The Land on the Tip of a Hair: Poems in Wood
Hui-Ming, Wang. The Land on the Tip of a Hair: Poems in Wood. Barre Publishers, 1972. Softbound. A unique collection of 'poems in wood' designed and hand carved by woodblock artist Hui-Ming and named after a line from a Robert Bly translation of a treatise on Hwa Yen Buddhism by Garma C. C. Chang, which reads, 'The infinite lands that no one can describe / Gather on the tip of one of Buddha's hairs / They don't nudge each other nor feel crowded and the tip of the hair does not grow larger / The lands all remain just as they were before.' Hui-Ming, who often worked with Leonard Baskin's legendary Gehenna Press, here collaborated with poets ranging from Charles Simic to William Stafford to James Tate to produce this lovely quarto-format journey through these microcosmic borderlands, negotiating between text and image, and between expressiveness and formality: while printed with generous margins and in the classic fine-press pairing of black and red, the compositions are chock full of whimsical nods to the then-blossoming counterculture.
