Tag Archives: 20th Century

1987: A Book Comes from the Sky

Posted on May 16, 2017 by corvusfugit

Xu Bing’s A Book from the Sky (1987) is a 604-page volume in the style of the Song and Ming dynasties—but it contains no actual Chinese characters; instead, the symbols—4,000 of them—are “meaningless glyphs designed to resemble traditional Chinese characters.” … Continue reading →

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1970: A Crow Builds a Nest

Posted on May 16, 2017 by corvusfugit

I liked these descriptions of nests from Richard Headstrom’s Complete Field Guide to Nests in the United States (1970). The book contains a few photographs, but largely depends on written descriptions of nests for identification. The description of the crow’s … Continue reading →

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1907: It Rains in Ireland

Posted on May 15, 2017 by corvusfugit

Irish rain of the summer and autumn is a kind of damp poem. It is humid fragrance, and it has a way of stealing into your life which disarms anger. It is a soft, apologetic, modest kind of rain, as … Continue reading →

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1933: Osip Mandlestam Writes his Last Poem

Posted on May 12, 2017 by corvusfugit

And I was alive in the blizzard of the blossoming pear And I was alive in the blizzard of the blossoming pear, Myself I stood in the storm of the bird-cherry tree. It was all leaflife and starshower, unerring, self-shattering … Continue reading →

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