From: Bcaryn
Sent: Thursday, May 12, 2011 8:21 AM
To: Bob Winters
Subject: the forest for the trees
Good morning, Bob,
I hope this email finds you well. After all, the world didn’t end yesterday (that’s not till the 21st, right?)
I have been so busy lately. All good things, mind you. But things are colliding, and I wonder if I could summon your assistance. In fact, I am offering you an opportunity for fame (not, alas, fortune). A collaborative, exhibitory opportunity.
Here’s the scoop. There is a call to artists (a while back, actually, but with so much going on, I forgot till the other day) to put a piece in a show at the museum, with the theme of our PNW forests. The piece’s dimensions can be no wider than 48″. My smallest on hand foresty painting is 57″, so I had to QUICK come up with something. The piece below is my something, and it is very, very little. 2″ high, in fact. I am still working on it, but I also need an artist statement of some sort. I thought, a haiku? Why not something to go with the piece, literally (or literary), instead of a traditional artist statement?
Given that this is due on Sunday, I am hoping you can use your brilliant word-smithy of a mind to come up with a haiku, for which you will be quotably noted and compensated with many thanks….something about the bigness of the forest, the smallness of the piece..I can put it in my pocket and bring it to show you if you say yes (oh please save me and say yes!!)
There are no guidelines for this haiku contest, for which you are the only contestant. Willing to take on the challenge?
Caryn
On May 12, 2011, at 9:02 AM, “Bob Winters” wrote:
Well heck. I’m no good at instant haiku, and like you I’m way overbooked right now. But your picture puts me in mind of a little haiku by the 19th c. Japanese poet Masaoka Shiki: (no, this isn’t from memory–I had to find it again in Harold Henderson’s old book on haiku)
Inazuma / ya / mori-no / sukima / ni / mizu / wo / mitari
Henderson translates as:
A lightning flash:
between the forest trees
I have seen water
What do you think?
Bob Winters
On May 12, 2011, at 9:08 AM, “Caryn Friedlander” wrote:
You’re good. Only problem is, lightning is rather a rarity in this (pardon the expression) neck of the woods. Could you appropriate that haiku and tweak it (or tweet it)?
I am going to try to acquire 7 more tiles and have a total of thirteen (you know where this is going…) what you are looking at are actually 4 two x two” tiles sitting together….
How about thirteen ways of looking at four tiles?
Something about a forest in a pocket?
Am I helping?
Caryn
On May 13, 2011, at 8:52 AM, “Bob Winters” wrote:
Here is the haiku
I declined to write for you.
How simple is that?
On May 13, 2011, at 2:23 PM, “Caryn Friedlander” wrote:
I checked my e-mail
To see if you had written.
You did!…..or did you?