Marly at "The Curator" of International Arts Movement

Photograph courtesy of Young Tran of San Francisco, California
 and sxc.hu. Find Young Tran's photographs here.

Not only is it launch day for A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage (first chapter here), but I have something special up at The Curator, a magazine of International Arts Movement. Today's issue contains pieces related to the celebration of a long-ago gift of cherry trees from Japan to the states--the same cherry trees in bloom along the tidal basin of the Potomac in D. C.

Makoto Fujimura, nihongan artist and founder of IAM, asked me for a poem on the cherry trees, so mine is very much an occasional poem written to fulfill a request related to a particular event, the gift's centennial. (Thank you, Mako!) The poem is in six parts:

Sakura
1. As Far as East from West
2. Self-portrait as Dryad, no. 9
3. East to West to East
4. The Dryad in Cherry-Blossom Time
5. Riddle
6. Tree Spirit Song

Read it here.

Wikipedia, cherry blossom: the flower of any of several trees of genus Prunus, particularly the Japanese Cherry, Prunus serrulata, which is sometimes called sakura after the Japanese (桜 or 櫻; さくら.)

Also up: "Ito Jakuchu: the Preserved Colors of Independence" by Makoto Fujimura, on the Ito Jakuchu exhibit, Colorful Realm: Japanese Bird-and-Flower Paintings at the National Gallery; Joshua Bengston's poignant "Waiting for Blooms" photographs taken at Hiyoriyama Park in Ishinomaki City.