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From his vantage point as a garden designer and writer based in
Kyoto, Marc Peter Keane examines the world around him and delivers
astonishing insights through an array of narratives. How the names
of gardens reveal their essential meaning. A new definition of what
art is. What trees are really made of. The true meaning of the
enigmatic torii gate found at Shinto shrines. Why we give flowers
as gifts. The essential, underlying unity of the world.
"The undisputed American master of Japanese garden scholars."--New
York Times, Dominique Browning Matching some 400 color photographs
to brief, informed observations, renowned garden designer Marc
Peter Keane walks us through 100 Japanese gardens, stopping along
the way to note essential elements of design, technique, and
culture. Covering everything from large-scale aspects of space and
balance to subtle elements that are often overlooked, this is an
innovative, stunningly visual guide for planning and inspiration.
Landscape architect and author Marc Peter Keane lived in Kyoto,
Japan, for nearly 20 years and specializes in Japanese garden
design. He lives in Ithaca, New York.
The garden as a poem. Not simply a beautiful design to be
appreciated by looking, but a living poem that can actually be
read. That is the way gardens were thought of in Japan during the
Heian period (794-1185). In that ancient society, a detailed
understanding of poetry was an essential part of life for people in
the literate classes. Poetic anthologies were learned by heart and
all manner of communications either included poems or were
interwoven with references to poetry. A central aspect of
Heian-period poetry was that it employed images of nature as
symbols of human emotions. A lonely pine tree on a windswept, rocky
seashore evoked the bitter sadness of someone waiting for their
lover. A scene of cut reeds, fallen and scattered this way and
that, was a standard epithet to express unsettled, scattered
emotions. When gardens were built, many of those same elements of
nature - pines and reeds and so many more - were also incorporated
into the designs. When gardens were viewed, they were understood
not simply as objects of visual beauty, but as being filled with
allegorical meanings drawn from poetry. These visual cues triggered
in the minds of people in the garden the memory of poems they knew,
and acted as catalysts in the creation of new ones. The word for
poem, "uta," was the same as that for song, and poems at that time
were often sung or chanted, rather than spoken. In this way, the
poetic elements were like songs in the garden. The author, Marc
Peter Keane, is well-known both as a garden designer and writer.
Having lived 18 years in Kyoto, Japan, he brings ample first hand
knowledge to the subject. "Songs in the Garden" not only describes
the nature of gardens in Japan 1000 years ago, but also suggests a
new paradigm for understanding what gardens can mean to us today.
Marc Peter Keane, in his remarkable set of meditative explorations,
Dear Cloud, asks what if we had the ability to act on our inner
urge to experience life as another person, not just hypothetically,
but to actually live their lives - to be that lonely man whose
chance meeting in the high-desert changes his life forever, or the
new-born babe amazed at its still unfathomed world? And not just
other people, but to intimately experience the unique viewpoints of
other forms of life on this planet - an ancient cedar struck by
lightning, a cheetah out for blood. And going even further, to
delve into the spirit of place and occupy the inanimate - a tide
pool, the mirror surface of a pond. Mixing a devoted naturalist's
awe with what seems almost shamanic insight, seasoned with inspired
and delightfully wry big-picture matter-of-factness, Dear Cloud
comprises fascinatingly detailed observations and unexpected
realizations about the world we live in. These thoughts take the
form of letters sent home by a shape-changing protagonist who slips
seamlessly between various identities, experiencing both the
profound physical solitariness of every existence, and
paradoxically, their absolute interconnectedness.
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