poet e.e. cummings / elephants were his totem

John Dos Passos, The Best of Times: An Informal Memoir. New York: New American Library, 1966, p. 135—

[American writer E.E.] Cummings' delight in certain things was contagious as a child's. Christmas tree balls, stars, snowflakes. Elephants were his totem. I would never have enjoyed snow so much if I hadn't walked around Washington Square with Cummings in a snowstorm. He loved mice. He had a great eye for sparrows and all pert timid bright-eyed creatures.

The last time I saw him the summer before he died he was entertaining a tame chipmunk. We ate supper on the porch of his father's old hilltop house in the woods above Silver Lake. The chipmunk kept popping through the vines and out onto the brick floor of the porch for peanuts. You couldn't tell whether Cummings or the chipmunk enjoyed the little scene more. They had the same glint in their eyes. They both looked their best.

how do you like your blue-eyed bird, mr. death?

Roy R. Behrens, © digital montage

Above One of my early digital montages (its title and date I can't recall). At the time I was interested in Arts and Crafts designer William Morris (that's Jane Morris leaning leftward), and Buffalo Bill (behind and above the target). One day we discovered that a bird (a starling) had been trapped in our wood stove, where it died and remained somewhat preserved. The feather colors were astonishing, and I decided I should place its body on a flat bed scanner, then use the result in a montage. Perhaps I also had in mind that wonderful e.e. cummings poem about the demise of Buffalo Bill: "How do you like your blue-eyed boy, Mister Death."

•••

Wilhelm Reich, Passion of Youth: An Autobiography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988, p. 10—

Once I was playing by the fence and a peasant boy my age [whom he was forbidden to play with] was watching me from a few meters away. Suddenly he grabbed a stone, I presume as a joke, and threw it at me. It hit my forehead and I bled a little. He certainly had not intended to be mean. My mother washed my forehead and told my father [who was the boss of the other boy's father] what had happened. Father became enraged. He summoned the child and the child's father. After referring briefly to the incident, he gave the father a dreadful beating. The peasant endured it quietly, without defending himself. As he walked off with his child, I could see him beating him the whole way home. The boy screamed frightfully. I was very upset, but said nothing and crept away to hide. I was about eight years old.

Behrens, Dreams of Fields (2025)

to catch a green lizard without its tail falling off

Above Roy R. Behrens, book cover design for Joseph Langland, The Sacrifice Poems. Cedar Falls IA: North American Review, 1975.

•••

Lawrence Durrell, quoted in George Plimpton, ed., The Writer's Chapbook (NY: Viking Press, 1989), pp. 107-108—

To write a poem is like trying to catch a lizard without its tail falling off. In India when I was a boy they had great big green lizards there, and if you shouted or shot them their tails would fall off. There was only one boy in the school who could catch lizards intact. No one knew quite how he did it. He had a special soft way of going up to them, and he'd bring them back with their tails on. That strikes me as the best analogy I can give you. To try and catch your poem without its tail falling off.

more info

a young dog acquires name of Henry Yah-mes

Alvin Langdon Coburn / Max Beerbohm Portrait

Max Beerbohm (in a letter to Lytton Strachey)—

Some time in 1913, at this address, my wife and I acquired a young fox terrier. We debated as to what to call him, and, as Henry James had just been having his seventieth birthday, and as his books have given us more pleasure than those of any other living man, I, rather priggishly perhaps, insisted that the dog should be known as James. But this was a name which Italian peasants, who are the only neighbors we have, of course would not be able to pronounce at all. So we were phonetic and called the name of the dog Yah-mes. And this did very well. By this name he was known far and wide—but not for long; for alas, he died of distemper.

sight unseen talk coming to Burlington Iowa

RELATED LINKS 

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work? /  Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage /  Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual art /  Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

hoop and holler when little pig got under skirt

Stark Young, The Pavilion: Of People and Times Remembered, of Stories and Places. NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951, p. 106—

My father had a brother-in-law, Uncle Henry Hargis, who had married my Aunt Elizabeth. She had been long since dead and the only thing remembered about her was that she went on wearing hoopskirts years after they were given up, because her legs were too weak for skirts pressuring against them, and that a little pig had got under the hoop one day and the more she kicked and screamed the higher he jumped.

today I bought a dress that is made out of wood

Where is the fifth pig?

