Cathay: Poems after Li Po | Limited Editions Club

Cathay: Poems after Li Po ~ Ezra Pound ~ Color woodcut prints by Francesco Clemente

The jewelled steps are already quite white with dew,
It is so late that the dew soaks my gauze stockings,
And I let down the crystal curtain
And watch the moon through the clear autumn.

“Il Miglior Fabbro” is how T. S. Eliot termed Ezra Pound –“the best craftsman.” This volume is all the more remarkable for the fact that Pound knew no Chinese. Yet these translations of eighteen medieval poems, mainly by Li Po (A.D. 70I-762), are acknowledged masterpieces. Pound worked from notes by Ernest Fenollosa, a great American scholar of Oriental literature and art. These notes Pound turned to poetry, imbued with the scent and flavor of their Chinese originals.

Italian‑born artist Francesco Clemente, as well, feels the magnetic pull of the East. There have been scores of books and articles by and about Clemente; and exhibitions of his art all over the world, including a large 1990 show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. As the organizer of the Philadelphia exhibit wrote, Clemente’s art “resonates between intensities of the cerebral and the sensual.” Especially here, in these seven exquisite color woodcuts.

One Volume, 8 x 12 inches
Seven color woodcuts by Francesco Clemente
Edition limited to three hundred numbered copies
Each signed by Francesco Clemente

Each color of Clemente’s seven illustrations has each been cut into wood blocks. These, in turn, were printed on Ogawashi paper from Japan. The text is printed on the same paper, on one side only, with each page carefully folded over by hand so that the blank sides remain invisible. The volume is bound in pale blue Japanese linen. 1993. $ 1,600

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