Birds and snow and jacket--

detail, "The Congregation of Birds"
Clive Hicks-Jenkins, 2009
And I'm looking at how well
these colors go with Glimmerglass...

Ventured out in the blowing snow as far as a bird conservatory with my husband and youngest child. Saw lots of birds--Gouldian finches and blue-neck and paradise tanagers and many more--and odd, stray creatures, lizards and tortoises and a sloth and mud skippers. On the way home, the world was mostly whited-out, all long snow-fields with a few sketchy trees and a blurred line of forest in the distance.

Now I need to do some work...

But what I keep thinking is that I cannot wait to see Clive's jacket image for Maze of Blood on Monday!

The Songbird Guns

          Once out of nature I shall never take
          My bodily form from any natural thing,
          But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
          Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
          To keep a drowsy emperor awake;
          Or set upon a golden bough to sing
          To lords and ladies of Byzantium
          Of what is past, or passing, or to come
       
It's National Poetry Month. For all you prompt-loving poets and writers out there in the known universe, try the inspiration of Christie's Aurel Bacs and the paradox of these works that combine the skills of a jeweler and an automaton maker with the look of pistols. These little "swords-into-ploughshares" items are among the strangest valuable objects ever made . . . and the most expensive joke guns ever.

My husband points out that these are a matched pair--dueling pistols, then, as if for a mock duel. No wonder they were made for a non-Western market, then, as the subject would have been far too serious in the West at that time. It took the West a many years to get to “Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries!” (Thank you, Monty Python, for taking us so far.)

I am also reminded of my husband's description of songbird duels in Hanoi. I would have liked to wander that street of birds. Dueling, birds, and Asia: it fits so neatly!

If you're not a poet or writer, the songbird guns are still remarkable. Take a look if you need a little absurd, marvelous birdsong in the morning.

Here is the description from Christie's, intricate with detail:

Rectangular gilt brass movements, chain fusées, circular bellows, double-barreled pistol-shaped cases, the grips with translucent scarlet enamel over engine-turned background, set with one pearl and diamond-set and one diamond-set rosette, split pearl-set lower edges, the upper edges decorated with black enamel and pearl-set laurel wreaths, the grips' reverses embellished with gold and black enamel pattern and pearl-set scroll and foliage motifs, both pistols centred by split-pearl framed gold plates chased with a lion on one side and a stag on the reverse, the top edges set with half pearls, gold matted and engraved hammers, the heads of the flint vises engraved with lion's heads, gold vise nuts terminated with diamonds, agate flints, gold pan covers with polished interiors, the outsides engraved with acanthus leaves, their springs terminating with diamonds, opening under the right pan covers for sound, the blue enamelled double barrels decorated with paillonné and laurel foliage simulating damascene works, three barrel-like ramrod pipes to the undersides, the ramrods containing the keys for the bird movements, the birds released by the percussion of the hammers when the triggers are depressed, the front covers opening and revealing painted varicoloured enamel bouquets of flowers over turquoise enamel, the birds set with realistically multicoloured feathers, lifting to the top of the barrels, turning, flapping their wings, opening the beaks and moving their tails, in time to a lifelike imitated bird song, when the song has finished the birds will automatically retreat inside the pistols and the covers will close. 

Attributed to Frères Rochat.
Circa 1820, for the Chinese market.

* * *

I am continually bemused by which posts or tweets receive comments. There must be a secret to it that I do not always grasp. Sometimes, though, it's easy: none on this one, but quite a few amusing ones on another posted later the same day at facebook--on an article about a young, naked performance artist who "paints" by pushing "eggs" full of paint out of her vagina." "Anywhere but an art gathering, this would be regarded as a satire on modern cultural emptiness."

"Sparowes"

It had a velvet cap,
And wold syt upon my lap,
And seke after small wormes,
And somtyme white bred crommes;
And many tymes and ofte
Betwene my brestes softe
It wolde lye and rest;
It was propre and prest.
       --from John Skelton (1463-1529),
            The Boke of Phyllyp Sparowe

Clive Hicks-Jenkins
for THALIAD

It's dank and cloudy with sun coming through a patch of blue, but the sparrows are tweeting indefatigably in the rose canes. So lovely to let the mind drift and flit with a flock. They never worry about their duty to publishers or work or whether their downy children are displaying any drive to leave the nest--they are a cheerful cloud of cheeping, of busy and furiously social enthusiasms.

Traditionally they are called a host of sparrows, a quarrel of sparrows, a knot of sparrows--my group is not quite large enough to be a host, nor are they a bickering quarrel this morning. And if they are a knot, these sparrows are a large, wondrous Celtic interlace that hardly knows head from tail as it moves in complicated ways through the rugosas.

The cardinals arrive in a dash of color, flicking their tails, bunching against the chill. But the sparrows cheep on, all pausing from motion for an instant, looking like little brown fruits left over from fall on the whips of the canes.
                         
