Semi-automatic

A man stands alone on a street corner — but to say he's alone isn't true, in fact he's surrounded by a swirl of pedestrians and onlookers, some of whom are also standing motionless at the moment, it's just that he happens to be on the corner for reasons of his own, which he shares with nobody else in the crowd, reasons which we, the witnesses of the scene in which he is the principal and in fact sole protagonist, are also not privy to — and it's not quite true to say that he stands either, he's actually half-standing, half-leaning, supporting himself against an ornate cast-iron lamppost that rises from the sidewalk, ascends over the man's head, and then curves down gracefully to grasp in one solitary iron-vegetable claw an opaque white globe, which is not illuminated at the moment because it is afternoon, and in fact the sun is steadily burning through the stagnant haze of dust and exhaust fumes that hangs over the city, and the office workers on their lunch hours have loosened their ties and opened their shirt collars to give them some small respite from the stifling heat — but the man isn't wearing a tie at all, just a beige short-sleeved cotton shirt buttoned all the way to the neck, with a single breast pocket which, however, is empty — and on the streetcar that is rattling past, tethered to overhead wires, the passengers are leaning out of the windows and exits trying to get a little air, fanning themselves with newspapers, and the men have removed their jackets and you can see that their shirts are soaked with sweat, but the man on the corner shows no sign of discomfort, in fact he's so at peace that he may have closed his eyes behind his dark glasses, not that he's sleeping mind you let alone passed out drunk, but clearly he hasn't been exerting himself or been shut up all day in some airless bureau where the spinning metal fans that are whirring on every desk, creating a drone like a hive of bees, do little to relieve the suffocating atmosphere, more likely he's been sitting by himself at a table in the corner of some dark air-conditioned bar a few blocks away, and the taste of the cool, sweet concoction he had been drinking — possibly having more than one — is still lingering deliciously on his palate along with the traces of cigarette smoke from the interior of the bar, though he, himself, doesn't smoke, and it may well be that he has closed his eyes the better to picture in his mind the woman he had been dancing with the night before, a woman of his acquaintance and possibly his lover but certainly not his wife because he isn't married, it's quite certain, he has the look of someone who isn't married, who will never be married, who perhaps one day when he is old and ill and childless will feel a brief pang of regret at his state but who will shake it off, because when all is said and done the memory of the taste of rum in your mouth on a hot afternoon leaves precious little room for regrets.

Swallows and Amazons

I'm not big on boating and I've never had much of an urge to read any of these children's adventure stories, although I confess I am intrigued to learn that their author, Arthur Ransome, may have been a Soviet spy. One of these days I really should at least give the first one a shot. I do love these covers though. Ransome himself was responsible for both the jackets and their interior art; some of the books say "with help from Miss Nancy Blackett," but that's the author's little joke, as "Nancy Blackett" is in fact one of the characters in the series. (Ransome also named a yacht after her.)


The Godine editions in the US, which used to be the only ones I had seen, employ different cover art, very handsome in its own way, but the original hardcover jackets are still available in the UK; the full set can be seen [link no longer active] on the website of the Arthur Ransome Society. Some of the colors are more subtle on my copies, which are from the 1950s, by which time the books had already been reprinted dozens of times.

Shakers, Bohemians, and a Cat in a Cage

Family in tow, Lew Ney (Luther Emanuel Widen), writer, printer, and tireless self-promoter, takes an excursion into the hinterlands and visits, among other local worthies, the Shaker community of New Lebanon, NY. From the Chatham (NY) Courier, Jan 9. 1930 (PDF).

Lebanon Springs is played (sic) host to three distinguished writers this week, with the coming of Charles Willis Thompson, formerly connected with the New York Times; his son-in-law, Lew Ney, self-styled mayor of Greenwich Village, whose real name is Luther Emanuel Widen, and his wife, a daughter, Ruth, of Mr. Thompson.

They are visiting Mr. and Mrs. C. P. Browning, and Mr. Thompson is recuperating from a recent nervous breakdown. Mr. Ney is rewriting his book, "Mad Man."

Mrs. Widen is spending the week end arranging the manuscript for a first book of poems by Eva S. Browning, probably to be called "Cyclone and Other Poems," to be published by the Parnassus Press on March 1.

The New York visitors are spending several days communing with the Shakers. They have been entertained by Sarah Collins of the chair shop and have met numerous of the 30 or so surviving members of what was not so many years ago the most flourishing religious community in the world.

Mr. Thompson's book on the presidents and near-presidents he had known (these last including Bryan and Hanna) was published by the Macmillans. He is a regular contributor to the Commonwealth, the American Mercury and other current publications of literary quality. He still is an unofficial member of the Times' staff, writing reviews of books particularly those dealing with political events and personalities. He was a great friend and admirer of [Theodore] Roosevelt accompanying him in the great campaigns. With Wilson in his book he deals rather caustically.

One of the best known of Mrs. Ruth Widen's published works in entitled "In Praise of Pain" which has enjoyed extensive vogue and still is popular. Mr. Widen has just published a six-verse poem entitled "Sister Corinne," written by Sister Grace Ada Brown in memory of Sister Corinne Bishop who passed to her spirit home December 3, 1929.

Mr. Widen, in planning to come to the Berkshire country, had equipped himself in accordance with his impressions of what would be needed in the way of apparel to resist the rigors of a highland winter and was astonished upon arriving to find a spring flavor in the air. His knee-high boots, heavy coats and wraps would have been supplanted by more seasonable garments had he only known. He had with him his typewriter, a couple of grips containing his stationery, Christmas cards and so on and a caged cat.

I was at first surprised at the Courier's blunt allusion to Charles Willis Thompson's "nervous breakdown," but perhaps in that set it was regarded as a badge of honor. A copy of Sister Grace Ada Brown's brief tribute, printed by Lew Ney, is in the Shaker Collection of the New York State Library. Eva Browning's Cyclone and Other Poems was issued in 1930 in an edition of 320 copies. As far as I can tell Ney never published a book called Mad Man; perhaps, since he apparently pronounced his nickname Looney, it was intended to have been autobiographical.

