Hand-Lettered Illustrations of Emily Dickinson’s Poetry

“Tell all the Truth but tell it slant . . .The Truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind”

As a lover of literature-inspired art and a longtime admirer of San Diego artist David Clemesha’s whimsical hand-lettered illustrations of classic nursery rhymes, I was utterly delighted to see Clemesha extend his signature style to literature for grown-ups, turning to the poetry of recent Literary Jukebox favorites Emily Dickinson, William Blake, and T. S. Eliot. Here are Clemesha’s takes on Dickinson, based on texts from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson.

The Soul has Bandaged moments –
When too appalled to stir –
She feels some ghastly Fright come up
And stop to look at her –

Salute her — with long fingers –
Caress her freezing hair –
Sip, Goblin, from the very lips
The Lover — hovered — o’er –
Unworthy, that a thought so mean
Accost a Theme — so — fair –

The soul has moments of Escape –
When bursting all the doors –
She dances like a Bomb, abroad,
And swings upon the Hours,

As do the Bee — delirious borne –
Long Dungeoned from his Rose –
Touch Liberty — then know no more,
But Noon, and Paradise –

The Soul’s retaken moments –
When, Felon led along,
With shackles on the plumed feet,
And staples, in the Song,

The Horror welcomes her, again,
These, are not brayed of Tongue –

The Railway Train

I like to see it lap the Miles -
And lick the Valleys up –
And stop to feed itself at Tanks –
And then — prodigious step

Around a Pile of Mountains –
And supercilious peer
In Shanties — by the sides of Roads –
And then a Quarry pare

To fit its sides
Complaining all the while
In horrid — hooting stanza –
Then chase itself down Hill –

And neigh like Boanerges –
Then — punctual as a Star
Stop — docile and omnipotent
At its own stable door –

The sky is low, the clouds are mean,
A travelling flake of snow
Across a barn or through a rut
Debates if it will go.

A narrow wind complains all day
How some one treated him;
Nature, like us, is sometimes caught
Without her diadem.

Did the harebell loose her girdle
To the lover bee,
Would the bee the harebell hallow
Much as formerly?

Did the paradise, persuaded,
Yield her moat of pearl,
Would the Eden be Eden,
Or the earl an earl?

To fight aloud is very brave,
But gallanter, I know,
Who charge within the bosom,
The cavalry of woe.

Who win, and nations do not see, 5
Who fall, and none observe,
Whose dying eyes no country
Regards with patriot love.

We trust, in plumed procession,
For such the angels go,
Rank after rank, with even feet
And uniforms of snow.

I did not reach Thee
But my feet slip nearer every day
Three Rivers and a Hill to cross
One Desert and a Sea
I shall not count the journey one
When I am telling thee.

Two deserts, but the Year is cold
So that will help the sand
One desert crossed-
The second one
Will feel as cool as land
Sahara is too little price
To pay for thy Right hand.

The Sea comes last — Step merry, feet,
So short we have to go —
To play together we are prone,
But we must labor now,
The last shall be the lightest load
That we have had to draw.

The Sun goes crooked —
That is Night
Before he makes the bend.
We must have passed the Middle Sea-
Almost we wish the End
Were further off —
Too great it seems
So near the Whole to stand.

We step like Plush,
We stand like snow,
The waters murmur new.
Three rivers and the Hill are passed —
Two deserts and the sea!
Now Death usurps my Premium
And gets the look at Thee.

God made a little gentian;
It tired to be a rose
And failed, and all the summer laughed.
But just before the snows
There came a purple creature
That ravished all the hill;
And summer hid her forehead,
And mockery was still.
The frosts were her condition;
The Tyrian would not come
Until the North evoked it.
‘Creator! shall I bloom?’

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant –
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind –

Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.

Elegantissima: The Design and Typography of Louise Fili

Three decades of typographic magic, graphic elegance, and combinatorial creativity.

For more than three decades, graphic designer Louise Fili* has been producing some of the most consistently exquisite typography, frequently hand-drawn and building upon thoughtfully curated vintage sources. In her decade as art director for Pantheon Books, she created nearly two thousand book jackets, each with remarkable attention to detail. Since 1989, she has expanded and extended her singular lens to restaurant menus and food packaging through her namesake design studio. The new monograph Elegantissima: The Design and Typography of Louise Fili (public library) offers, for the first time, a sweeping look at Fili’s work and the philosophy behind it.

But Fili’s greatest gift is perhaps the extraordinary ability to seek out vintage gems — and to do so with great taste — which she then reimagines and combines into entirely new designs that aren’t mere homage to the past but, rather, an entirely original visual language with an entirely original point of view.

In the foreword, the inimitable Steven Heller observes Fili’s power of combinatorial creativity, something another design hero, Paula Scher, has previously spoken to:

What Louise does instead is build upon things passé to enliven her contemporary graphic statements — even when the result has vintage resonance.

Almost every example in this book can be unpacked to discover its influences and inspirations (and herein are detailed case studies). However, the manner in which these component parts are reassembled is uniquely Louise’s. It is all too easy to add pre-cooked ingredients from archival sources, but to then transform them into designs that are at once familiar and entirely novel — well, that takes extreme discipline.

For a charming aside, here’s a heart-warming anecdote about Heller and Fili’s relationship:

Dear Louise,

I just wanted to tell you that I think your book and book jacket designs for Pantheon are excellent Consistently so.