                      * * *
Finding me elsewhere in recent books:

• Thaliad's epic adventure in verse here and here (Montreal: Phoenicia Publishing, 2012)
• The Foliate Head's collection of poems from Stanza Press (UK) here
• A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage from Mercer University Press (ForeWord 2013 finalist, The Ferrol Sams Award, 2012) here
• The Throne of Psyche, collection of poetry from Mercer, 2011, here
• Excerpts at Scribd

"the centre cannot hold"

 Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
 Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
 The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
 The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
 The best lack all conviction, while the worst
 Are full of passionate intensity.
              --Yeats

Have been watching the news on the computer, listening to the early morning havoc in Boston. Amazing how much wreck and mayhem two young, wild minds can cause. (For that matter, it's amazing how much damage anhydrous ammonia can do in Texas. Or bombs on the other side of the world.) Outside, the birds have not heard and are chirping of better news, and the flowers have not heard of images and go on standing, cold and inviolate. What a beautiful, terribly fallen world.

Addendum: After some chat about the link and implications of what Yeats says on facebook, I should certainly add that in this instance certainly "the best" have been wonderfully forthcoming with help in Boston. I am glad Yeats is a poet, not a certified prophet!

So sad this week for many of the family of man, including that grieving family on the other side of the world whose sons will not come home again... Little brother on the loose, did you admire your elder brother too much?

Faced with assaults on precious pieces of our world and the post-marathon risk of increasing post-terror militarism in this country, we go on, doing what we must do as part of families and businesses and temples and schools and so on. And so do I, along with a thing I feel meant to do: making stories and poems and attempting to support what is fine and worthy in our culture.

Morning after foolishness

Clive Hicks-Jenkins decoration for Thaliad

It's the day after April Fool's Day, and I am just the same size of fool as I was yesterday! I may even be a little bigger, given all those Easter basket chocolates. I find these things slightly disappointing but no surprise... Quite impossible to pack all one's foolishness into a single day, after all.

The foolishness of April 1st is compounded by the thought that the date marks the beginning of the absurd, hopeful thing, Poetry Month. I have been writing a lot of poems lately, but I almost feeling like not writing any at all in April because of this terrible bone of charity, the once-yearly reminder of an art most people think already dead. Never mind. Art is the phoenix that returns burning from the grave, whether anybody notices or not.

In fact, art is that strange creature that is always re-inventing itself, starting from nothingness. Every book of energy, every painting of life has to be started by somebody who does not know how to make what needs to be made.

In the realm of absurdity, the sky snowed on the snowdrops yesterday, and it is snowing on them today, though the sparrows and juncos and mourning doves are hunched on the ground under the feeder or combing the air from rose canes to hemlocks. One dove chases another on foot under the roses, heads bobbing, but it's far too bitter for springing love on one's mate.

I must hie me to taxes once again (alas!), so I just shrug and wave and go on.

Meeting me elsewhere: excerpts from 2012 books (A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, Thaliad, The Foliate Head) at Scribd. Thaliad at Phoenicia Publishing. See page tabs above for review clips and information on those brand new books plus The Throne of Psyche from 2011, and more.

Birds by snow-light--

It snowed all night on Sunday. It snowed all day on Monday, and then on through the night. And now it is snowing still, and the heart of the big rugosa is cheeping like mad, its branches shivering but not losing snow as juncos and chickadees and sparrows take lovely, dipping flight. They practice evasive maneuvers against the shadow of the kestrel, quick-sailing in groups from rose to hemlock. The rose hips hold up toques of snow, and the canes are thickly outlined. Lighting and pecking, the birds rock the feeders. Now and then a chase weaves right through the densely-packed rugosa canes, more marvelous and intricate than any CGI speed chase through a film-forest.

I woke to the strangeness of snow-light through my lids, feeling that all was hushed and stopped. And I had a weird feeling of being alone, the only person awake for miles. Perhaps I was still dreaming because I had some dim sense of being a medieval monk, holding up his little candle against the dark and the barbarian hordes, that everything I cared about was beautiful, gracious, and full of light but under assault by the world.

And then I surfaced a little more, and rolled out of bed to pack lunch for my youngest and roust him to do a little chemistry homework before school. So now I am having a cup of tea and watching the wandering snowflakes and the birds puffing themselves up against the cold. For now, the kestrel is nowhere in sight.

Athanasius, Kamassian, etc.

One of the many vignettes by Clive Hicks-Jenkins
that decorate the pages of THALIAD.

Doves and cardinals, sparrows and juncos are puffed and perched in the rose canes, waiting for somebody to push through the snow and give them seed. Poor little fussers and cheepers, this Southern somebody is not quite ready for the cold world as yet. What am I doing instead?

Today I am going to a class on Athanasius. That should be strange and interesting. I have been reading in his life of St. Anthony and imagine some people will have fits over his casual disposing of the guardianship of his sister (and possessions that had belonged to their parents) and his desire for the complete abolition of all memory--not of, say, his knowledge of the faith but of his parents (and I suppose, his sister--highly convenient!) and the events of his prior life. Both efforts would appear profoundly odd to either a secular or a religious person in the 21st-century West, I imagine. One longs to know whether he succeeded and never dreamed of his mother bending over him when he was an old codger of 105, or had an unexpected memory of walking along a path by the river with his father--or felt a stab of panic about his sister, dropped in a convent.