White and the River (Siv Cedering Fox)

And I am my father,
and I stop,
pull an orange from the pocket
and peel it,
throw the peelings in the snow,

pick up my gun
and ski back home,
hang my white killing
on a hook in the cellar
where bloodoranges lie

a crateful
of color
in winter.

Siv Cedering Fox, lines from "White and the River," from Cup of Cold Water.

When I was in my not yet jaded teens I came to know Siv Cedering Fox very slightly when she hosted a series of evening poetry workshops at a local library which I attended with a group of friends. At this point most of my memories of her are probably largely imaginary; in her mid thirties at the time, blonde, Swedish-born and speaking in a slightly accented English, she seemed to exude the mystique of both poetry and womanhood (a heady mix for me in those days), as well as wisps of the folklore of a not quite Christianized Scandinavia. For some reason I want to picture her wearing a necklace of white bones or fragments of seashells, but I'm fairly sure I'm just making that up.

Cup of Cold Water was published in 1973 by New Rivers Press, which still exists although the book is long out-of-print. It includes a number of black-and-white photographs, also by the poet. There was a vogue for that kind of thing in publishing for a while, but I think it has passed, no doubt because the market for poetry is no longer considered sufficient to justify the bother. Though I didn't know it at the time or had forgotten it, she was a painter as well.

"White and the River" is a poem in several sections, each told from the point of view of one member of a family. The section above, chosen because it works best self-contained, is the concluding one. The lines throughout are as crystal clear as the goblet on the cover, but the overall narrative is left somewhat enigmatic. I always more or less arbitrarily pair the poem with Glenda Adams's deliciously venomous short story "Sea." The two don't actually have much in common except that they deal with the mysteries of siblings, fathers, water, and death, but I must have read them first around the same time and the association has stuck.

Siv Cedering (she eventually dropped her married name) published a number of other books of poetry and children's books in English, as well as at least two novels in Swedish and a number of translations from one language to the other. She died in 2007.

Found in translation (Mark Strand)

Who cares if old age comes, what is old age?
Your shoulders are holding up the world
and it's lighter than a child's hand.
Wars, famine, family fights inside buildings
prove only that life goes on
and nobody will ever be free.
Some (the delicate ones) judging the spectacle cruel
will prefer to die.
A time comes when death doesn't help.
A time comes when life is an order.
Just life, without any escapes.

Carlos Drummond de Andrade, lines from "Your Shoulders Hold Up the World." Translation by Mark Strand, from Souvenir of the Ancient World, Antaeus Editions 1976.


We shall drink from the traitor's skull,
we shall wear his teeth as a necklace,
of his bones we shall make flutes,
of his skin we shall make a drum;
later, we'll dance.

"War Song." Translation by Mark Strand, from 18 Poems from the Quechua, Halty Ferguson 1971.


You must look for them
under the drop of wax that buries a word in a book
or the name at the end of a letter
that lies gathering dust.
Look for them
near a lost bottlecap,
near a shoe gone astray in the snow,
near a razorblade left at the edge of a cliff.

Rafael Alberti, lines from "The Dead Angels." Translation by Mark Strand, from The Owl's Insomnia, Atheneum 1973.

The contents of the three books above, with some corrections and additions, were later collected in the omnibus edition below.


Looking for Poetry: Poems by Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Rafael Alberti / Songs from the Quechua, Alfred A. Knopf 2002.

The Owl & the Pussycat

At daybreak they stopped at the ocean
Took a walk as they watched the sun rise
In the palm of God's hand
They rolled in the sand
As the lazy foam danced in the tide

Corinne West, "The Road to No Compromise"

Though it's only an EP of six songs*, one of them a cover, this record is full of little mysteries and illuminations. I've been an on and off fan of Kelly Joe Phelps since his first record; Corinne West's name meant nothing to me until recently, though she's released three earlier CDs. They met late last year and are now touring together; whether they're "a couple" I have no idea but musically their alliance seems to have benefited both parties, Kelly Joe by bringing him down to earth and smoothing out some of his eccentricities, Corinne West by giving her songs (all of which she has recorded before) the fire and momentum lent by Kelly Joe's guitar playing, which has never been less than brilliant even when, in the past, some of his own material tended to be a little opaque. Compare the fairly tame version of "The Road to No Compromise" on Corinne's first record to the one on Magnetic Skyline and you'll appreciate the difference. His playing here is driving and relentless but never obtrusive.

But give full credit to Corinne West for her songwriting. In the week or so since this record arrived I've given repeated listens to "Whiskey Poet," "Mother to Child," and the other tracks and I keep finding more things hidden in their depths; since some of them first appeared almost ten years ago when she must have been pretty young she clearly has a gift. Time after time some little detail leaps out, like the brilliant and unexpected last line of "The Road to No Compromise."

To the lost child the road is a cradle
For the outlaw the road's where you hide
Takin' you in
You travel again
'Till blindness becomes sight

As for the title of this post, it first struck me when I was listening to this song that some of the stanzas seemed to capture the deft touch and rhythms of Edward Lear's timeless nursery rhyme, which ends, for those who don't remember it from their childhoods or those of their children, as follows:

They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

Then it came to me that both compositions were, in the end, about lovers setting out together to find their place in the world, and even though Corinne West's song was written long before she and Kelly Joe Phelps met, Kelly Joe makes a very fine owl, though, things being different in our day, he's not the only one crooning over a "small guitar." I'm not a believer in metempsychosis, but I find appealing the idea that the wandering shade of Edward Lear, stranded in 21st-century California, might temporarily have made its abode in the body of a young woman writing a road song.

(By the way, kudos to the designer of the packaging, aprobertsarts.com, for the clever emblem containing the musicians' names. It's made to look like an old soda bottle cap; the back cover reproduces several antique bottle caps, made to appear as if they were affixed "magnetically" to a metal surface, possibly a weathered refrigerator magnet.)

*Soon to be expanded to a full album to be released by Tin Angel in the UK, reportedly in September 2010.

