Gaspar Orozco’s extraordinary Book of the Peony blew me away by a storm of quiet flame and blackness and nothing everythingness. I am writing this from Pont-Aven, where I have come to write about colonies and gatherings of artists, before regaining (what an inapproprie word,) and suddenly this poetry hits me in the Breton chill with-I can’t say what-a dark blaze when I expected I have no idea what?
I had been thinking ah, peony, like pensee, like a beloved and delicate pansy of thought, but this peony is nearer the chrysanthemum of Japanese writing from long ago. This remarkable poetry brings the long ago into nowness, if I can put it like that. It lights from far and also near, burning. -Mary Ann Caws