Personism

Paired: Scher + Stewart

The World by Paula Scher

The Map of the World Confused with Its Territory

In a drawer I found a map of the world,
folded into eighths and then once again
and each country bore the wrong name because
the map of the world is an orphanage.

The edges of the earth had a margin
as frayed as the hem of the falling night
and a crease moved down toward the center of
the earth, halving the identical stars.

Every river ran with its thin blue
brother out from the heart of a country:
there cedars twisted toward the southern sky
and reeds plumed eastward like an augur’s pens.

No dates on the wrinkles of that broad face,
no slow grinding of mountains and sand, for—
all at once, like a knife on a whetstone—
the map of the world spoke in snakes and tongues.

The hard-topped roads of the western suburbs
and the distant lights of the capitol
each pull away from the yellowed beaches
and step into the lost sea of daybreak.

The map of the world is a canvas turning
away from the painter’s ink-stained hands
while the pigments cake in their little glass
jars and the brushes grow stiff with forgetting.

There is no model, shy and half-undressed,
no open window and flickering lamp,
yet someone has left this sealed blue letter,
this gypsy’s bandana on the darkening

Table, each corner held down by a conch
shell. What does the body remember at
dusk? That the palms of the hands are a map
of the world, erased and drawn again and

Again, then covered with rivers and earth.

—Susan Stewart

Paired: Walker + Oliver

Eglingham Children and Swan on Beach, Northumberland, England (2002) by Tim Walker

The Swan

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

—Mary Oliver

Tim and I became fast friends during a slow walk under the hot sun in the South of France. We'd just been served lunch on the grounds of a fancy estate and slipped away to stroll down to a pond where two handsome and terrifying swans made their home. We were curious to have a look at those magnificent creatures, but careful not to get too close.

Must. Take. Photo. MUST!

Photographer's Dilemma by Tatsuro Kiuchi

Photographer's Dilemma by Tatsuro Kiuchi is utterly charming, like all of his work. It's also the perfect characterization of the dozens of diehard photographers I know. I found him via the current issue of Poetry Magazine — the cover of its July/August 2009 issue is illustrated with Kiuchi's equally charming On the Beach.

Speaking of Poetry Magazine — source of my most recent Paired post's poem Blowing the Fluff Away — you should subscribe. It's super.

Paired: Distin + Sarah

Dandelion (2008) by Sara Distin

Blowing the Fluff Away
For E.B.

The sprig of unknown bloom you sent last fall
spent the long winter drying on my wall,
mounted on black. But it had turned to fluff
some months ago. Tonight I took it down
because I thought that I had had enough
of staring at it. Brittle, dry and brown,
it seemed to speak too plainly of a waste
of friendship, forced to flower, culled in haste.

So, after months of fearing to walk past
in case the stir should scatter it to bits,
I took it out to scatter it at last
with my own breath, and so to call us quits.
—Fooled! for the fluff was nothing but a sheath,
with tiny, perfect flowers underneath.

—Robyn Sarah

Source: Poetry (July/August 2009).

Only Love Can Break Your Heart

Paired: Forer + Tennyson

My friend to live with you alone, Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee by Taj Forer
From the series Threefold Sun
Released as a 20x200 edition on Wednesday, August 5th, 2009
Taj and I had a lovely chat about Threefold Sun, Rudolf Steiner, biodynamic farming and raw milk.
You can read the transcript on the 20x200 blog.

Ode to Memory

  I.

    Thou who stealest fire,
  From the fountains of the past,
  To glorify the present, O, haste,
    Visit my low desire!
  Strengthen me, enlighten me!
  I faint in this obscurity,
  Thou dewy dawn of memory.

          II.

    Come not as thou camest of late,
  Flinging the gloom of yesternight
On the white day, but robed in soften’d light
      Of orient state.
Whilome thou camest with the morning mist,
  Even as a maid, whose stately brow
The dew-impearled winds of dawn have kiss’d,
      When she, as thou,
Stays on her floating locks the lovely freight
Of overflowing blooms, and earliest shoots
Of orient green, giving safe pledge of fruits,
Which in wintertide shall star
The black earth with brilliance rare.