The Approach to the City (7)

It was nearing dusk as he descended the steps into the city, and in the distance he could see the first scattered lights coming on across the river. A storm moved through and thundered briefly, leaving the paving-stones damp and the air thick as rising steam before moving off to the north. Except for a few stragglers everyone seemed to be having dinner, either at home or behind the windows of the restaurants along the plaza. He wasn't hungry, though, and he wanted to make it back to the street of red bricked houses before nightfall.

There was a light on in the front window this time, and when he rang the bell he heard the shuffling of shoe leather in addition to the alarms of the dog. A tall, withered man just over the cusp of old age answered the door, holding a newspaper in one hand, and ushered him in. He brushed the cocker spaniel aside and nodded at the advertisement. As he led his visitor up the winding stairway he explained that he was a widower with no children, and that the room was more than he needed now. The rent was low and he implied without quite saying so that he wanted someone to be there to watch out for him. He was gentle and soft-spoken and seemed unlikely to meddle; for its part the spaniel soon lost interest in the newcomer and retired.

The room was large and open and the walls bare. There were windows on two sides, one pair looking up the hill and the other over the rooftops to the water. They were open a few inches at the bottom and the breeze was lifting the bottom of the thin white curtains. The wooden floor had recently been swept clean, there was a bed and a dresser and a rocking chair, and a small bathroom with a freestanding tub lay off to one side; the man said there was another chair and a nightstand that he could bring up from the basement. A large porcelain lamp on the dresser, topped with a faded but clean and intact shade with a fringe along the edges, gave evidence of a woman's taste, he thought, and he wondered how long the wife had been gone.

They shook on it. He offered a month in advance but the man said not to worry. As he went to go back downstairs he turned and ask if he'd eaten, then invited him for a sandwich when he learned he hadn't. He left him to settle in, which didn't take long. He hung up his coat, unpacked a few things, washed his hands, and lay on the bed for a moment to test it out, which he hadn't thought of doing before. It seemed adequate so he got up and descended to join his landlord.

The dog was sleeping behind the front door and barely lifted its head as he stepped past. He could see now by its muzzle that it was old, as advanced in its term of years as the man. There was a platter of cold meat on the table and a jar of horseradish. He took two slices of bread from a paper package, fixed the sandwich, and finally, at his host's urging, helped himself to a bottle of beer from the refrigerator.

The old man was sitting in an arm chair turned away from the window, a pile of newspapers in a basket by his side. He had been doing a crossword puzzle but set it aside and turned his attention to the sandwich in his lap. His tenant sat across from him on the couch, setting his plate on the low wooden table in front of him, and the two men ate, mostly in silence but entirely at ease, as the darkness filled up the streets around them.

(The above is the last section, for now, of what may become an ongoing project.)

Corinne West & Kelly Joe Phelps: "Amelia"

Not Joni Mitchell's tune from Hejira, but a very different song by Corinne West, performed here with Kelly Joe Phelps. The pair (are they a couple?) will shortly be releasing an EP of six songs (this one's not included); it's called Magnetic Skyline. There are two cuts streaming on Kelly's website, and so far I have to say I've liked everything I've heard.

The Man Without Qualities

Do certain books exist largely to remind us of our own intellectual inadequacies? If so, this one will do for me. So many writers I admire have raved over this novel that I long felt that it was practically my duty to read it, even back in the '70s when the only edition available in the US was the old Capricorn paperback that sneakily concealed the fact that it only contained a small fraction of the work Musil wrote.


I tried reading The Man Without Qualities three or four times over a period of years. Each time, after I had bogged down and given up, sooner or later I would come across another essay about the book that convinced me that it really was something I owed it to myself to finish. So I'd pick it up again, start from the beginning, and push ahead a little further than the last time, but in the end I never made it past the first section, "A Sort of Introduction." And that's as far as I'll go with it, I think. Either something's lost in translation or it's just too steeped in a fundamentally Central European sensibility for me to appreciate.


Anyway, back in the '90s I picked up the first two volumes of this Secker & Warburg set in a used bookstore. (As it happens, they were sold to the store by a friend of mine, whose name is still written inside them and who bought them in London in 1973.) I can't remember where I picked up the third -- probably at a book sale. The cover treatment on Volume 3, which was first published in 1960 and reprinted five years later, must be the original design. The earlier pair are reprints from 1966-67; the designer is Ian Miller and the figure in the cover photo, which looks like a still from some classic '50s or early '60s black and white British film, is unidentified but presumably not Robert Musil. There's a newer, more complete translation now, but I've never tried it.

The Approach to the City (6)

The city's elongated central plaza occupied a kind of plateau, partly natural and partly sculpted out of the hill by human hands. A park, shaded by oak trees and crisscrossed by carefully maintained brick paths, ran down its center, and there were three gazebos or small bandstands, currently deserted, at regular intervals. The downhill side was tenanted by a row of prosperous shops -- a goldsmith, a bookshop, a furniture store, and others he couldn't see from the corner -- while facing them on the far side of the park stood the towered municipal building, a bank, a library, and some modestly imposing white mansions that he took to be the homes of the wealthy. The pedestrian traffic here was the heaviest he had seen, and he had to keep a sharp eye out for bicycles, which veered through the crowd at alarming speeds.

He crossed to the municipal building, the lower storey of which was bisected by a broad flagstone arcade. He followed this until it intersected with another, perpendicular passage; here there was a little enclosed garden, a goldfish pond, and a bulletin board covered with a variety of notices, not all of them official. After giving the papers a cursory glance he continued on his way. Where the arcade emerged at the rear of the building there was another garden, this one planted with azaleas and rhododendrons, then a strip of green lawn, and finally the base of a long series of timber steps that zigzagged up to the top of the hill. The steps were slick and a little arduous to climb -- no surprise, then, that he was the only one using them that morning. The surrounding hillside had been terraced and planted with dwarf willows and Japanese maples, a little too fussily for his taste, he thought, but when he turned around and rested for a moment a magnificent view of the city and the river in the distance lay before him. He stood for a while even after he had caught his breath. The hills on the opposite shore were partially obscured in mist, but he could make out the far end of the bridge and the lot where he had left his car the day before.