Ione Robinson, A Wall to Paint On. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1946, p. 373-374, while visiting Berlin, from a letter dated November 8, 1938 (less than a year in advance of the start of World War II) —

Today I bought a dress that is made out of wood. I still can't believe it. In fact, there was not one “natural” item in this department store; everything was synthetic. In an arcade on Unter den Linden, I spent a long time looking at photographs of Hitler and I bought a series of tiny "flap” [flip book] photos which, when you riffle them fast, make him come to life like a miniature movie. The one I have shows him making a speech and if you riffle the pages slowly the gestures are so calculated and ridiculous they make you laugh—although that is one thing I have not seen people do in this city. 

The people in the streets [of Berlin] look worn and tired. Life is completely regulated. There are signs every few feet, telling one what to eat and believe. Money is controlled. Four dollars a day is about all you can spend. In a certain sense, this makes life very simple—you know exactly what you can and cannot do. Even though certain things could be achieved through such a system, I don't see how anyone could be happy. I begin to feel as though I were living in a well-run jail. There is the same security of a bed at night, something to eat, and a few hours of “forced” recreation. But the realization that one must constantly yield to the will of a single man takes all the incentive and moral force from a human being.

improvisation on stage / unrehearsed adjustment

Mary Garden

Maurice Browne, Too Late to Lament: An autobiography. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1956, p. 155—

We were thrilled [having been given tickets to attend a performance of Le Jongleur, an opera starring the famous soprano Mary Garden]…we had never seen it, longed to do so, had not been able to afford seats. The performance outstripped even our expectation; Mary Garden was an exceptionally skilled actress as well as an exceptionally fine singer. She was also a first-rate “trooper.” The market scene came to an end; the stage was being cleared for her entrance, the crowd dispersing; suddenly in the very center of the stage a donkey refused to budge, straddled his legs and performed an act which had been rehearsed. The audience grasped, then rocked with laughter; the donkey, satisfied, made an effective exit. Mary Garden entered upstage center, seemed not even to glance at the spot where she would otherwise have stood, crossed down a little to the left of it and began to sing. In one second there was not a sound from that crowded house.

a report of naiveté in assessing works of art

Cavern [detail] © Roy R. Behrens 2021

Abel Warshawsky, The memories of an American Impressionist. Kent OH: Kent State University Press, 1980, p. 62—

[In Paris] The "cult of the naive" at all costs became a rage…

A group of painters in Montmartre decided to exploit this hysteria and have some fun with the critics. Procuring a donkey, they tied a large paintbrush to his tail, first dipping the brush into an assortment of colors. Then a canvas was set up within striking distance of the donkey's tail, which in its gyrations soon covered the canvas with a weird conglomeration of colors—quite a stunning study in the new style, as the spectators all agreed. Witnesses and a notary, who had been invited to attend, attested to the manner in which the work had been done. This canvas was framed and sent to the Salon des Independants. It bore as title, if I remember rightly, Sunset on the Red Sea. After several well-known critics had remarked it and written about it as a work of extraordinary interest, the story with the signatures of the witnesses was published, and the laugh was on the "new art" critics.

Also see Art by Animals video, Desmond Morris, and pandemic montages.

pachydermatitis: there's an elephant on the hill

There is an elephant in the room. It is said he resides on Capitol Hill. He is as old as an elephant’s ears, with a voice that stumbles through his trunk as if he were constantly drinking. He is said to have enormous sway. But in truth he has no power, because he built that illusion by cowering at the most critical times. He snivels as the poisons drift, as nitrates flood the rivers, as storms foretell the climate shift. With a sinister sense of achievement, he buries his constituents in ditches of denial, in return for once again voting for him. He is the darling of cancerous sprays, of implicit gun support, of threatened insurrections, of crafty wasteful substitute fuels, of reluctance to address a plague, of refusing to act when it matters. His disservice is equivalent to addiction, scorn, and shameless stealth. Faced with faceless children’s remains (their tiny futures slaughtered by enabled weapons of war in our homes) he is once again bereft of words. His thick tongue is a stumbling block. His persuasive powers are drained by drought. He is a fossil who’s run out of fuel. Not born yesterday, this elephant seems not to realize that his perfect attendance Sunday School pin will melt in Hell when he arrives.

National Parks at Jester Park Nature Center

National Park Poster © Roy R. Behrens 2019

Above I am absolutely pleased (ecstatic even) by the opportunity to exhibit at Jester Park Nature Center (in Polk County, near Granger IA) a series of 23 digital montage posters, the theme of which is US National Parks and Monuments. I actually designed these in 2019, with the thought that I would frame them and make the exhibit available to nature centers to exhibit without charge. It was a great pleasure to design them, and an even greater pleasure results when other people can enjoy them also.

