Nice overview, Max. I think you might eventually find a few bits that could be cut somewhat, but.
Made me think of Wilde’s ‘Nature copies art’ meme… (which nature here does a lot)...
Doug
> On Apr 12, 2016, at 8:30 PM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Inside Outside
>
> Having climbed its hill, why should I
> enter the Asian Art Museum
> except to enjoy, admire -
> and fail if I tried to emulate -
> work so far beyond my powers?
>
> Outside, the green hilltop park:
> lakes with ducks; wide, far
> vistas to sea and mountains;
> old trees, surely the town’s
> widest-spreading cherry tree -
>
> speak directly of what, inside,
> several eras of Asian arts
> celebrate fully, modestly.
> All outdoors presses on me
> its beauties - grandeurs, even,
>
> worthy of the art indoors, give
> or take a buffalo or two.
> The wholesome artlessness
> of the natural! - the well-planted,
> tended, pruned and watered real!
>
> Locals with earnest easels may
> well lurk where just now I can’t see,
> rendering each their honest view.
> (Strollers exempt themselves from fresh
> attention, as their cellphones flash.)
>
> Mainly I feel these land- sky- sea-
> scape panoramas unframed are
> unframeable, certainly way
> beyond the current verbal
> resources at my disposal.
>
> A middle-distance silver flash
> shapes itself into a squirrel.
> Outdoors provokes art appetite,
> stirs ambition, only to beggar
> the impractical artificer.
>
> Let it all pour in on me,
> pondering the Puget-Sound
> tsunami my wife assures me
> will follow the due-any-day
> (or worse, -night) Great Quake.
>
> Hokusai’s ‘Great Wave’ frames a safe
> exquisite Fuji; quake and great waves,
> she says, will take most of Seattle.
> Though from here I can’t see it,
> shapely Mount Rainier awaits
>
> on its near horizon whichever
> cataclysm may come first, its own
> fated eruption sure, except its date.
> What pours in on me - too phlegmatic
> to imagine ruin - is sunlight
>
> merely, brightening all the ponds,
> lightening the evergreens’ cones,
> tinting my self-darkening specs.
> Everything ungraspable moves
> faster than eye or aging mind - or
>
> calligrapher’s hand? Well, an old
> culture has its codes and formulae,
> confident stilled re-presentations
> of the quick. I’d better go inside,
> flashing a smile and Senior’s card.
Douglas Barbour
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https://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuations 2 (UofAPress).
Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
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Charles Simic.
