Book, The Ghost in the Underblows by Alfred Young Fisher

This is a Book. It was designed by Alvin Lustig. It is dated 1940 and we acquired it in 1993. Its medium is lithography in orange and black ink on off-white wove paper. It is a part of the Drawings, Prints, and Graphic Design department.

This object was donated by Tamar Cohen. It is credited Gift of Tamar Cohen and Dave Slatoff.

Its dimensions are

H x W: 23.9 x 31.5 cm (9 7/16 x 12 3/8 in.)

It is inscribed

Printed in black ink, left: Wondering whether life comes to the dead/From touching sacred death./I wish at times I could praise the beauty of thistles/Their full meed, but who can even record/The loveliness of cedars and music,/Or tell what catches his heart in a vise/When the fingering sea twangles all the cords in the brain?/So, whether westward I look or toward the dawn/Whether I consider the bones of prophets,/Whether I see the magnificent colors of heaven/or the quieter things, or whether/The subterranean orchestras play on;/It is no difference. Nor is it difference/To me where I sit, what I do, or even whom I love;/There is only the incapacity of my poor wit/And the dull drum of my heart in its forest./One thing I see, though. This is it: I am coming nearer/To what I am, out of myself and the pretension of others,/So that I shall finally be capable of hearing/Under the leaves a sound, and the clear/Whistling of little flutes, and the blowing noises/Of horns under the thorns on the rosebush./These I shall begin with at last. And should/There eventually come, when I see myself in the mirror,/The full symphony of greater things/Then I shall concentrate my disappearance to them/And my phosphorous bones will, be sure,/Be ready for the whole miracle of life./XXIV/Who are you, dog with a lolling tongue/And you slaverous, dripping bitch, to yell/And snap in the streets at the other animals,/Treading fellows and the sweaty chase/Down the alleys and meadows of the brain? Who are you?/The visions of the past rise and descend/Like mercury in thermometers, and the souls/270.

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