It took him another ten minutes to reach the summit. As far as he could see from where he stood the undulating ridge had been planted with great beech trees surrounded by expanses of green lawn. A dirt path wound through, paralleling the river until it suddenly made a sharp turn inland and down a long gradual slope. He followed it until he came to a little pond, on which a dozen or so ducks and geese, and farther off, an aristocratically aloof pair of swans, were floating and dipping their beaks beneath the surface. There was a wooden bench by the pond and a petite young woman was sitting upon it, alone. He guessed her to be about twenty-four; she wore a dark floral print skirt, a white blouse, and a little open jacket that was, perhaps by intent, a size too small. She had a kind of little carpetbag next to her on the bench, and on her left shoulder perched a single white dove that swiveled its head alertly at his approach.

He stopped a few yards away and called out a good morning; she responded with a rather birdlike nod and a chirped hello, then immediately turned her attention away from him and began rummaging in her bag. After a moment she stood and held up five uniform light blue rubber balls; with a sharp snap of her hand she tossed first one, than another, than the rest into the air in quick succession. As the balls descended she caught them with quick, even motions and sent them aloft again; they rose, arced, and fell, she rolled them onto her shoulders and down the back of her arm, she crossed her hands and wove them around herself in intricate figures. After thirty seconds of this she took a deep breath and her face assumed a graver expression, then she suddenly closed her eyes and slowed her pace; impossibly, the balls found their way back into her hands again, time after time, without the slightest deviation from their circuit, like particles orbiting the nucleus of an atom. He stood astonished and motionless. Finally she opened her eyes again, seemed to reorient herself, picked up the pace once more, and in a final flourish whirled the balls into a pattern too intricate for him to make out until all at once they came to rest, all together, perfectly nestled in one outstretched hand. The dove had not moved.

She remained frozen for a second, until he began to applaud wholeheartedly and shouted "brava!" She executed a curt little bow, straightened again, shrugged her shoulders like a marionette, then, smiling shyly and barely glancing in his direction, she sat back down, stowed the balls in her bag, and began whispering something to the bird. He stood stock-still, debating whether to speak or what to say, but already she seemed to have broken whatever connection had briefly existed between them. There was no hat beside her or any other sign that she expected remuneration for her performance. After a moment he said "good day" again, she acknowledged it with a quick nod without meeting his gaze, and he walked slowly off, still spellbound by what he had just witnessed.

The Approach to the City (5)

He awoke at first light, dressed at once, and went out to find a newspaper. Overnight the temperature had dropped to within a few degrees of freezing and there were wisps of light fog lingering above the pavement. Nothing was open in the square, but he found a little food market a block further on and bought a paper, a baguette, an apple, and a small package of butter. The heavy-set middle-aged man at the register wore a flannel cap that was much the worse for wear and looked like he was still half asleep. He put the things in a paper bag and handed them over, then sat back on his stool as if he thought he would doze off until the next customer appeared, which looked like it might not be for a while.

On his back way through the square he passed a solitary window-washer, who greeted him as effusively as if he were an old friend and then returned to his duties, working methodically and efficiently as he cleaned first one window of the tavern and then another. Two of the fingers of his right hand were missing, and he stepped over to the next storefront with a slight limp, still smiling and nodding as his new acquaintance walked on.

When he reached the pension he stowed the package on the bureau and went down to the breakfast room, newspaper in hand. He had been mistaken: there were several other guests already seated around the tables, including a young couple, but no sign of the woman who had signed him in the night before. A slight young woman with an accent that was difficult to place poured coffee for him and asked him what he'd like. He ordered eggs, sausage, and a croissant, and unfolded the paper while he waited for her return. There was nothing of note: some local elections, sports, a few snippets of international news, and the usual weddings and such. There were some letters hotly debating some kind of construction proposal, but without knowing the background he was unable to form an opinion about who was in the right. Only in the advertisements did he find something of interest. He folded a corner of the page, carefully tore off a square, and folded it neatly inside his coat pocket. The waitress brought his plate and he ate at a leisurely pace, looking out through the plate glass door into the little patio beyond, where a single white azalea, sheltered under the splayed-out limbs of what he thought might be a quince tree, was not quite ready to bloom. Three men came in, dressed in suits; he supposed they were there on a business trip or perhaps belonged to a religious group. They were chatting merrily together and bantering innocently with the waitress, who didn't quite seem to know how to respond.

He gathered his things and brought them downstairs to the reception desk to check out. When no one appeared he stuck his head into the breakfast room and caught the waitress's attention. She disappeared into the kitchen, and a moment later a thin, balding man in a dark gray turtleneck appeared, found the appropriate paperwork, asked if everything had been satisfactory, and accepted the proffered payment with a thin, distant smile. Shown the advertisement, he recognized the address and said it was not far, just a few blocks up the hill.

By now the sun had driven off the last of the fog and chill and gave promise of a fair day. There was some wind coming off the river, as there nearly always was, but it was slack this morning and barely disturbed the dust and remains of dead leaves along the sidewalks. In the ten minutes it took him to climb to his destination -- he was not far from the clock tower now, and a view of the river was opening up behind him -- he became warm enough to remove his jacket and fold it over his arm.

The street curved across the hill in a slow arc, sloping downwards and away on its distant end. There was a green embankment on the upper side, and the other was lined with uniform two-storey red brick residential buildings with yards in the back but no space between. There were a few bicycles chained to the railings in front, and a wagon and trike parked along the sidewalk, but the children he supposed were either still having breakfast or had already gone to school.

He found the number, climbed the stoop, and rang the bell. A small dog barked within but there was no answer. He waited, tried again, then took out his pen and left a note in the box saying that he would come back in the afternoon. He walked further down the street, to the point where it dipped down along a high stone wall and bent out of sight. Off the hill, inland from the river, was a low wooded valley with a patches of meadow and a few stone buildings and spires. He gazed out for a moment, then turned around, retraced his steps to the intersection of the street that climbed past the clock tower, and set his course for the top of the ridge.