Every time I am struck by a book in our bookroom or on the in-coming table it is something you’ve been responsible for.

Best regards,

[signed] Steve Heller

On March 9, 1982, when I was art director of the New York Times Book Review, I sent the grammatically challenged note above to Louise Fili, whom I had never met and, in fact, had never laid eyes on before. A little more than a year later we were married.

This intimate disclosure is essential, lest anyone reading this foreword to Louise’s monograph presume I lack critical objectivity. Strictly speaking, at the time I wrote the note I was a genuinely objective fan of Louise’s typographic elegance, visual flair, and conceptual ingenuity, as well as her keen expertise with illustration — an area I knew something about.

Appropriately lavish and stunning, Elegantissima is the perfect showcase of Fili’s intricate, arresting, and always elegant work.

* …who looks strikingly like Anaïs Nin

Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.

Age of Power and Wonder: Vintage Science Infographics from 1930s Cigarette Cards

What metal diver suits have to do with electricity generation and the sound spectrum.

Vintage visions of the future of technology abound, and while some futurists’ predictions have been strikingly right, most of them remain delightfully ludicrous. Indeed, any trip in the time machine of science and technology is inevitably accompanied by equal measures of amusement at our past misguidedness, marvel at how far we’ve come, and anxiety about how misguided we ourselves may seem in the future. In the first half of the 20th century, such predictions were a form of popular entertainment and even appeared as collectible cards that came with food and tobacco products.

The New York Public Library has digitized a large collection of such cigarette cards, including a Max Cigarettes series from 1935-1938 titled Age of Power and Wonder — a set of 250 cards predicting advances in science and technology and exploring curious aspects of the era’s existing inventions. Also included in the series were a number of scientific and quasi-scientific infographics, gathered here for your viewing pleasure.

No. 20. THE SPECTRUM.

Ordinary white light is made up of a number of colours which, put together, produce 'white'. The picture shows the first position occupied by infra-red light which has a wave length too long to be visible by the human eye. Immediately above the infra-red comes visible red, and then orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Above the violet is the ultra-violet, the health-giving , invisible, high-frequency rays which have been proven so vital to life. Very much higher up come X-rays and Gamma-rays.

(Complement this with Goethe’s theory of the color spectrum and human emotion.)

No. 72. THE SPECTRUM OF SOUND.

The source of sound is always a body in a state of more or less rapid vibration. The number of vibrations (cycles) per second can be measured and so sounds classified according to their cycle values. Thus, like light, sound is arranged in a kind of 'spectrum'; each sound having a wave-length. Thus, if the frequency of a note be 200 to a second, its wavelength is 1-200 units.

No. 209. RELATIVE SPEEDS.

All movement is relative, not absolute. Two cars moving side by side along a road at 60 miles per hour, relative to the road, are stationary in relation to each other. A car is traveling on the road at 60 m.p.h., beside it on the rail a train is traveling at 100 m.p.h. In the air above them a plane is traveling at 200 m.p.h. All the speeds quoted are relative to the surface of the earth. In relation to the train, the aircraft is only doing 100 m.p.h., just as the train is only doing 40 m.p.h. in relation to the car*.

No. 55. IN THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA.

Divers not equipped with any kind of apparatus at all become uncomfortable and run considerable danger if they go beyond 50 feet. Diving to such depths for a living is extremely trying. It shortens life, causes various diseases of the heart and blood, and may result in sudden and painful death. In an ordinary diving suit depths of 150 feet may be reached, but beyond that there is a danger that pressure upon the body would result in injury and death. In the 'Tritonia' all-metal suit, twenty times this depth is quite feasible.

No. 151. PETROL FROM COAL.

Fluid fuel has many advantages over solid fuel; it is easier to handle, can be fed to the fire or furnace without the need for stokers, and it is far cleaner. Moreover, you cannot use coal in the engines of motor cars or aircraft. The supplies of mineral oil which yield petrol are rapidly becoming exhausted. Petrol is being extracted from coal by the hydro-generation process -- five tons of coal yielding one ton of petrol. The other four tons are not wasted but produce valuable raw materials and by-products.

No. 100. SHOWING LOSS OF ELECTRIC POWER IN TRANSIT.

The imperfect conductivity of available materials results in great loss of power of current during transit over long distances. The loss occurs even in the cable, which puts up a slight resistance to current. Metals at temperature near -273ºC. have almost perfect conductivity. A method of reproducing this condition of frozen metals might save millions sterling every year.

No. 78. IMPORTANCE OF TIDAL WAVES.

The importance of the work done in forecasting tidal levels by the 'Brass Brain' in Washington is demonstrated in a simple fashion in this picture. Note how a deep draught ocean-going ship can safely pass at high tide and can still do so if low tide levels were a quarter again as high above the sea-bank. Knowing the exact time and level of ebb is vital.

For a bout of excruciating irony, card number 6 in the series examined advances in cancer treatment:

No. 6. WAR ON CANCER

When scientists first began to create synthetic radio-activity, to make substitutes for radium, by bombarding certain atoms with millions of electron-volts, someone suggested, 'Why make radium to cure cancer? Use the bombarding atoms direct'. This suggestion was adopted by the use of very high voltage X-rays. Many successful experiments have been made.

* Raise your hand if the math here makes you raise an eyebrow.

Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.