The poster exhibit at Jester Park was installed earlier this week, and will remain on view at the Nature Center Galleries there through August 28. It will officially open with an in-person reception (free and open to the public), including wine and refreshments, on Thursday, May 12, from 6 to 8 pm. Sounds wonderful. 

Exhibition at Jester Nature Center

And of course it’s also an opportunity to see other on-going exhibits in the same building, including the work of glass artist Tilda Brown Swanson, as well as permanent features as well. There is additional information at this online link.

For those who live too far away, or who can’t attend in person for other reasons, the posters can easily be accessed online. For example, all the posters are the internet (click on each to enlarge it to view) at this link. But they can also be experienced in video form online at YouTube here.  

There also another online component that quite a few people have found of interest in understanding the significance of how color, shapes, and other pattern attributes contribute to animal camouflage. It’s a succinct 30-minute video talk on Nature, Art and Camouflage, also free on YouTube. A screen grab from the video is reproduced below, as is one of the National Park posters.

For the opportunity to share the posters at the Jester Park Nature Center, I am especially grateful to Missy Smith, Nature Center Coordinator, and Lewis Major, Naturalist.

video on Nature, Art and Camouflage

 

blind prejudice / the thing to fear is fear itself

Gypsy family, public domain

Jay Partridge, A Wonderful Experience: A Memoir. Independence IA: Privately published, no date, p. 29—

[Growing up in southern Iowa] I remember only one fear I had when I was a child. It was a fear of Gypsies. Someone said Gypsies steal little boys to work for them. Every year Gypsies would camp over-night, sometimes stay a day or two, at the Mount Vernon school grounds on the corner west of the house.

Their dark skin, black hair and long dark dresses with capes or shawls all scared me. Mom thought their dress was better to hide things they stole. She always tried to keep them out of the house. They were always coming over to get something to eat and feed for their horses.

They traveled in little buildings on wagons pulled by horses. Sometimes there might be five or six loads of them. Seemed like next morning our cows never gave as much milk. The folks always though the Gypsies had come during the night and milked the cows. The folks also thought some chickens, eggs, feed, and maybe a pig were missing after the Gypsies were gone.

Anyway, I breathed easier when they left, because then I knew three little boys they hadn’t stolen.

 ••• 

William L. Shirer, 20th Century Journey. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976, p. 83—

[While growing up in Cedar Rapids IA] The fear of Indians by the acquisitive white settlers persisted for some time…Sometimes a stray and hungry Indian from the nearby Tama Reservation would come to the back door of our house to beg food and my worried mother would lock the doors and windows and, if the man persisted in knocking, call the police. We were brought up to believe that “the only good Indian was a dead Indian” and nothing was said to us in those days of the cruel and savage slaughter and the robbery of the Indians by the white Americans, one of the darkest sides of our history.

ham and bacon / let's say eggs for both of them

Vintage print advertisement

Richmal Crompton, William’s Treasure Trove. UK: George Newnes Ltd, 1962.

“I incline to the theory that the plays of Shakespeare were written by Bacon.”

“How could they be?” said William …“How could that man Ham—“

“I said Bacon.”

“Well, it’s nearly the same … Well, if this man Bacon wrote them, they wouldn’t put this man Shakespeare’s name on the books ...”

“Now, boys, I want you all please to listen to me … There was a man called Hamlet—“

“You just said he was called Bacon,” said William.

“I did not say he was called Bacon.”

“Yes, ‘scuse me, you did … When I called him Ham, you said it was Bacon, and now you’re calling him Ham yourself.”

“This was a different man…Listen! This man was called Hamlet and his uncle had killed his father because he wanted to marry his mother.”

“What did he want to marry his mother for?” said William …

“It was Hamlet's mother he wanted to marry.”

“Oh, that man what you think wrote the plays.”

“No, that was Bacon.”

“You said it was Ham a minute ago … I tell you what,” said William confidingly, “let's say Eggs for both of them.”

Vachel Lindsay | the fate of an unbroken colt

Index of American Design (Public Domain)

Eleanor Ruggles, The West-Going Heart: A Life of Vachel Lindsay. New York: W.W. Norton, 1959, pp. 185-186—

Though by day the sky was a bright Kansas blue and the sun descended on the prairie like the stroke of a golden hammer, there was darkness and death at the Weaver place. Both Frank and his brother Forrest, who worked with him, had a certain hard attractiveness—“but their cruelty,” pronounced Lindsay in his diary, “was bottomless.”