(To be continued)

Written & Printed And Bound

This space having been notably deficient in color of late, I will try to atone with these scans of one of the most visually dazzling books I know, a privately printed poem by the American educator, poet, and maker of books Loyd Haberly (1896-1981), who not only wrote and printed and bound it but also designed the typeface, which is known variously under several names, including Paradiso and Gregynog (the latter because it was designed during Haberly's brief tenure as director of the Gregynog Press in Wales).

The cover is decorated paper over boards; the leather spine has NEECHA, the name of the poem, stamped in gold.


Here's the title page, which is noticeably wrinkled because of the handmade paper Haberly employed. (Making paper, though, was the one major step in the bookmaking process that he, unlike the papermaking historian Dard Hunter, didn't get involved in.)


But the glory of this book is the page spreads, all eight of which appear below. I'm afraid some of the scans are less than ideal, but they're the best I could do with my hardware and without risking damage to the binding. Around each text block Haberly has arranged a pattern made up of colored squares. Each square is an individual piece of type, and since the pages were printed by letterpress he must have printed each color separately, meaning that some pages -- the two that have yellow, red, green, and blue squares, in addition to the black text -- would have to have gone through the press five times. If you look very carefully, you'll notice that some of the squares are slightly out of alignment with adjacent squares of different colors. I'm not a printer and so I don't know the tricks, but I can't imagine how he managed this. I guess it's no surprise that the book is short, or that Haberly only printed 32 copies.









The poem itself is no great shakes, I'm afraid, but Haberly thought enough of it that he produced two versions. The one above is from 1944; a year earlier he had printed an edition of 48 copies, set on a smaller page size, without the mosaic border but with three hand-colored vignettes. Both editions were completed while Haberly was associated with Washington University in St. Louis. He later continued his printing activities at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey. The collection of handmade books that he left to Fairleigh Dickinson is now at Drew University. There are other collections of his work at several institutions, including the University of Iowa and the New York Public Library as well as the Multnomah County Library, which recently sponsored an exhibition dedicated to Haberly. The best overview of his work is an article by Jay Satterfield in Books at Iowa, 58 (1993). An online version is available.

The Approach to the City (4)

The pension recommended by the waitress was only two blocks away, down one of the little side streets that led off the square. The street -- alley might have been a better word -- was cobblestoned and curving, and his echoing footfalls were the only sound to be heard as he searched for the number he had been given. The building was narrow, two storeys high, with white curtains in the downstairs window and a lantern shining above a low stoop outside. He rapped tentatively with the knocker, waited a moment, then rapped again, firmly this time. He was about to give up and retreat to the tavern when he heard a door shut somewhere in the interior, followed a moment later by the sound of the lock being unlatched from within. The woman who opened the door -- just a few inches wide at first -- looked to be about thirty, he thought; she was tall and rather grave looking, her dark braided hair tied up in back, and he suspected he had interrupted her preparations for bed. He mumbled an apology and said he'd been told she had rooms to let and was that true? She said yes and beckoned him in.

The cramped lobby was dominated by a bird cage as tall as a man, in which a dozen yellow finches were hopping and chirping in agitation, whether at his presence or for reasons of their own he couldn't tell. There was no reception counter, just a little wooden writing desk with a ledger and a fountain pen and one caned chair with a man's valise resting on it. The wallpaper was cream-colored, in good order, and had some kind of faint floral pattern on it that was only noticeable on close inspection. "You're alone?," she asked, though it was quite evident that he was. "Any bags?" He hadn't. She seemed unconcerned at this; she entered his name and particulars in the ledger, told him that he could settle the bill in the morning and that breakfast began at seven.

"Will you be going out again?" she asked.

For a second the question struck him as a bit intrusive, but then he reflected that he might be her only lodger and that she might want to lock up for the night. He said that he wanted to mail some letters and asked if there was a postal box nearby. There was, she said, and indicated its location, which was in the square where he had eaten.

"I'll leave the street door open, then, and please be sure to lock it behind you when you return."

"Of course." She handed him the brass key to his room, which was on the third and uppermost floor; there was no tag or ring. As he climbed the winding stairs the birds suddenly became quiet and when he looked down he realized that the woman had drawn a shroud over their cage.

The room was small and low-ceilinged and it was stiflingly hot when he first went in, but as soon as he opened the window over the street the night air quickly made it bearable. The furnishings were spare -- a high and narrow single bed, a little desk with a straight-backed chair, and a little bureau with a potted plant -- but there was neither a stain nor a fleck of dust or cobweb anywhere; the adjoining water closet was also spotlessly clean. He hung his coat on a hook on the back of the door, looked out on the silent streetscape for a moment, then fished out the postcards and pen and sat down to write. It didn't take him long; he wrote three cards, each with nearly identical messages, then separated and licked the stamps and firmed them down with his thumb.

He left his coat in the room when he went down stairs; he didn't think he'd need it. The lobby was quiet and dark except for a single nightlight, and there was no sign of the pension-keeper. He stepped into the street and began to retrace his steps towards the square. The little tavern was still in operation -- there were lights on and he could see some patrons at the tables by the window -- but other than that the square was deserted and nearly all of the lights in the surrounding buildings had been extinguished. He dropped the cards in the box and was about to turn back when something caught his eye; there, at the far corner of the square, an animal sat on its haunches observing him alertly but, it seemed to him, neutrally as well. He thought at first that it might be a dog, but as he peered through the shadows he saw that its proportions were all wrong, its legs too spindly and long. He took a step or two in its direction; the coyote remained still at first, then rose and darted off in a single quick motion.

(To be continued)

The Approach to the City (3)

He walked upriver along the promenade for a few blocks, until he came to the bottom of a broad street that wound steeply up through the city. A stout, gray-haired woman was selling newspapers and souvenirs from a little shaded kiosk on the corner; he fished some change from his pocket and bought some postcards, and then, on further reflection, a cheap ball-point pen and some stamps. The stamps were a light emerald green, and framed between their perforations was an engraving of the river, depicted, he thought, from not far from where they stood. He stowed his purchases in his coat pocket, nodded his thanks, and started up the hill.

