The Hand We Are Dealt: a Poetic Guide to Playing Cards
by Lucas Grasha,
ASRA Scholar
Card 22 of The Mantegna
Deck: Urania, the Muse of
Astronomy.
Playing cards are familiar. You know their suits: diamonds,
hearts, spades and clubs, in a deck of 52. Blackjack, Gin and
Poker are played with these cards—but do you know the
cards’ origins?
Though unsuspected, the deck of 52 abases a deep and
grand iconographic history. Cards as we know them were
filtered through and modified by French card-makers during
the 19th century. Their stylings date back to the 15th, but they
hardly held a monopoly. The French had contemporaries—
Italians, Germans, Swiss and Hungarians also laid their cards
on the table. More than regionality, these other cards bore
imagery that resonated with players on social, ethical and
political levels.
I sought to reveal this history, to overturn the erasure of card
iconography. But it would be odd to make new decks for
which modern players have no visual vocabulary. Instead, I
transcribed the cards’ images into poetry. The verse presented
here is as much a process note as it is a poetic genome.
Though not reflective of the cards’ contemporary
sentiments, my poetry attempts to translate the messages
housed in the card iconography into current meanings. The
poems are thus ekphrastic, which describes the process of
explaining images in words. My images present here are taken
th
from The Mantegna Deck (from 15 century Italy) and Les
Cartes a Jouer (a history of playing cards). These images and
their associated poems summate this: the forgotten cards
deserve to speak once again.
Card 29 of The Mantegna
Deck: Astrology as a Virtue.
The poems presented here cover their respective images.
You are welcome to read each poem and flip it up to reveal its
card. Discover grace at the fringe of forgetting.
Cards of the Revolution with personifications
of Equality, Liberty, and Geniuses.
Card 25 of The Mantegna Deck: Arithmetic as
a Virtue.