On Sunday, July 7, he was in the sitting room writing letters when he heard a fearful row out beyond the barn. Frank and Forrest were exciting themselves by disciplining Dick, a frisky broncho colt, whom they had tied up and were beating over the head—one with a doubletree [a harnessing cross bar], the other with a pitchfork handle—while Forrest plied himself with swigs of whisky so that he could be as mean as Frank.

Lindsay heard the roars, oaths, thuds of the bar and stick, whinnies of pain and tattoo of hoofs all the long afternoon till at six o’clock Frank's fat and patient wife May ran over to the barn and protested, reminding the men it was Sunday and warning them they wouldn’t be blest and would lose a day’s harvest.

On Monday morning the little broncho Dick was hitched to the reaper along with three large mules. He went dancing out to the field, looking devilish, defiantly objecting to keeping his head on a line with the others and hauling the great load almost by himself. That night he came dancing home. On Tuesday he went out again dancing for battle, but returned at night dragging and panting.

On Wednesday, just past the hottest hour, Lindsay was working in the field with Forrest. About three o’clock the pony, who till then had been feebly dancing, went mad. He strained against his halter. His eyes were distended. Blood oozed from his mouth. His hide—a mass of wounds from Sunday’s torture—was clustered thick as fly paper with thirstily sucking flies.

Lindsay, who had never quite overcome his childhood terror of horses, put fear behind him and between them he and Forrest managed to pull the lunging animal away from the mules and restrain him by two halter ropes while Frank, the more savage brother, was sent for. Frank, cursing, tried to lead Dick back to the barn, but when they reached the pasture of long uncut prairie grass the pony sank down into it and kicked the air convulsively with all four feet. Then his heart broke and he died.

“If God gives me grace,” Lindsay pledged, alone with his diary, “some day I shall write his memorial—THE BRONCHO THAT WOULD NOT BE BROKEN.”

•••

NOTE In the decades following World War I, Nicholas Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931) was among the best-known poets in the US. His most popular poems include “General William Booth Enters Into Heaven” and “The Congo.” He traveled across the country, by walking, surviving in part by “singing” his poems and working as a short-term farm worker. Overcome by financial difficulties and depression, he took his own life on December 5, 1931, by drinking a bottle of lye. 

The aesthetic value of rhymes, alliteration, and other language patterns, not unlike those that Lindsay used, are discussed in a 30-minute video here (free, with online access).

a poodle doth spare us the odium of a law suit

Giovanna Garzoni (1648)

Above Giovanna Garzoni, Dog with Biscotti. Oil on canvas, 1648. Public domain.

•••

Abel G. Warshawky, The Memories of an American Impressionist. Kent State University Press, 1918, pp. 131—

An amusing story was told me in this connection by Robert Logan [1875-1942], the American etcher. A wealthy maiden lady of Boston had commissioned a local painter to do her portrait, and when it was finished had indignantly refused to take it on the grounds that the portrait was unrecognizable. Why even her pet poodle, she exclaimed, the loving companion of all her hours, had failed to recognize his mistress in the picture, which, as a matter of fact, was both an excellent painting and a first-rate likeness. Not wishing to risk the publicity and odium of a law suit to recover his fee, the portraitist in his dilemma turned for advice to a distinguished painter of his acquaintance, who also happened to know the recalcitrant lady. The latter in due course received a letter from the portrait painter, informing her that he had effected certain subtle changes in her picture and that if she would come to see it in his studio, she would, he felt sure, be highly satisfied with the result.

The invitation having been accepted, the friendly adviser appeared in the painter’s studio shortly before the hour appointed for the lady’s visit, bringing with him a piece of fresh bacon, which he proceeded to rub over the features of the portrait. When the lady arrived, bringing her poodle with her, she found the distinguished artist admiring her portrait and congratulating his colleague on the excellent resemblance he had obtained. To these eulogies the lady replied dryly that the portrait did not please her, and that even “darling Fido” did not recognize his mistress. “But, dear Madam,” insisted her friend, “are’t you aware that dogs, especially poodles, are notoriously shortsighted? Hold the little darling close to the picture, and then see if he does not recognize you.” Held close to the canvas, Fido, who sniffed the delicious aroma of bacon grease, made frantic efforts to kiss the painted image of his mistress, succeeding in applying several licks to her mouth, eyes, and nose. “See, Madam,” remarked the painter, “how the dog recognizes and adores your likeness.” Needless to say, the lady was won over to admiration and the portrait was paid for.

inoculated bodies, the stench of sick horses

Marcel Ponty, travel poster (c1925)