          III.

Whilome thou camest with the morning mist,
  And with the evening cloud,
Showering thy gleaned wealth into my open breast;
Those peerless flowers which in the rudest wind
    Never grow sere,
When rooted in the garden of the mind,
  Because they are the earliest of the year.
    Nor was the night thy shroud.
In sweet dreams softer than unbroken rest
Thou leddest by the hand thine infant Hope.
The eddying of her garments caught from thee
The light of thy great presence; and the cope
  Of the half-attain’d futurity,
  Tho’ deep not fathomless,
Was cloven with the million stars which tremble
O’er the deep mind of dauntless infancy.
Small thought was there of life’s distress;
For sure she deem’d no mist of earth could dull
Those spirit-thrilling eyes so keen and beautiful;
Sure she was nigher to heaven’s spheres,
Listening the lordly music flowing from
    The illimitable years.
  O, strengthen me, enlighten me!
  I faint in this obscurity,
  Thou dewy dawn of memory.

          IV.

Come forth, I charge thee, arise,
Thou of the many tongues, the myriad eyes!
Thou comest not with shows of flaunting vines
    Unto mine inner eye,
    Divinest Memory!
  Thou wert not nursed by the waterfall
Which ever sounds and shines
  A pillar of white light upon the wall
Of purple cliffs, aloof descried:
Come from the woods that belt the gray hillside,
The seven elms, the poplars four
That stand beside my father’s door,
And chiefly from the brook that loves
To purl o’er matted cress and ribbed sand,
Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves,
Drawing into his narrow earthen urn,
    In every elbow and turn,
The filter’d tribute of the rough woodland;
    O, hither lead thy feet!
Pour round mine ears the livelong bleat
Of the thick-fleeced sheep from wattled folds,
    Upon the ridged wolds,
When the first matin-song hath waken’d loud
Over the dark dewy earth forlorn,
What time the amber morn
Forth gushes from beneath a low-hung cloud.

          V.

Large dowries doth the raptured eye
  To the young spirit present
    When first she is wed,
      And like a bride of old,
    In triumph led,
      With music and sweet showers
      Of festal flowers,
  Unto the dwelling she must sway.
Well hast thou done, great artist Memory.
  In setting round thy first experiment
    With royal framework of wrought gold;
Needs must thou dearly love thy first essay,
And foremost in thy various gallery
  Place it, where sweetest sunlight falls
  Upon the storied walls;
      For the discovery
And newness of thine art so pleased thee
That all which thou hast drawn of fairest
Or boldest since but lightly weighs
With thee unto the love thou bearest
The first-born of thy genius. Artist-like,
Ever retiring thou dost gaze
On the prime labor of thine early days,
No matter what the sketch might be:
Whether the high field on the bushless pike,
Or even a sand-built ridge
Of heaped hills that mound the sea,
Overblown with murmurs harsh,
Or even a lowly cottage whence we see
Stretch’d wide and wild the waste enormous marsh,
Where from the frequent bridge,
Like emblems of infinity,
The trenched waters run from sky to sky;
Or a garden bower’d close
With plaited alleys of the trailing rose,
Long alleys falling down to twilight grots,
Or opening upon level plots
Of crowned lilies, standing near
Purple-spiked lavender:
Whither in after life retired
From brawling storms,
From weary wind,
With youthful fancy re-inspired,
We may hold converse with all forms
Of the many-sided mind,
And those whom passion hath not blinded,
Subtle-thoughted, myriad-minded.

My friend, with you to live alone
Were how much better than to own
A crown, a sceptre, and a throne!

O, strengthen me, englighten me!
I faint in this obscurity,
Thou dewy dawn of memory.

—Lord Alfred Tennyson