Vernal Equinox

May we embrace the soft spirit of the day's sharing of the light and the dark

Lettering with Pentel brush pen on natural baking parchment combined with an image of a magnolia blossom in photoshop

Poetry Month-Spring Slat Book

Here's a slat book with a spring acrostic poem. It's one of the projects in my Homes for Poems pdf ($5. for download in my etsy shop). There are eight projects, each for a different kind of poem. I created this material as part of my Making Books With Children series, but it works for adults as well.

Homes for Poems on etsy

Studio Sunday-Spring Token

Spring!

May the balance of light at the equinox

bring us tranquility and calm

Effloresce

Yesterday's word from dictionary.com was effloresce: to burst into bloom; blossom. What a perfect word to welcome in the May. I hope to post a flower image for each day of May. Spring has been a long time coming—celebration feels necessary.

Poetry Month-Bloodroot

Last year was the first year of the bloodroot plant in the front garden. The flower came and went without my notice so I have been on the alert. Yesterday I saw a bud and today one of the flowers is in full bloom. My excitement led me to look for a poem about bloodroot. Here is one by Elaine Goodale Eastman which was included in her book, All Round the Year: Verses from Sky Farm, which was published in 1881.

Not pressing close on crowded ways,
Not shrinking back from any eye,
But calm beneath the open sky,
And slow to meet our curious gaze:

In April’s hour of virgin fame
The bloodroot gives her blossom birth,
And trusts within the kindly earth
The hidden sources of her shame.

Along the teeming meadow-side,
Hard by the river-banks are seen
Her close-veined sheaths of tender green,
With generous frankness opening wide.

When lo! the secret of an hour
By throbbing April warmth unsealed,
In sudden splendor stands revealed
The glowing whiteness of the flower:

A pure large flower of simple mold,
And touched with soft peculiar bloom,
Its petals faint with strange perfume,
And in their midst a disk of gold!

O bloodroot! in thy tingling veins
The sap of life runs cold and clear;
I break thy shining stemn, and fear
No conscious guilt, no lasting stains.

I brand with shame thy peerless brow,
Whose golden coronet is riven,
And cast to all the winds of heaven
Thy drifts of many-petaled snow!

Yet, ere the reckless deed appears,
Thy truth compels my heart’s disguise,
Thy beauty pains my mortal eyes,
Thy pulse-beats hammer in my ears.

I seem myself the panting earth,
The Spring within be newly born;
I feel thee from my breast uptorn --
I grapple with a larger birth.

My narrow senses downward hurled,
In upper air I blindly grope --
I strive to reach a living hope,
And blossom in the other world!

Go, struggles deep, and visions wild,
From heart and brain I set you free;
Thro’ human need I still must see
And grasp the human undefiled.

Go, wondrous flower --thy soul is mine--
My gazing cannot do thee wrong’
To me the conscious pangs belong!
To me, at last, the right divine!


Elaine Goodale Eastman led a fascinating life. You can read it on wikipedia.

If you're interested in learning more about the bloodroot plant, I suggest Spring Wildflowers of the Northeast by Carol Gracie.

Book Arts Tuesday-A Book for Almost Spring

It's almost-spring. The days are longer, the sun is stronger but there's still snow on the ground here and I am itching for flowers and green. Here's a little book to tide us through—a stick and elastic book made with a sprig of plastic flowers, 2 sheets of used copy paper folded in half the long way with the writing on the inside and then in half again. I collected a few garden quotes and did the writing with colored pencil.

Studio Sunday—The Day After a Workshop

Here's the studio table the day after my book project at the craft table at the Revels Spring Sing in Watertown. Yesterday was great fun making books with the kids while listening to all the voices joined together to welcome in the spring. Tony Barrand, a longtime favorite of mine, was the guest artist. Now to put everything back in its place.

At the Revels Spring Sing: