Heat Wave

Seattle is in the thick of a heat wave. Here are some images to make things even warmer.

Sun by Brian Wildsmith

Brian Wildsmith’s sun is powerful, yet benevolent.

Antonio Frasconi made a Book of Many Suns in 1955. Here are nine Frasconi woodcuts of suns. Each small sun has a large personality.

Enough sun you say? There is always more sun.

More, More, More by Julie Paschkis 2018

Here are some images that are not specifically of suns but are hot with color and imagery.

Ingri and Edgar Parin D’Aulaire show the making of the world in their book of Norse Gods and Giants. A volcano erupts. Hot.

Joohee Yoon shows the beginning of the world in her illustration of Walt Whitman’s Hummingbird from the book Beastly Verse. With a controlled palate the world is erupting with heat and light.

There is more volcanic heat on Wm Steig’s Rotten Island. Steig was a master of beastliness including beastly heat

…and beastly beasts.

Is the heat making you feel beastly? Maybe you feel like this She Goat or Bear, from a late 19th centurty Russian Lubok.

Cool off with an early morning bike ride! Here’s a jaunty cyclist illustrated by Mariana Malhão in the book Uma Rosa Na Tromba de um Elefante by António José Forte.

A jump in the water is another good option. Orlando the Marmalade Cat, by Kathleen Hale shows how. The gentle drawing and the lithographic process make the water soft and inviting.

Whatever you do – keep cool!

Winter Haiku

Here are some winter haiku from Japan, paired with illustrations from around the world.

Ingri & Edgar Parin D’Aulaire

Koson Ohara

Ingri & Edgar Parin D’Aulaire

Alois Garigiet

Carlos Marchiori

Ezra Jack Keats

Antonio Frasconi

Yury Vasnetsov

Most of these haiku came from the website Japan Powered. Please click here to read more Winter Haiku.

A traditional haiku has 17 syllables written in 3 lines (5/7/5) often using images from nature. I hope these poems will inspire you to write a winter haiku of your own. If so, please send it in to the comment section! Or send a haiku that someone else wrote that you like.
Here is my attempt.

Black branches scribble
Crooked words on chalky sky –
Twigs snap the cold spell

And here is a winter haiku I saw on a friend’s tee shirt.

Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don’t make sense
Refrigerator

Word Watching

Several years ago Julie Larios introduced me to the concept of chiming (as opposed to rhyming).
When two words rhyme they have  the same ending: river and sliver.
Chiming is looser. Chiming words bounce off each other in all kinds of ways. They could have similar sounds at the beginning, middle or end: sliver, silver, swindle, windless, windswept. Chiming allows you to experience the meaning of the words and the pure sounds.
Since childhood I have loved the book Ounce Dice Trice. Those words chime! The book is all about word-watching: delighting in words for their sounds and meanings.

Learning a new language is a way to hear words from the outside as well as the inside. I wrote about that in this post about my new book Flutter and Hum, Aleteo y Zumbido.

In 1955 Antonio Frasconi came out with See and Say – A Picture Book in Four Languages. Frasconi was born in 1919 in Argentina to Italian parents. He grew up in Uruguay and then settled in the US in 1945. His wonderful woodcuts shine a light on the words in all of the languages.The struggle and delight of language is to describe things and evoke feelings that exist beyond language.  Here are two poems by Pablo Neruda, illustrated by Frasconi, that dip their toes into that river. I shiver.

p.s. -Thanks to Jennifer Kennard for lending me Frasconi’s See and Say. Please explore Jennifer’s wonderful blog Letterology.

p.s. -Please click on the events page to find out about upcoming events and sales.

p.s. – To read a blogpost about words on quilts click this link to Mooshka – a patchwork blog.