Telling the story

I've decided to make Fridays my day for reprinting posts from the Myth & Moor archives. I have nine years of them after all -- having started this blog in 2008 -- so some of them may be unfamiliar to you, depending on when you joined us here. New posts will published Monday to Thursday (with Mondays, as always, dedicated to music); then Friday's archival post will relate to themes that have emerged during the week. The marvelous Le Guin poem excerpted below first appeared here in autumn 2014. It's a poem about women writers and storytellers, reprinted today with a little more art. Additional excerpts from the poem are tucked into the picture captions.

I see her walking
on a path through a pathless forest
or a maze, a labyrinth.
As she walks, she spins
and the fine threads fall behind her
following her way,
telling
where she is going,
telling
where she has gone.
Telling the story.
The line, the thread of voice,
the sentences saying the way.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

(from "The Writer On, and At, Her Work)

The magical art in this post is by painter and illustrator Toshiyuki Enoki. Born in Tokyo in 1961, he was trained in traditional Japanese painting, lacquer painting, and western painting techniques. Please go here to see more of his work.

The poem excerpted above, and in the picture captions, is from The Writer on Her Work, edited by Janet Sternberg (Virago Press, 1992); it also appears in Le Guin's collection  The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination (Shambhala, 2004). I recommend seeking it out to read in full. All rights to the text and art above are reserved by the author and artist.