Might and Minotaur

Here's Brecca once again.


Brecca: stoneware; glazed with seafoam. I like how the glaze broke well, filling in the hollows with a rich light blue and revealing the contours just the way I wanted. Art-luck.

You can also see Brecca here and here.

Yeats and Pound: "Lake Isle" Poems

THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, 
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; 
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee, 
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, 
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; 
There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow, 
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day 
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; 
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, 
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

--William Butler Yeats      (1892)


THE LAKE ISLE


O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves, 
Give me in due time, I beseech you, a little tobacco-shop, 
With the little bright boxes
               piled up neatly upon the shelves
And the loose fragment cavendish
               and the shag, 
And the bright Virginia
               loose under the bright glass cases, 
And a pair of scales not too greasy, 
And the whores dropping in for a word or two in passing, 
For a flip word, and to tidy their hair a bit. 

O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves, 
Lend me a little tobacco-shop, 
               or install me in any profession
Save this damn'd profession of writing, 
               where one needs one's brains all the time. 

--Ezra Pound     (1915)

Land-Shark, Creekside

I'm happy with this piece.

William Dunbar's "Lament for the Makers"

LAMENT FOR THE MAKERS

I that in heill was and gladness
Am trublit now with great sickness
And feblit with infirmitie: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

Our plesance here is all vain glory,
This fals world is but transitory,
The flesh is bruckle, the Feynd is slee: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

The state of man does change and vary,
Now sound. now sick, now blyth, now sary,
Now dansand mirry, now like to die: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

No state in Erd here standis sicker;
As with the wynd wavis the wicker
So wannis this world's vanitie: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

Unto the Death gods all Estatis,
Princis, Prelattis, and Potestatis,
Baith rich and poor of all degree: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

He takis the knichtis in to the field
Enarmit under helm and scheild;
Victor he is at all mellie: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

That strong unmerciful tyrand
Takis, on the motheris breast sowkand,
The babe full of benignitie: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

He takis the campion in the stour,
The captain closit in the tour,
The lady in bour full of bewtie: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

He spairis no lord for his piscence
Na clerk for his intelligence;
His awful straik may no man flee. --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

Art-magicianis and astrologic,
Rethoris, logicianis, and theologis,
Them helpis no conclusionis slee: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

In medecine the most practicianis,
Leechis, surrigianis and physicianis,
Themself from Death may nocht supplee: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

I see that makaris amang the lave
Playis is here their padyanis, syne gods to grave;
Sparit is nocht their facultie: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

He has done petuously devour
The noble Chaucer, of makaris flour,
The Monk of Bury, and Gower, all three: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

The good Sir Hew of Eglintoun,
Ettrick, Heriot, and Wintoun,
He has tane out of this cuntrie: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

That scorpion fell has done infeck
Maister John Clerk, and James Afflek,
Fra ballat-making and tragedie: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

Holland and Barbour he has berevit ;
Alas! that he not with us levit
Sir Mungo Lockart of the Lee: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

Clerk of Tranent eke he has tane,
That made the aventeris of Gawaine;
Sir Gilbert Hay endit has he: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

He has Blind Harry and Sandy Traill
Slain with his schour of mortal hail,
Quhilk Patrick Johnstoun might nocht flee: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

He has reft Mersar his endite
That did in luve so lively write,
So short, so quick, of sentence hie: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

He has tane Rowll of Aberdene,
And gentill Rowll of Cortorphine;
Two better fallowis did no man see: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

In Dunfermline he has tane Broun
With Maister Robert Henrysoun;
Sir John the Ross enbrasit has he: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

And he has now sane, last of a,
Good gentil Stobo and Quintin Shaw.
Of quhom all wichtis hes pitie: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

Good Maister Walter Kennedy
In point of Dedth lies verily;
Great ruth it were that so suld be: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

Sen he has all my brothers sane,
He will nocht let me live alane;
Of force I mon his next prey be: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

Since for the Death remeid is none,
Best is that we for Death dispone
After our death that live may we: --

Timor Mortis conturbat me.

 --William Dunbar (1460?-1520?)


From The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900,
edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch.
Oxford : Clarendon Press ; London.

Howard Nemerov's "The Makers"

THE MAKERS

Who can remember back to the first poets, 
The greatest ones, greater even than Orpheus? 
No one has remembered that far back 
Or now considers, among the artifacts, 
And bones and cantilevered inference 
The past is made of, those first and greatest poets, 
So lofty and disdainful of renown 
They left us not a name to know them by. 

They were the ones that in whatever tongue 
Worded the world, that were the first to say 
Star, water, stone, that said the visible 
And made it bring invisibles to view 
In wind and time and change, and in the mind 
Itself that minded the hitherto idiot world 
And spoke the speechless world and sang the towers 
Of the city into the astonished sky. 

They were the first great listeners, attuned 
To interval, relationship, and scale, 
The first to say above, beneath, beyond, 
Conjurors with love, death, sleep, with bread and wine, 
Who having uttered vanished from the world 
Leaving no memory but the marvelous 
Magical elements, the breathing shapes 
And stops of breath we build our Babels of.

--Howard Nemerov

A Cold Wind Blowing -- At The Ford

Marching Orders

William Shakespeare's Macbeth;
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein;
Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest;
Guy de Maupassant's The Necklace and Other Short Stories;
Mark Strand and Eavan Boland's The Making of a Poem;
E. Annie Proulx's The Shipping News;
assorted stories and poems via handouts;
and some appropriate film clips.

English 1B: Spring 2013

Park-Time

Friends at play.

Sweet dog.

