Spotlight Art and Poetry – Mount Fuji: The Great Wave Off the Coast of Kanagawa – A Painting / Print by Katsushika Hokusai – The Great Wave: Hokusai – A poem by Donald Finkel – Fuji Distant Small – A Poem by Goff James

Goff James

Aug 18

Painting is silent poetry and poetry is painting that speaks.

Plutarch

Image

Mount Fuji: The Great Wave Off the Coast of Kanagawa

Katsushika Hokusai

Poem

The Great Wave: Hokusai by Donald Finkel

But we will take the problem in its most obscure manifestation, and suppose that our spectator is an average Englishman. A trained observer, carefully hidden behind a screen, might notice a dilation in his eyes, even an intake of his breath, perhaps a grunt.

Herbert Reed, The Meaning of Art

It is because the sea is blue,
Because Fuji is blue, because the bent blue
Men have white faces, like the snow
On Fuji, like the crest of the wave in the sky the colour of their
Boats. It is because the air
Is full of writing, because the wave is still: that nothing
Will harm these frail strangers,
That high over Fuji in an earth-coloured sky the fingers
Will not fall; and the blue men
Lean on the sea like snow, and the wave like a mountain leans
Against the sky.

In the painter's sea
All fishermen are safe. All anger bends under his unity.
But the innocent bystander, he merely
'Walks round a corner, thinking of nothing': hidden
Behind a screen we hear his cry.
He stands half in and half out of the world; he is the men,
But he cannot see below Fuji
The shore the colour of sky; he is the wave, he stretches
His claws against strangers. He is
Not safe, not even from himself. His world is flat.
He fishes a sea full of serpents, he rides his boat
Blindly from wave to wave toward Ararat.

Poem 2

Fuji Distant Small by Goff James

Fuji distant small
Snow-capped
Stands
Heaven aching
Armed

From the ocean's depths
Waves a writhing
Claw and gnash
Time obscured
Unravels

Ghost-faced fishermen
Heads bowed 'gainst
The storm
Heaving haul and
Breathe their last

Deep into silence's
Darkness
Each frail craft
In turn
Succumbs

Fuji distant small
Snow-capped stands
Wives and children
Grieving
Weep

Painting / Print Attribution © Katsushika Hokusai, Mount Fuji: The Great Wave Off the Coast of Kanagawa, c. 1830–32 ACE

Source Attribution https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/45434

Poem Attribution © Donald Finkel, The Great Wave: Hokusai

Source Attribution https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=27932

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