lilies of the valley,
 
day lilies, or the clustering Canada, large, gold,
long-stemmed as pasture roses, belled out over the vase–
or maybe Solomon’s seal, the petals
ranged in small toy pairs
 
or starry, tipped at the head like weeds.
They could be anonymous as weeds.
They are, in fact, the several names of the same thing,
lilies of the field, butter-and-eggs,
 
toadflax almost, the way the whites and yellows juxtapose,
and have “the look of flowers that are looked at,”
rooted as they are in water, glass, and air.
I remember the summer I picked everything,
 
flower and wildflower, singled them out in jars
with a name attached. And when they had dried as stubborn
as paper I put them on pages and named them again.
They were all lilies, even the hyacinth,
 
even the great pale flower in the hand of the dead.
I picked it, kept it in the book for years
before I knew who she was,
her face lily-white, kissed and dry and cold.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Stanley Plumly was born in Barnesville, Ohio, in 1939, and grew up in the lumber and farming regions of Virginia and Ohio. His work has been honored with the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award and nominations for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the William Carlos Williams Award, and the Academy of Amerian Poets’ Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. He is currently a Distinguished University Professor and Professor of English at the University of Maryland. His poetry will appear in the Silver Birch Press SUMMER ANTHOLOGY (June 21, 2013).

Painting: “Wildflowers” by Walasse Ting — prints available at allposters.com.

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Walasse Ting (1929-2010) was a Chinese-American visual artist and poet. Common subjects include women and cats, birds, and other animals. His works are found in the permanent collections of many museums worldwide, including the Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the Hong Kong Museum of Art. (Read more at wikipedia.org.)

The Addressing of Cats, Poem by T.S. Eliot, Painting by Walasse Ting

THE ADDRESSING OF CATS
Poem by T.S. Eliot
You've read of several kinds of Cat,
And my opinion now is that 
You should need no interpreter 
To understand their character.
You now have learned enough to see
That Cats are much like you and me
And other people whom we find
Possessed of various types of mind.
For some are same and some are mad
And some are good and some are bad
And some are better, some are worse--
But all may be described in verse.
You've seen them both at work and games,
And learnt about their proper names,
Their habits and their habitat:
But how would you address a Cat?

So first, your memory I'll jog,
And say:  A CAT IS NOT A DOG.

And you might now and then supply
Some caviare, or Strassburg Pie,
Some potted grouse, or salmon paste--
He's sure to have his personal taste.
(I know a Cat, who makes a habit
Of eating nothing else but rabbit,
And when he's finished, licks his paws
So's not to waste the onion sauce.)
A Cat's entitled to expect
These evidences of respect.
And so in time you reach your aim,
And finally call him by his NAME.

So this is this, and that is that:
And there's how you ADDRESS A CAT.

Painting: "Blue Cat, Green Eyes" by Walasse Ting

The Naming of Cats, Poem by T.S. Eliot, Painting by Walasse Ting

THE NAMING OF CATS

Poem by T.S. Eliot

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo, or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey —
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter —
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular,
A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkstrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum —
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover —
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

(From Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, poems by T.S. Eliot)

Listen to T.S. Eliot read “The Naming of Cats” here. 

Painting: “Cats in the Garden” by Walasse Ting (1929-2010)

Green Dog #10 by Zhou Chunya

“I’ve seen a look in dogs’ eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.”

JOHN STEINBECK

PAINTING: “Green Dog No. 10” by Zhou Chunya

Several years ago, I saw the above painting from Zhou Chunya’s Green Dog series at a Chicago art exhibition, and was awestruck by the huge canvas (18 feet wide by 23 feet high — no, that’s not a typo!). Most of the canvas was blank and the image of the dog appeared in the lower right. As I recall, this painting’s price was over $200,000. Thinking this was a typo, I asked the woman in charge of the booth the cost of the painting, and she confirmed the price. Since that time, I’ve learned more about Zhou’s Green Dog paintings and his touching relationship with his dog Hei Gen (Black Root), who died in 1999. Find out more about this fascinating artist and series of paintings here.