89 Ways Of Looking At A Cloud
89 Clouds, by the poet Mark Strand and artist Wendy Mark is one of the most beautiful books on clouds.
Eh! qu’aimes-tu donc, extraordinaire étranger ?
– J’aime les nuages… les nuages qui passent… là-bas… là-bas… les merveilleux nuages !Charles Baudelaire
Just the concept of cloudy makes us think of fog and altitude, and appeals to that tenuous romance between humans and imprecision. “Man is in love and loves what vanishes. What more is there to say?”said W. B. Yeats once. And perhaps only a poet or an artist, such as Baudelaire or J.W. Turner, can access something as eternally elusive as clouds.
In 1991, Pulitzer Prize-wining poet Mark Strand and the artist Wendy Mark joined forces to create one of the most beautiful books in existence on the shifting theme of clouds. A memorable collection of little ghosts. 89 Clouds is an 89-verse poem on the atmospheric phenomenon that has given form(s) to more than one disperse imagination. Perhaps similar to Wallace Stevens’ ominous poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”, 89 Clouds is also a list of possible ways of looking at clouds – which are never the same, not even to themselves –– with the good fortune to be accompanied by Mark’s illustrations.
In no particular order, these are some of the verses of the book, which remain in the memory like clouds do (because “no whiteness (lost) is so white as the memory of whiteness”).
A cloud is never a mirror
Words about clouds are clouds themselves
If snow falls inside a cloud, only the cloud knows
Every lake desires a cloud
A cloud without shape is always open
Clouds are drawn by invisible birds
The cloud that was gone would never come back
A cloud is a cathedral without belief
A cloud lit from within is somebody’s study
A cloud dreams only of triangles
Related Articles
Pictorial spiritism (a woman's drawings guided by a spirit)
There are numerous examples in the history of self-taught artists which suggest an interrogation of that which we take for granted within the universe of art. Such was the case with figures like
Astounding fairytale illustrations from Japan
Fairy tales tribal stories— are more than childish tales. Such fictions, the characters of which inhabit our earliest memories, aren’t just literary works with an aesthetic and pleasant purpose. They
A cinematic poem and an ode to water: its rhythms, shapes and textures
Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water. - John Keats Without water the equation of life, at least life as we know it, would be impossible. A growing hypothesis holds that water, including the
Watch beauty unfold through science in this "ode to a flower" (video)
The study of the microscopic is one of the richest, most aesthetic methods of understanding the world. Lucky is the scientist who, upon seeing something beautiful, is able to see all of the tiny
To invent those we love or to see them as they are? Love in two of the movies' favorite scenes
So much has been said already, of “love” that it’s difficult to add anything, much less something new. It’s possible, though, perhaps because even if you try to pass through the sieve of all our
This app allows you to find and preserve ancient typographies
Most people, even those who are far removed from the world of design, are familiar with some type of typography and its ability to transform any text, help out dyslexics or stretch an eight page paper
The secrets of the mind-body connection
For decades medical research has recognized the existence of the placebo effect — in which the assumption that a medication will help produces actual physical improvements. In addition to this, a
The sea as infinite laboratory
Much of our thinking on the shape of the world and the universe derives from the way scientists and artists have approached these topics over time. Our fascination with the mysteries of the
Sharing and collaborating - natural movements of the creative being
We might sometimes think that artistic or creative activity is, in essence, individualistic. The Genesis of Judeo-Christian tradition portrays a God whose decision to create the world is as vehement
John Malkovich becomes David Lynch (and other characters)
John Malkovich and David Lynch are, respectively, the actor and film director who’ve implicitly or explicitly addressed the issues of identity and its porous barriers through numerous projects. Now