The street was too steep for carts and omnibuses, which kept to the more gradual slopes on the edges of town, but not beyond the capabilities of a strong walker, which he was. Other pedestrians, young and old, were climbing with him, and a few as well were heading down towards the river, planting their feet firmly so as not too tumble headlong. The sun was directly on his shoulders now. In another hour, or perhaps a little more, it would light up the sky above the opposite shore with vermillion and then disappear for the night. The wind was blowing up the river and for the first time that day he felt a bit of a chill and was glad of the exertion. After a ten minutes' climb the street leveled off and opened into a compact little square surrounded by three-storey stone buildings decorated with iron railings and windowboxes full of geraniums. In the center of the square was a brick plaza encircling a lone, peeling sycamore. There was a bench beneath the branches and there he sat for a moment to catch his breath.

On the building opposite a purple-flowered vine -- he thought he knew its name but couldn't come up with it -- had been trained up the downspout of the gutters and then along the eaves. The door swung open, and as a couple in their twenties emerged he heard the clinking of dishware within. Talking it for an eatery of some sort -- he hadn't had a meal since morning and was feeling an increasingly thirst -- he got up and crossed to it and turned the knob of the heavy wooden door. He had not been mistaken; it was a kind of tavern, low-ceilinged and dusty but boisterous and busy. The smells wafting from the kitchen were promising; a passing waiter, towel slung over his shoulder, nodded and waved him into the interior. There were no private booths, just large common tables surrounded by wooden benches. As soon as he sat, exchanging nods with the group of three men sitting further along the table, a fortyish waitress in a dark skirt and blouse appeared with silverware and a placemat woven from some kind of stiff fiber, and asked him what he wanted. He hesitated for a second, realizing that there was no menu. The waitress indicated a blackboard beside the bar, and stood by patiently as he mulled over the limited options. He ordered a ham sandwich and a beer.

The three men were soon joined by two friends and then by a young woman whom he surmised was the wife or the girlfriend of one of the men who had just sat. They each gave him a nod; they seemed in high spirits -- though not drunk by any means -- but he knew little of their language and could make out only a smattering of broken phrases. The other tables were quickly filling up; over the jumble of conversation and the clinking of silverware and china the diners slowly raised their voices. When the waitress returned with the sandwich and a full glass he could barely make herself heard to thank her. She waved him off anyway as if it were nothing.

The sandwich was delicious, the ham tender, aromatic, roughly and thickly carved and enclosed by slices of an excellent, crusty sourdough. When he had drained his dark, bittersweet beer he ordered another and sat nursing it for a while. When he tired of watching the other patrons in the room he looked out through the windows, where the evening shadows were inching steadily across the square. Finally he stood, settled the bill, and asked the waitress if there were rooms to be had nearby. She mentioned an address, and when he hesitated gave him directions and said it wasn't far. He drew on his coat and went outside. There were lights on now in the buildings that ringed the square. Above them, looming on the hill above, rose the clock tower, illuminated by spotlights.

(To be continued)

The Approach to the City (2)

As the climb across the bridge turned into a descent he turned his gaze onto the city that lay ahead. Beginning at a broad promenade that paralleled the river just above the waterline, the buildings rose in broken columns and spirals, their ascent of the irregular slopes interrupted by little squares and plazas and by cobblestone streets and alleyways that opened momentarily to his view before bending out of sight. Many of the rooftops were surmounted by terraces and roof gardens, though little grew there this early in the season. Above, in the background, loomed the stark, unweathervaned spire of a clock-tower, its lower stories concealed by the intervening buildings. Beyond that, groves of first sumac and maple and then tulip and sycamore shaded the higher ground; here and there, through the branches of the uppermost trees, he could see glimpses of what seemed to be open parkland at the crest of the hill.

In the river just offshore a fishing boat, its little skiff in tow, was slowly closing a seine around a school of silver herring that had come upriver to spawn. The fish, forced into an ever tighter pocket, leaped and thrashed at the surface, a lucky few springing over the edges of the net to freedom. Gulls circled and dove at those that remained encircled; the crew of the boat waved them off, half-heartedly, to scant effect. In a few moments the noose had been set and the dripping haul winched up. Trapped by each other's bodies, the herring were now still. The crew swung the seine into the stern, fussed with the tackle and rigging for a few moments, then released the catch into the hold.

The span of the bridge soared inland well past the shore, until it converged with the hillside. The road ahead passed through a stark gash cut in the exposed rock of the ridge, but his course lay elsewhere; he veered to the left side, to the opening of a ramp that cloverleafed steeply down to the city. There was no pedestrian lane here, but no traffic either; clumps of grass and a few spindly seedling maples poked through the cracks in the pavement. When he reached ground level he stood for a moment in the shadow of the bridge, Above him, swallows were swooping in and out, butressing their nests with mud and straw, and paid him little mind.

The city's great wrought iron gates were open and unattended. In front of him stretched the promenade he had seen from the bridge; at this end there was little activity, just a few pedestrians and one handcart whose contents were hidden beneath a tarp. The man conducting it paused in his labors just long enough to nod and say good morning. He removed his cap, not out of courtesy but rather to mop his brow, and then resumed his course.

The fishing boat had moved upstream and a little further in the offing. It had dispatched its tender, which was occupied by a lone figure who controlled the end of the seine. Slowly the larger boat played out the line and the skiff moved off, describing a broad slow circle in the water.

(To be continued...)

