The Art and Craft of Natural Dyeing: Traditional Recipes for Modern Use (review)

covers the geography between San Francisco and the hills of east Kentucky (he juxtaposes San Francisco and east Kentucky in "DiMaggio Smiles") is characteristically American: we traverse great distances, both literally and imaginatively , creating in our experience and in our artistic renderings of our experience, what might be termed "American space." (Europeans are apt to observe that, in contrast to Americans, they think a one-hundred-year-old house is modern but a hundred miles is a great distance, while we Americans think a one-hundred -year-old house is old and a hundred miles is no distance at all.) Allen's movement through space is both literal and a metaphor for a movement in time. To go forward, he goes "backward into those hills" of east Kentucky , his home, "to dig at memories/ pressed hard/ like coal seams between rock" ("Backward Into Those Hills"). In "The Dead," "Pick Your Own Strawberries ," "Reaching For Rose" (where "Too many years have piled their memories/ Like fallen leaves waiting to be raked and burned") Allen retrieves memories with such vividness and immediacy that past and present are momentarily confushed . Crossing Catawba Creek in "Pick Your Own Strawberries," remembering how his grandfather, riding with him years ago, objected to music on the car radio, he reaches "for the dial that is not turned on." There are many memories, preserved like "dragonfly wings in coal" ("Appalachia Revisited"). But equally memorable are images of things in motion: "the lizard blink of broken white lines" on the highway in "South of Toledo"; the "morning s silver/fishtailing off commuters' windshields/ along Idaho Street's cracked concrete" in "Potrero Hill"; or, "Wind-pressed around the wiper arm,/ the green wing of a moth/ [that] flutters like a ripped sail" ("The Windcarver"). The image of the terrapin on the road in the opening and closing poems, "And I Thought of Linda," and "The Roads I Travel," neatly focuses this collection, thematically and imagistically. The book's attractive design by Roy Zarucchi is enhanced by Carolyn Page's cover and other artwork by Page and Ann Carol Croom. The Roads I Travel is a judicious selection of M. Ray Allen's work and a welcome addition to the series of chapbooks published by Nightshade Press. -Jim Wayne Miller Liles, J.N. The Art and Craft ofNatural Dyeing: Traditional Recipesfor Modern Use. The University of Tennessee Press. Nashville, Tennessee, 1990. Cloth, $39.95; Paper, $19.95. What do we like about this book? Everything! It is a superb book—the information, the history, the personal quality, the organization, the size, and the price. What else can we do? Mr. Liles has done a tremendous amount of research for this book, more than usual for a book of this type. In the Preface he talks about a celebration of the colors, and the photographs in the book certainly attest to that. The photos are clear; they show the depth as well as the true colors. Most dye books refer almost exclusively to the fibers and extracting the dyes, and neglect the true colors. Liles' appreciation of, his enjoyment in, and his understanding of the art and craft of dyeing comes through on every page. The inclusion of modern uses in his fabrics and clothing items adds a great deal to the use as well as the enjoyment of this book. He has stayed true to his title, especially his subtitle! We thank Mr. Liles for giving us this book. We recommend it for anyone who is interested in natural dyeing, novice or master. If we had room on the shelf for just one dye book, this would be it,. —Jerry and Eleanor Workman 69 ...