This morning I am also reading Poetry of Asia: Five Millenniums of Verse from Thirty-three Languages, Beyond the Lyric: A Map of Contemporary British Poetry, and A Reader's Guide to William Butler Yeats. I was rereading Godric until I misplaced it yet again, so that rounded out a week of poetry and ascetics.

According to that book with all the numbers in the title, the entire known literature in the Kamassian language is a single folk poem. (What is Kamassian? "One of the Samoyed languages which with the Finno-Ugrian make up the Uralic family. The last community to use the language was discovered in 1914 at the confluence of the Yenisei and Angara rivers in central Siberia.") Appropriately, it's a lament about being unmoored from one's clan, the tents rotten and the ways overgrown.

* * *

New vistors: I'm never quite sure what sort of attention one should pay to the hundreds of passers-by who go by the site daily and don't leave a message on facebook or twitter or in the comments. But if you would like to know more about my work, please check the tabs above for my 2012 books--A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage (novel/Mercer/Ferrol Sams Award), The Foliate Head (collection of poetry/Stanza Press), and Thaliad (epic adventure in verse/Phoenicia)--and 2011's poetry collection, The Throne of Psyche. For the brand new Thaliad, the Phoenicia Publishing page for the book has a collection of review clips and comments and good help on how to order in hardcover or paperback. You may read samples from the three 2012 books at Scribd.

Mike-diary: Birds of Hanoi

Last night our youngest wore his jammies and his bathrobe inside out in hopes of a snow day, and he got one with a vengeance. Several fluffy feet of flakes were piled high before the snowfall stopped. As we are now missing the absent Mike/Dad, who is plenty warm while volunteering in Vietnam, I'll post a little from his musings. He has moved on from Saigon to Hanoi.

* * *

The Birds of Hanoi

Compared to their hardhearted, business-driven brethren in the south, the shop owners of Hanoi seem almost feeble in their commercial drive. In truth, the shops in the north are much more interesting, with lots of local mountain tribe crafts, elegant silks, jade carvings and a surprisingly thriving contemporary art scene. Unlike the south, there is not clutching of sleeves and tugging at belt loops to entice the westerner with a stray dollar or two into a place of business. And I think no aspect of the Hanoi shop better symbolizes this difference in values than the birds of Hanoi.

You see, most shops have a bird cage in them. Even street mechanics, soaking transmission gears in oil in their make-a-due garages on street corners about the city, would not think of starting their day's venture without hanging a bamboo cage or three of vireos on a local lamp post. These dear little birds, the color of unripe tangerines with just a blush of future sweetness showing, leap and chirp frantically in a panic within their bamboo worlds. But they are thought to bring luck, and do bring a natural charm, so their discomforts are accepted as a requirement of feng shui, or luck, or just good taste. So the sorrow of the birds is felt to be a price worth paying.

I happened upon the bird selling street. Shops tend to aggregate in streets by theme here, so there is a plumbing street and a wood carving street and a funeral street, which happens to make up the far half of the bird selling street. And what a lot of birds there are! Some are weedy sparrows who are bought for the sole purpose of being released as an offering for propitiation for sins. These, much like in the Bible, are two a penny, or rather $5000 dong a matched set. They fly away with an excited confusion, dazzled by their captivity and unexpected release. The sparrow cages are the most modest. They are simple rectangles of bamboo slats. I am sure they are crowded and unpleasant. But buyers are plentiful and there seems to be a lot of sparrow-sized sins that need a Buddhist-style accounting.

More impressing cages are reserved for more impressive captives. The vireos I have mentioned. After sparrows, they are held in the greatest number and as a chorus produce a mighty chirping. Rose-quartz-colored canaries are also well represented, and, while less numerous than the vireos, they seem to take to heart the challenge offered by the other inferior but more numerous singers. Were that all jealousies and conflicts so beautifully contested! The quick cheerful chirps of the vireos strive forth against the melodious lines of the canaries, each note as a foot soldier. To stand exactly between the walls of the vireos and canaries is to place yourself at a collision of beauty.

The largest birds are some mynah birds. They are valued for their mimicry and intelligence and this value is reflected in the elaborate cages reserved for this avian royalty. Lacquered, carved, inlaid, no craftsmanship is too extravagant for a bird that can imitate the human voice or a can opener with equal alacrity. The sellers dote on these fellows, coddling them against drafts, sun, or poking fingers. These birds command the highest return and are beloved by the merchants for this. These birds smell strongly like pigeons.

These little wicker spheres of birdy joy are spread through out the city. It is hard to imagine Americans, or Saigonese for that matter, wasting effort on birds. The mess and trouble would seem too much. But here the warbling is thought to be of great value. Perhaps they believe the singing, better than tugging or wheedling, will bring the willing customer within.

Picture: The bird cage is from tootoo.com, and is made by the Vietnamese company, Chanh Khang.