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Stitching Porcelain: Poetry
Stitching Porcelain , Deborah Larsen's first book of poetry, is a narrative-lyric sequence based on the life of Matteo Ricci, the resourceful Jesuit who entered China in 1583 and stayed for a quarter century. Pondering cultural accommodation as well as faith, many of the poems center on actual Ricci's dressing as a Buddhist; his awe-inspiring map (with China shrewdly centered); his prostration before an empty Dragon Throne. Other events the poet imagined. (In the title room, Ricci addresses a love lyric to "Your porcelain is so fine, so thin,/a brass wire can repair it . . . /Once I saw you beneath the bamboo/ . . . bent back/from the world, stitching porcelain.") With a felicity rare in a debut volume, Larsen's opalescent poetry works in perfect counterpoint to the strange and brilliant Ricci.
61 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1991
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July 17, 2021
“O Lord, where are you! Out giving the hawk advice?
Consider him.
He will lose fistfuls of hair at Attock-on-Indus.
He will retch with the swaying of camels.
He will not gauge the third minor cleft before the Pass of Parwan,
The labyrinths of his ears will deceive him.
He will walk backwards when he hears a flute and a lyre,
He will wander two days among the pistachio bushes.
O Lord, where are you! Out feeding squab?”
- from New Litany for the Disguided Brother Bendedtto de Gois as He Begins the Overland Journey to Cathay, 1603, p. 31
Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) was a Jesuit missionary, and the first westerner to enter the Forbidden City, though he was denied an audience with the Wanli Emperor. This slim book of poetry interweaves his story with echoes of Hopkins and haiku; a marginal outline guides the reader through the story’s speakers; lovely.
When I first read this in 1993 it did not make much of an impression on me, and I don’t think I progressed much beyond the first three poems. I enjoyed it greatly in 2008, so either the poems have matured or I have.
Consider him.
He will lose fistfuls of hair at Attock-on-Indus.
He will retch with the swaying of camels.
He will not gauge the third minor cleft before the Pass of Parwan,
The labyrinths of his ears will deceive him.
He will walk backwards when he hears a flute and a lyre,
He will wander two days among the pistachio bushes.
O Lord, where are you! Out feeding squab?”
- from New Litany for the Disguided Brother Bendedtto de Gois as He Begins the Overland Journey to Cathay, 1603, p. 31
Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) was a Jesuit missionary, and the first westerner to enter the Forbidden City, though he was denied an audience with the Wanli Emperor. This slim book of poetry interweaves his story with echoes of Hopkins and haiku; a marginal outline guides the reader through the story’s speakers; lovely.
When I first read this in 1993 it did not make much of an impression on me, and I don’t think I progressed much beyond the first three poems. I enjoyed it greatly in 2008, so either the poems have matured or I have.
Displaying 1 of 1 review