Comments on: Hevenyssh

By: Mary Meriam

Mary Meriam — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 16:33:51 +0000

A Jewish cemetery in Poland – that’s astonishing! What you wrote under the photo made me think this must be “Lavinia’s desk.”
Here’s Venus:
http://www.poster.net/matisse-henri/matisse-henri-papiers-decoupes-venus-4705885.jpg
I was lucky enough to see the Matisse cut-out show in Washington DC in 1977, and I’m glad to look at these again after so many years.
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By: Lavinia Greenlaw

Lavinia Greenlaw — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 13:38:41 +0000

Mary:
The stones, writing and mud on slabs were arranged, but not by me. I came across them in an abandoned Jewish cemetery in Poland a couple of years ago. Letters or prayers to the dead.
Thanks for the link to Matisse. It got me thinking again about plain shapes. My favourite of his late cut-outs is Venus (1952), who rises white from blue.
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By: Mary Meriam

Mary Meriam — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 02:17:17 +0000

Actually, I do like this photo, too, I was just – as they say in New York – yanking your chain. It reminds me of color field paintings, or Matisse paper cut-outs, especially this one: http://teachers.westport.k12.ct.us/artsmarts/Projects/Matiss5.jpg – the blue, and the jagged edges. But the two most memorable photos are Suffolk Coast and the one with paper, writing, rocks, and muddy junk on slabs. They seem to have more of you in them, as if you’d arranged a story. Well, I guess the muddy junk photo was completely arranged. Now I’m scrolling through the collection, I really like “Easy listening,” though “Cosmic Bloom” and “Black ice and rain” are also very fine. Grim, but always with a slice of light.
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By: Lavinia Greenlaw

Lavinia Greenlaw — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:19:42 +0000

Jane, I used to work for a publisher (of poetry among other things) whose walls boasted some spectacular fungi. The building was so run down, it is now the only property in Soho to have been left empty for 20 years. I had a bar fire and a typewriter. I inherited a mug.
Thank you, Henry, for the link to Andrey Gritsman’s essay and poems. He raises more questions than I can keep up with but I am grateful to be pointed in the direction of such things. It’s good to see talk of Brodsky in such a discussion:
…What keeps hearts from falseness in this flat region
is that there is nowhere to hide and plenty of room for vision.
Only sound needs echo and dreads its lack.
A glance is accustomed to no glance back.
Mandelstam’s crystallographers, Dickinson’s quartz contentment…
Mary, this is one of my photos – of the crystals on the wall, which might sound like conceptual blah but had a visceral effect in such a cramped space. And thank you for the found ekphrastic poem. I was intrigued, if a little unnerved. It’s that thing about hearing your own voice.
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By: Mary Meriam

Mary Meriam — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 02:29:35 +0000

Little marks on blue background. Very nice. (yawn) I like your photos better, Lavinia. And I love that quote from Chaucer: hevenyssh-ish. But you didn’t say anything about “Shine and Rot”, perhaps the world’s first found ekphrastic poem.
PS: Hi, Henry. You were hilarious about the Next Thing.
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By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 20:09:21 +0000

Thank you for intruding this Arctic blue facet on the current Harriet current.
A break from facetious.
Here’s something chemical (smoky) : http://www.richmondreview.co.uk/library/gritsman01.html
“Poets, envy the crystallographers!”
- Osip Mandelstam
“His firm stanzas hang like hives in hell”
- Wallace Stevens
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By: Jane Holland

Jane Holland — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:57:39 +0000

I took my three young kids to a dentist’s surgery the other week. The ground floor waiting room was magnificent … but for private patients only. We ascended two flights of steep and low-ceilinged stairs to the NHS waiting room, and were greeted by the sight of strange grey funghi growing in its damper corners and a sheen of condensation even over the plastic chairs.
Not quite the poetic material of crystals, but I imagine the Huddersfield school could have made something out of it.
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