Book of the Peony

“Gaspar Orozco’s extraordinary Book of the Peony blew me away by a storm of quiet flame and blackness and nothing everythingness. I am writing this from Pont-Aven, where I have come to write about colonies and gatherings of artists, before regaining (what an inapproprié word,) and suddenly this poetry hits me in the Breton chill with—I can’t say what—a dark blaze when I expected I have no idea what? I had been thinking ah, peony, like pensée, like a beloved and delicate pansy of thought, but this peony is nearer the chrysanthemum of Japanese writing from long ago. This remarkable poetry brings the long ago into nowness, if I can put it like that. It lights from far and also near, burning.” —Mary Ann Caws