This is the most recent book added to my culled library. I bought it just yesterday morning. The excitement is akin to that of a new box of 100 crayons!
To have a clearer look at the table of contents, please see the link below. (In addition to thoughts on individual colors, there are fascinating general remarks on optics, color perception, and helpful indices. Meanwhile, here is an Impressionistic taste of the interior.
Context for My Poem, “Polychrome”:
Yesterday, I took some valuable advice from a book I will spotlight before the end of the month on good bookstores. I allowed myself to not simply picked up the book I was after, but I allowed myself to browse our local independent bookstore, Content. There, at the very back of the store, on the bottom shelf, I saw the book spotlit today: The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair (Penquin Books, New York, 2016). Sat down to explore its structure and style. And, feeling very excited, brought it home.
So far, I have only read a tiny sliver of its pages but I am certain it will be a permanent resosurce. I have always felt that color is medicine. Too many cloudy days make me feel sick, and I think that full-spectrum light enhances health because it contains all possible color. Linquistically, this resource has great resonance because it showcases the names we have devised for different tints, shades, and hues. I have been enjoying the history of common-name colors and becoming acquainted with names antique or otherwise obscure to me previously. I have also been making mental note of the color names I perceive and use that are NOT here! I feel sure this will provide not only pleasure on first reading cover-to-cover but serve as a kind of color thesaurus for my work as a poet and writer. I think it will help me to be more precise, and it will probably also lead to new ideas for poems.
Case in point: Last night, I read about an ancient pigment called lead white–long-lasting and terribly toxic. I thought that might lead to a poem about poisons. Yet, this morning, I awoke thinking about the seemingly colorless, white or bleached buildings of the Mediteranean world, and how shocked I was to learn in an art history course in college that they were originally highly colored. The result is today’s poem.
Until tomorrow, LESLIE