Maurice Browne, Too Late to Lament: An autobiography. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1956, pp. 50-51. This is his eyewitness description of what it was like to be a British soldier aboard a troop ship, sailing to South Africa, during the Boer War in 1899. If this isn’t vivid enough, imagine later experiences of American soldiers on World War I troop ships, as they were being transported to France (c1918), stricken by mal de mer (seasickness) and the equivalent then of COVID-19, called Spanish flu—

A rolling, pitching ship; packed hammocks; beasts held upright by the sides of their narrow stalls; the stench of horses sick at both ends; on decks slippery with fifith, vomiting men leading voiding horses; a beast falling, a broken leg, a shot: another carcass heaved overboard; aching bodies, inoculated for typhoid, strewn about the deck; hard-bitten faces at poker round a barrel: “Keep out of this, young Browne—it’s no game for children”; the stillness of tropic seas; long glamorous days; endless blue; uproar amid endless hush.

Stendhal Meets Rossini / Who Crows for You?

Above Bantam, comic shadow caricature by British artist Charles Henry Bennett, Victorian illustrator.

•••

Stendhal (Marie Henri Beyle), author of The Red and the Black, describing an incident in a visit to Italy in 1817—

We halted in Terracina, and there…we were invited to take supper with a party of travellers newly arrived out of Naples. Gathered about the table, I observed some seven or eight persons, amongst whom, in particular, my eyes lighted upon a fair-haired young man, of some five or six-and-twenty years of age, astonishingly handsome in spite of a slight touch of baldness. I pressed him for news of Naples, and in particular, of music in that city: he answered my curiosity with answers that were clear-cut, brilliant and humorous. I enquired of him whether, when I reach Naples, I might still hope to see [Gioachino] Rossini’s Otello. I pursued the topic, asserting that, in my opinion, Rossini was the bright hope of the Italian school; that he was the only living composer who had true genius as his birthright. At this point I noticed that my man seemed faintly embarrassed, while his companions were grinning openly. To cut a long story short, this was Rossini.

the elephant has a wrinkled moth-proof hide

Above A construction pattern for making a two-person elephant costume, from Albert Neely Hall, The Boy Craftsman: Practical and Profitable Ideas for a Boy's Leisure Hours. Boston: Lothrop, Lee and Shepard, 1905.

•••

Ogden Nash, "The Elephant," one of a series of comical animal poems written to accompany Camille Saint-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals . NY: Columbia Masterworks, 1949—

Elephants are useful friends,

Equipped with handles at both ends.

They have a wrinkled moth-proof hide.

Their teeth are upside down, outside. 

If you think the elephant preposterous,

You've probably never seen a rhinosterous.

•••

VIDEO LINKS

Nature, Art, and Camouflage  

Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage

 Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage

 Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage

a cart, a ball, and two boxes of wooden bricks

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Above Roy R. Behrens, Cavern (© 2021). Digital montage.

•••

John Ruskin (Victorian-era writer and art critic), Prataerita [Of Past Things], 1899—

…I was never permitted for an instant [as a child] to hope, or even imagine, the possession of such things as one saw in toy shops. I had a bunch of keys to play with, as long as I was capable only of pleasure in which glittered and jingled; as I grew older, I had a cart, and a ball; and when I was five or six years old, two boxes of well-cut wooden bricks.

With these modest, but, I still think, entirely sufficient possessions, and being always summarily whipped if I cried, did not do as I was bid, or tumbled on the stairs, I soon attained serene and secure methods of life and motion; and could pass my days contently in tracing the squares and comparing the colors of my carpet; examining the knots in the wood of the floor, or counting the bricks in the opposite houses; with rapturous intervals of excitement during the fillling of the water cart, through its leathern pipe, from the dripping iron post at the pavement edge; or the still more admirable proceedings of the turncock, when he turned and turned until a fountain sprang up in the middle of the street. But the carpet, and what patterns I could find in the bed covers, dresses, or wallpapers to be examined, were my chief resources, and my attention to the particulars in these was soon so accurate that, when at three and a half I was taken to have my portrait painted by Mr. [James] Northcote, I had not been ten minutes alone with him before I asked him why there were holes in his carpet.

alphabestiary / the moose found in his pajamas

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Above Roy R. Behrens, Alphabestiary (© 2021). Digital montage.

•••

H.L. Mencken, in The American Mercury, March 1925—

The [Ku Klux] Klan is actually as thoroughly American as Rotary or the Moose. Its childish mummery is American, its highfalutin bombast is American, and its fundamental philosophy is American. The very essence of Americanism is the doctrine that the other fellow, if he happens to be a minority, has absolutely no rights—that enough is done for him when he is allowed to live at all.