It seemed appropriate to dig, once again, into the treasures of The Abstract Garden. With no permission, I here take a detail from Peter Reddick's engraving to Philip Gross's The Listening Station which is a very beautiful poem by any standards but which gives, for me, a wonderful image of the internet - a manifestation which I cannot begin to understand but which fills me with wonder. An extract, therefore . . .
. . . or it's scaffolding
for a vast construction
made of shades of light and language,
girder-work so fine
and taut and twangling you could fold
it all into a suitcase,
early morning, with a sound a bit like rain.
5 comments:
What Nicolas doesn't mention, modestly, is that the poem The Listening Station was triggered by his remark, in conversation with Peter and me: ‘Matisse pasted bits of coloured paper in arrangements that one cannot forget, just using his eye. I use grids and geometry…’ One thing led to another... and that's how the process went. Thanks, Nicolas.
Philip
The geometry in question is, of course, beautiful, but when drawn diagrammatically it reminds me of some strange sigil from one of those fantastic grimoires of the hermetic magical tradition... perhaps the sign used in the conjuration of an angel...
Gulch Soarmound (an assumed name fairly easily decoded, he hopes) wonders if his tribute to Nicolas's transcendant geometry (and the mise en page of the still stone) ever reached the editorial desk? It was sent a week ago with the selected identity of 'Other' as opposed to 'Blogger' or 'Anonymous'.
Nicolas is indeed a modest man for his grids are no more an inquisitor's gridiron than his geometry the least nightmare of a symmetrophobe. Each mise en page is like a stone perfectly stilled in a meadow. We may well apply to him, and to his dear partner Frances, Samuel Vincent's delineation in The Young Gallant's Academy of 1674: 'Well poized in all humours, in whom nature shewed most Geometry.'
Nicolas modestly welcomes the views now successfully posted by the egregious Gulch Soarmound (whose identity HAS now been cracked!) and apologises for the mix-up which was probably caused by the Bloggers not understanding the mechanism of Commenting.
This has resulted in the two posts being in the wrong order . . . but goodness knows how one might correct this!
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