Land-Shark: Two Views

Shark: sculpture mix; floating blue and transparent brown glazing, layered.

Charm: Deer In The Wood

A Cold Wind Blowing

John Buchan: "A Barndoor Fowl"?

Here are two paragraphs from the very end of the first chapter --"Lost Gods"-- of John Buchan's The Island of Sheep, published in 1936, that I'm finding resonant.  Richard Hannay, of The Thirty-Nine Steps, is our narrator, and he's reached his fifties . . . .


I continued my journey -- I was going down t the Solent to see about laying up my boat, for I had lately taken to a mild sort of yachting -- in an odd frame of mind.  I experienced what was rare with me -- a considerable dissatisfaction with life.  Lombard had been absorbed into the great, solid, complacent middle class which he had once despised, and was apparently happy with it.  The man whom I had thought of as a young eagle was content to be a barndoor fowl.  Well, if he was satisfied, it was no business of mine, but I had a dreary sense of the fragility of hopes and dreams.

It was about myself that I felt most dismally.  Lombard's youth had gone, but so had my own.  Lombard was settled like Moab on his lees, but so was I.  We all make pictures of ourselves that we try to live up to, and mine had always been of somebody hard and taut who could preserve to the last day of life a decent vigour of spirit.  Well, I had kept my body in fair training by exercise, but I realized that my soul was in danger of fatty degeneration.  I was too comfortable.  I had all the blessings a man can have, but I wasn't earning them.  I tried to tell myself that I deserved a little peace and quiet, but I got no good from that reflection, for it meant that I had accepted old age.  What were my hobbies and my easy days but the consolations of senility?  I looked at my face in the mirror in the carriage back, and it disgusted me, for it reminded me of my recent companions who had pattered about golf.  Then I became angry with myself.  'You are a fool,' I said.  'You are becoming soft and elderly, which is the law of life, and you haven't the grit to grow old cheerfully.'  That put a stopper on my complaints, but it left me dejected and only half convinced.

--John Buchan, The Island of Sheep

Reprise: Ophelia II

I'm not sure why I am drawn to such images, but I am . . . to the point of creating and documenting them.  "Ophelia, you're breaking my heart . . . "  Who sang that?

Reprise: Ophelia

Bowl: Diver In Clay

Wet Clay: Moon-Man

Fox and Shark: In Progress

Shakespeare: "If It Were Done When 'Tis Done"

Light -- and dark -- reading.

Brecca, Bull From The Water

Brecca in the stream. The air bubbles in his eyes --or are those water bubbles?-- are particularly effective, don't you think?

Luck of the Bull-Man.

Brecca: stoneware; blue glazing.  An old piece, but a favorite one.

Seamus Heaney's "In The Attic"

IN THE ATTIC

1.
Like Jim Hawkins aloft in the crosstrees
Of Hispaniola, nothing underneath him
But still green water and clean bottom sand,

The ship aground, the canted mast far out
Above a seafloor where striped fish pass in shoals—
And when they’ve passed, the face of Israel Hands

That rose in the shrouds before Jim shot him dead
Appears to rise again . . . “But he was dead enough,”
The story says, “being both shot and drowned.”

2.
A birch tree planted twenty years ago
Comes between the Irish Sea and me
At the attic skylight, a man marooned

In his own loft, a boy
Shipshaped in the crow’s nest of a life,
Airbrushed to and fro, wind-drunk, braced

By all that’s thrumming up from keel to masthead,
Rubbing his eyes to believe them and this most
Buoyant, billowy, topgallant birch.

3.
Ghost-footing what was then the terra firma
Of hallway linoleum, Grandfather now appears
Above me just back from the matinée,

His voice awaver like the draft-prone screen
They’d set up in the Club Rooms earlier.
“And Isaac Hands,” he asks, “was Isaac in it?”

His memory of the name awaver, too,
His mistake perpetual, once and for all,
Like the single splash when Israel’s body fell.

4.
As I age and blank on names,
As my uncertainty on stairs
Is more and more the light-headedness

Of a cabin boy’s first time on the rigging,
As the memorable bottoms out
Into the irretrievable,

It’s not that I can’t imagine still
That slight untoward rupture and world-tilt
As a wind freshened and the anchor weighed.

--Seamus Heaney,

Human Chain, 
Faber and Faber: London, 2010.

The New Tea Mug

That's the same bowl I posted in yesterday's entry here, but with the light from a different angle, suddenly there's a shiny band about the upper section.  I had some luck making this piece, both in the throwing and the glazing, especially as I was using up some rather dried up clay that I should have wrapped better.

I could point out the three flaws -- or more? -- in this small piece, but I like it more than enough to keep it for my own tea-drinking.  The piece is short (only 3" high, 3 1/2" wide), but the shape is quite right for holding and sipping.  (The slightly flared top; the slightly bulging belly; the smooth and rounded lip, neither too thick nor too thin.)

Also, with the flaws, I have an excuse not to give it away to anyone I like, right?

Tea Bowl: studio-mix clay (stoneware + Navajo wheel);
transparent brown, floating blue, and clear glazing, layered and dripped.

Ego and Alter Egos

Self-Portrait at the Studio: October 21st, 2012.

Friend:  You always look so at peace with yourself.

Myself:  I delete those other shots.

Fox and Shark (Both Goofy): Being Glazed / Kiln-Bound

I've heard it said that every piece one makes is a self-portrait, but that doesn't mean that the similitude hits the mark or strikes the proper chord, to mix some metaphors.

Reindeer Games: Swimming In The Rain

If you are curious, you can see how Lucky started his rehabilitation as a one-legged flying reindeer via a glaze test here.