The Approach to the City (1)

By mid-afternoon he was driving through a sinuous valley that wove through a range of low, rounded hills. On the summits and slopes the leaves had just opened and in the uncertain light were still pale and tender and shaking lightly in the breeze. Every few miles the road forded another slow-moving stream or a little stony brook. The names of these watercourses, marked on signs on the abutments of the bridges over which he crossed them, were in a language he couldn't pronounce, but he was sure he passed over some of the same ones more than once. On one of the surrounding hills there was an active quarry -- for gravel or some kind of ore he couldn't guess -- and only a thin protective shell of the lower hillside had been left standing between the pit and the thoroughfare. Other than that he saw few signs of human habitation, though he knew there must be perfectly ordinary little towns not far distant, concealed behind the hills. A solitary red-tailed hawk swooped into view, crossing the highway low and just a few yards ahead of him. Perhaps startled by his approach, all at once it flared its tail and darted higher and out of sight.

He came upon the great river sooner than he expected. The road bent again, and at first he didn't realize that the new green line of ridge that now appeared directly ahead of him in the distance was already the summit of the far shore. The road began a steady descent, but until he was almost at the water's edge the river itself remained hidden from the highway. All at once it opened out, broad and stately and opaque beneath the overcast sky. On the far shore, spreading out along either side of the long, low bridge, were densely packed constellations of red brick or white stone buildings, from one or two to perhaps as much six or seven stories high, alternating with thick clusters of trees. The heights above were unbuilt and green, except in a few bare spots where outcroppings stood open to the sky. A little somnolent marina lay before him, and a flotilla of small white boats puttered near the opposite shore, but the wide gray expanse of the central channel was empty and undisturbed by the wakes of oceangoing vessels, though he little doubted that the river's great depths were ample for their drafts.

From here on he could proceed only by foot. He exited, parked his car in an adjoining, mostly unoccupied lot, pocketed the keys, and crossed to the bottom of the long, concrete ramp that ascended from the shore and out over the water. Avoiding the center of the roadway, disused but in good repair, he kept to the narrow pedestrian lane, bordered by rigging and cables, that traversed its seaward outer edge. Heights did not bother him, particularly -- he had been a bit of a climber in his youth -- but the further out he went the more the wind picked up and buffeted him. His head down, sheltered in the raised-up collar of his coat, he barely nodded at the scant few figures who passed him going the other way.

It was two miles, perhaps a little more, to the other side. Just past the halfway point the climb became more arduous, as the roadway arched up over the deepest part of the channel to allow for the passage of ships. Here the sun broke through the clouds for a few moments, casting a column of shimmering light on the water below. He looked down, and precisely at that moment the river beneath him suddenly broke open and an enormous sturgeon, heading upriver, thirty feet in length if not more, raised its antediluvian snout and arched its massive armored back into the air, seeming to hover on the water's surface for an instant before plunging out of sight. The water rippled out on either side and chopped against the supports of the bridge, but as long as he watched the creature did not re-emerge.

(To be continued...)

Up in the Downs

Artwork by Richard Doyle from The Scouring of the White Horse by Thomas Hughes. These illustrations are not in the copy I have, which is the American edition published by Ticknor & Fields in 1859. The elaborate titling, which I'm guessing is supposed to evoke the twisted branches of a hedgerow, reads The Scouring of the White Horse / A Country Legend.

The scene depicted, of stout Saxon warriors exuberantly memorializing King Alfred's victory over the Danes in 871 AD, is anachronistic, as it is no longer believed that the stylized hill figure known as the Uffington White Horse has anything to do with Alfred or with Anglo-Saxon England at all. It was carved into the chalk of the Berkshire Downs, in essentially the design in which it appears to this day, in the late Bronze Age (c. 800-1000 BC), and would have disappeared long ago had it not been periodically "scoured" of encroaching turf. That more than a hundred generations of Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, and Normans not only refrained from obliterating the carving but actually went to the trouble of renewing it from time to time is, when you think about it, fairly astonishing. Perhaps it served as a convenient excuse for merrymaking -- it certainly did so in Tom Hughes's day. Whether the horse -- if that's indeed what it is -- was originally intended as a religious symbol or as some kind of territorial or tribal marker no one now knows.

The White Horse is located above the village of Uffington in what used to be part of Berkshire but is now Oxfordshire. From Oxford, where we were staying, it can be reached by taking a bus to the market town of Wantage, which has an excellent small museum devoted to the history of the region, and then a second bus that stops at the isolated crossroads below White Horse Hill. We scaled the hill the hard way, across its face through pastureland that was muddy in spots, not realizing that there was a paved road to the top of the ridge. Even on a fair March day -- there were paragliders soaring above us, and the views were splendid from the summit -- the site was uncrowded. A small flock of sheep just a few meters from the carving ignored our approach and only broke away when we strode right through their midst.

We sat down to catch our breath near the head of the figure, and while we were there passed our copy of an illustrated guidebook to a fellow climber so that he could prove to his skeptical son that he was indeed standing next to a giant horse, as the full outline of the carving, which measures more than 100 meters from nose to tail, is best seen from a distance or from above. Above and behind the horse, on the crest of the hill, are the earthworks of an Iron Age fort known as Uffington Castle. The Ridgeway, an ancient trail that runs through the Downs and on to Avebury, passes over the hill, and if you follow it west for a mile or so you will come to Wayland's Smithy, a fine Neolithic chambered long barrow sheltered in a beech grove.

There's no gift shop or visitor's center on White Horse Hill, and I for one hope there never is, as the bleak, peaceful solitude of the place allows one to better contemplate the views of the surrounding countryside as well as the vast expanses of time that are in evidence. There was a lone vendor selling ice cream from a van; we passed on the ice cream but took him up on what he solemnly promised was the best hot chocolate in the world. And it wasn't bad at that.

Tom Hughes's novel The Scouring of the White Horse is still enjoyable reading, although more reliable for its glimpses of Berkshire folklife than for its archaeology. Kate Bergamar's Discovering Hill Figures, in the Shire Classics series, is an excellent portable guide to the Horse and similar figures, most of which are far more recent in origin. The latest archaeological evidence is surveyed in Uffington White Horse in its Landscape, by C. Gosden et al.

Photo by Maddie.

