Illustrations and Ephemera for Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin Finger Puppets, originally uploaded by abbey*christine.

I recently had the chance to look at several nineteenth-century illustrated editions of Uncle Tom's Cabin, responses to the novel, and children's books of verse and tales based on the novel. The amount of material generated already as the installments of Stowe's novel were appearing in The National Era is astounding. If you think that the gadget madness started with Lucas's Star Wars, you need a sentimental trip to the sentimental edge of the nineteenth century.

I post here a few highlights from a random web image search.

Images, from left, with links to original sites: [1] [2] [3] Eliza's escape across the frozen Ohio river; [4] Dinah holding little Eva; [5] [6] Eva and Topsy; [7] Eva with Tom

So sitzen Sie richtig

Sigmar Polke, This Is How You Sit Correctly (After Goya)

This is one of my favorite paintings (and poems). Back in the day, before April turned from Poetry Month into tax month, I would linger over my favorite art and read poems waiting for something (or nothing) to happen.

Not to make it sound too idyllic, I was often bored.

There is a picture of me, though, leafing through an Egon Schiele album, some seven years ago. It was taken in a darkish pub on a hot August day, one of the most surprisingly surprising days when my sandals fell apart and I walked barefoot through the main streets of Poznań.

For years I remembered that a couple of pictures were taken on that occasion but had never seen them. Until Gryzmak dug them up in a box last Christmas. Between the summer we first met and our meeting six years later they had been waiting among other photographs and papers. Objects can be patient like I never can.

I envy that kind of poise as I fill out my forms and wait for magnolias to kick into full bloom. Now they are teasing me, on the verge of opening but still keeping to themselves.

What's admitted by the door can be kept
by the mind. Can be trapped
in a list. Can be lifted

by the tail and tenderly placed
where it will no longer be
in the way. It was never easy.

(from Mary Jo Bang, "This Is How You Sit Correctly (After Goya)")

Sometimes it's hard to make connections and the concluding sentence chooses to imitate the spring.