"Catch the Wind" -Robert McIntosh, Muskagee (Creek) Nation- Date??
DESERT NOTES. RIVER NOTES.
By Barry Lopez
I am enjoying this book, because it's not like a novel you can just plow through in a couple of days. It's full of great imagery, and poetic, but I don't think it classifies as poetry...it's just a compilation of random chapters, or notes. I would describe it as "abstract", but I'm not exactly sure how to use that word correctly. :)DESERT NOTES. RIVER NOTES.
By Barry Lopez
My favorite chapter so far is called, "The Wind". I have always loved windy days (except when biking). Watching the trees sway - the sensation of everything being stirred by an invisible flow. I love how Barry Lopez describes it in this book. The chapter begins with a woman...
"She is lying on her side in the dust; she is sightseeing along the curve of the desert floor."
She is watching an ant, when the wind comes and,
"she can feel the air bending like water around the soles of her feet...flowing up over her ears like hands burying in her hair; coming up the side of her leg, around below her hip under her back where there is space between her and the earth, back across her chest and gone, over her arm, tingle, finger, stretch, gone. Tongues of air roping like coils, water brushing dry leaving all the pores of her flesh puckered. With her head to one side she can see it touch out on the desert floor, gone."
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I had so much fun looking for wind artwork to post on the blog. I found many that I really liked. I also stumbled across this wonderful Emily Dickinson poem:
XXIV
Of all the sounds despatched abroad,
There's not a charge to me
Like that old measure in the boughs,
That phraseless melody
The wind does, working like a hand
Whose fingers brush the sky,
Then quiver down, with tufts of tune
Permitted gods and me.
When winds go round and round in bands,
And thrum upon the door,
And birds take places overhead,
To bear them orchestra,
I crave him grace, of summer boughs,
If such an outcast be,
He never heard that fleshless chant
Rise solemn in the tree,
As if some caravan of sound
On deserts, in the sky,
Had broken rank,
Then knit, and passed
In seamless company.
"Undine in the Wind" -Arthur Rackham- '69??
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I probably should write about the beautiful snowy day we're having here in Salt Lake... It's really coming down! Maybe tomorrow.
Of all the sounds despatched abroad,
There's not a charge to me
Like that old measure in the boughs,
That phraseless melody
The wind does, working like a hand
Whose fingers brush the sky,
Then quiver down, with tufts of tune
Permitted gods and me.
When winds go round and round in bands,
And thrum upon the door,
And birds take places overhead,
To bear them orchestra,
I crave him grace, of summer boughs,
If such an outcast be,
He never heard that fleshless chant
Rise solemn in the tree,
As if some caravan of sound
On deserts, in the sky,
Had broken rank,
Then knit, and passed
In seamless company.
***
I probably should write about the beautiful snowy day we're having here in Salt Lake... It's really coming down! Maybe tomorrow.
5 comments:
Desert notes is probably my favorite from Barry Lopez. I did like River Notes and Arctic Dreams as well. Arctic Dreams was a different than the "notes." I read it over the space of a few years. Since then, I have read two or three other novels set in the arctic. I doubt I would have had the interest had it not been for Barry Lopez.
wow...i generally hate wind, but the imagery with the desert floor was quite lovely. the art work was fun to see as well. gee, i love how you embrace life as well as the wind. xox
I am so amazed at how well exposed you are to so many awesome and beautiful things! Will you send me a list of your favorite books? I am reading "A Wrinkle in Time" for the first time. I would love some great suggestions from you. (By the way, nice comment on Jonny's blog...you wanna piece a me?)
"The wind is never our friend."
-a fishing guide in Arkansas
It is if your a fish...
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