Arrival

“The illusory emptiness ...” – K

The long, low ferry, illuminated only by a single lantern that rattled on its bow, slowly drew into shore, bumped heavily against the great timber pilings, and came to rest. From the deck a dark figure tossed a heavy rope across to a pair of waiting hands on the pier, and in a few deft motions the craft had been tied off and secured and was rocking gently in its own diminishing wake. The passengers began to disembark, in twos and threes. Among them was a tall man in a heavy overcoat and turned-up collar, who waited his turn, then climbed the rungs of the short ladder to stand on the surface of the pier. He joined the flow heading inland, off the wet planks and onto solid ground, then up a gradual incline into the shadowy beginnings of the water district. Lanterns shone from the salt-encrusted windows of a few low buildings, and figures beckoned from the doorways, but he ignored them and kept pace with the others. They ascended along a narrow street of shuttered and dilapidated warehouses, all of them dark and to all appearances abandoned. Here and there an alley broke off to the left or right, and small furtive creatures scuttled away at the sound of approaching footsteps.

The intermittent drizzle that had accompanied the ferry in its passage across the water was now turning to snow, though the heavy, wet flakes melted as soon as they met the pavement, or dissolved on the coats and faces of the advancing pedestrians. The street opened out into a little square of three-storey stone buildings. In a few, lights appeared in the windows and bits of muffled conversation broke from behind tavern doors, but the throng strode firmly onward, losing only a straggler now and then who turned aside from the flow and stood in place for a moment on the streetcorner, as if debating inwardly, before stepping away towards the flickering halos that emanated through the windowglass of storefronts.

A few blocks further and the narrow street intersected a great, bright boulevard, along which a thin but steady procession of citizens were promenading, wrapped in scarves and muffs and with hats angled down against the snow, which was falling steadily now and swirling into little eddies at their feet. The two perpendicular streams of traffic began to mingle and break apart until they were no longer distinguishable, but still the man kept to his course, passing streetcorner after busy streetcorner, always climbing, his back to the waterline. Eventually he came to a grand square, ringed by statues of heroes and columns of uniform but leafless trees whose branches arched over the crowd. A trio of acrobats were performing on the sidewalk, detaining at least for a moment the attention of a cluster of spellbound onlookers, and near them a man in a tattered leather coat was leafing through the pages of a windblown and half-soaked newspaper. From a bandshell beyond came a steady rhythm of brass and drumbeats that formed a kind of ostinato to the shouts and laughter that echoed around the square; the man slowed his step and cocked an ear to hear the music better, but only for a moment. Leaving the square behind, he continued through a prosperous mercantile district, passing elegant couples, in high spirits and wrapped in furs and astrakhans against the cold, who emerged from limousines parked along the curb and disappeared into the interiors of the nearest night spot at hand. The women eyed him warily but without altering their expressions; the men showed no sign of noticing him at all.

A few blocks beyond he reached the summit of the city. All around him stood immense, gray, unornamented towers, blindingly and coldly illuminated but empty and silent at that hour. The snow was collecting at their bases, an inch deep or more, and beginning to drift against the curbs and retaining walls. He turned for a moment to take a look behind him, down at the prospect of the city and the waterside that lay in the distance below, but they were mostly lost to view, hidden by the snow and the unforgiving columns. Block after block he walked, until the tallest towers began to give way to smaller but equally featureless structures, then all at once he was beyond the center of the city altogether and was descending towards an isolated, windswept knoll, a busy park during the day but utterly dark and abandoned after sundown. He strode along a concrete path, past cast iron benches that overlooked a steep declivity; before him, dotted here and there with tiny lights, lay the mist-shrouded hinterland of the city. He crossed a low, iron bridge to another small hill, then came to the uppermost of a long procession of steps that led down to the valley floor. He passed no one; his footing had become treacherous as the snow slowly mounted, and a bitter wind now rose up, driving the swirling flakes into his eyes. After a few moments, in the shelter of the hill above him, the wind dropped and he continued his descent in the absolute stillness of the falling snow.

At the base of the hill, as far as he could see in all directions, lay a warren of narrow streets lined with low houses and hovels packed tightly one against the other. Most were dark, but here and there a weak, solitary flame appeared through a window. There was no sound except, intermittently, the very distant barking of a dog. A solitary pedestrian, head bowed, emerged from a crossing alleyway and nodded at his approach; he nodded in return but spoke no greeting. The forlorn banlieu sprawled on; his exertions gave him warmth as he walked first one mile, than another. The snow was deep now, unbroken by footprints, and the wind once again picked up and stung his face, blowing drifts across his path as he trudged heavily from one grim corner to the next. There was no longer any illumination in the buildings he passed; either they were untenanted or their occupants had quenched their lamps and sought sleep, huddled in the chill, alone or with their companions as luck might have it. He heard the cracking of a branch from far off, and only then did he notice the cragged outline of the first tree, looming above a house as he passed. Soon the houses thinned out and the woods enveloped him, the street narrowed to a winding but well-trod path. Looking over his shoulder, he saw that the city had disappeared behind him; the snow had risen to his knees but all at once it ceased falling and the wind dropped altogether. He felt the blood return to his face as he approached the little cottage, its windows lit up by a strong warm glow, where his love lay drowsing, awaiting him, wrapped in her blanket of dreams.

Inflation

German postage stamps, 1923. The highest denomination here: 20,000,000,000 marks. (That one must have been for Special Delivery.) The first two rows are overprints of lower-denominated stamps.

Two mountains

I was already finding the repetitive images in these stamps a little disturbing even before I figured out what they were. The topography in the background of the 5 centavo and 10 centavo stamps is symbolic, not real, as it places Mt. Fuji in Japan in juxtaposition with Mt. Mayon on the island of Luzon, roughly 2,000 miles to the south. The stamps were, in fact, issued by the Japanese government for use during the occupation of the Philippines during the Second World War. The original sheets were larger, but as parts of multiple rows have been removed I've cropped the images square for the web.





Like most postage stamps, the ones above were designed to be separated and put to use one or two at a time, but somehow their sinister uniformity when viewed like this speaks volumes about the aspirations of conquerors and empires, in any era.