Posted by Ursula K. Le Guin

http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2017/09/25/poem-written-in-1991/

http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/?p=55333

Poem Written in 1991

When the Soviet Union Was Disintegrating

by Ursula K. Le Guin

i

The reason why I’m learning Spanish
by reading Neruda one word at a time
looking most of them up in the dictionary
and the reason why I’m reading
Dickinson one poem at a time
and still not understanding
or liking much, and the reason
why I keep thinking about
what might be a story
and the reason why I’m sitting
here writing this, is that I’m trying
to make this thing.
I am shy to name it.
My father didn’t like words like “soul.”
He shaved with Occam’s razor.
Why make up stuff
when there’s enough already?
But I do fiction. I make up.
There is never enough stuff.
So I guess I can call it what I want to.
Anyhow it isn’t made yet.
I am trying one way and another
all words — So it’s made out of words, is it?
No. I think the best ones
must be made out of brave and kind acts,
and belong to people who look after things
with all their heart,
and include the ocean at twilight.
That’s the highest quality
of this thing I am making:
kindness, courage, twilight, and the ocean.
That kind is pure silk.
Mine’s only rayon. Words won’t wash.
It won’t wear long.
But then I haven’t long to wear it.
At my age I should have made it
long ago, it should be me,
clapping and singing at every tatter,
like Willy said. But the “mortal dress,”
man, that’s me. That’s not clothes.
That is me tattered.
That is me mortal.
This thing I am making is my clothing soul.
I’d like it to be immortal armor,
sure, but I haven’t got the makings.
I just have scraps of rayon.
I know I’ll end up naked
in the ground or on the wind.
So, why learn Spanish?
Because of the beauty of the words of poets,
and if I don’t know Spanish
I can’t read them. Because praise
may be the thing I’m making.
And when I’m unmade
I’d like it to be what’s left,
a wisp of cheap cloth,
a color in the earth,
a whisper on the wind.

Una palabra, un aliento.

ii

So now I’ll turn right round
and unburden an embittered mind
that would rejoice to rejoice
in the second Revolution in Russia
but can’t, because it has got old
and wise and mean and womanly
and says: So. The men
having spent seventy years in the name of something
killing men, women, and children,
torturing, running slave camps,
telling lies and making profits,
have now decided
that that something wasn’t the right one,
so they’ll do something else the same way.

Seventy years for nothing.

And the dream that came before the betrayal,
the justice glimpsed before the murders,
the truth that shone before the lies,
all that is thrown away.
It didn’t matter anyway
because all that matters
is who has the sayso.

Once I sang freedom, freedom,
sweet as a mockingbird.
But I have learned Real Politics.
No freedom for our children
in the world of the sayso.
Only the listening.
The silence all around the sayso.
The never stopping listening.
So I will listen
to women and our children
and powerless men,
my people. And I will honor only
my people, the powerless.

–Ursula K. Le Guin
1991

http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2017/09/25/poem-written-in-1991/

http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/?p=55333

Posted by Jill Zeller

http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2017/09/24/the-reluctant-travelers-favorite-illustrators/

http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/?p=55357

It all started with Aubrey Beardsley, (1872 – 1898, England) in early studies when I thought I wanted to be an artist. Pen and ink drawings were my oeuvre, so to speak. So, I endeavored to copy him—below (his, not mine) was my favorite accomplishment. The Narnia illustrations by Pauline Baynes seemed to reek of Beardsley, to my un-studied eyes.

Edmunc Dulac was born in 1882, in France. (d. 1953) His elaborate, colorful, dreamy paintings decorated the published tales of Hans Christian Anderson, Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, and The Comedy of the Tempest by William Shakespeare.

Another Englishman, Arthur Rackham, (1867 – 1939) is best known for his fairy tale work, however he also illustrated The Tempest.

Born in 1870, in Philadelphia, an American broke into this esteemed clan of illustrators. Maxfield Parrish (d 1966) illustrated numerous books and magazine ads, and designed for Tiffany. One of his most well-known images was painted for a lamp company. One of his designs for a chocolate box was based on the Rubaiyat.

All of this male talent makes me wonder where the women were. Chicago-born Margaret Brundage (1900 – 1976) comes to mind, with her title “Queen of the Pulps”. In the 1930s she produced beautiful and of course, highly-sexualized illustrations for Weird Tales.

In researching tarot decks, I came across Pamela Coleman Smith (1878 – 1951), who not only illustrated the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot, but many books and magazines and produced 100s of images.

These two very talented female artists are, I am sure, only a tiny fraction of female illustrators working at the turn of the last century and beyond. My own lack of knowledge was partly from ignorance but also partly from the lack of female representation (except as subjects) in the reference books I had at the time. Beatrix Potter, Jesse Wilcox Smith, and many more appear in my research.

Who can name others for me? Women who drew for money, and preferably, for other than children’s stories?

http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2017/09/24/the-reluctant-travelers-favorite-illustrators/

http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/?p=55357