Poetry Thursday - The Great Figure by William Carlos Williams

Charles Demuth, "I saw the figure 5 in gold", 1928 (via)

The Great Figure

Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
fire truck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city.

-- William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

In 1920, William Carlos Williams scribbled this poem on a sheet of paper while he was walking in Manhattan - when a phrase came to mind, he would write it down on anything to hand, and some of his poems were born on prescription blanks and others written in a few minutes between seeing patients in his medical practice. "The Great Figure" inspired his friend Charles Demuth to paint The Figure Five in Gold in 1928. 

Later, Robert Indiana based a painting on Demuth's -

Robert Indiana, The Figure Five, 1963 (via)

Woodblock Wednesday?

I'd set aside Wednesday mornings for continuing with the japanese woodblock printing, a time when I would have been at the class this term ... but other things come up and plans have to be changed....

Currently woodblocks have given way to the stitched pots (earlier ones are here), as I get some ready to dip, dry, and fire. A local ceramics studio is willing to have me join them over the summer.

It seems there were quite a few fabric pots already in various stages of stitchedness ....

Work in progress

All this will turn white, though some pots will have a bit of black, from the metal threads already stitched or yet to be added. In the heat of the kiln the transparency of the fabric will metamorphose to the translucence of porcelain; the flexibility and sturdiness of the fabric to the hardness, brittleness and fragility of porcelain. The details of the stitching will become "texture".

Drawing Tuesday - Hays Galleria

Hays Galleria is a converted warehouse complex near London Bridge. The view across the river to the City inspired both Janets -

Janet B

Janet K

 Sue settled for a view of Tower Bridge -

 Najlaa found architectural details -

 Jo did two versions of barrows with (tourstic) goods for sale -

Sat in a cafe, I looked upward at the structure that holds the roof, and the mellow brick of the original warehouse walls -

 but it was more fun to use watersoluble pencils too finish off a little drawing I'd started on the tube journey, and then revise it for a bigger version -

(the black square needs to be bigger - more on the left
 and just a tad more at the bottom)

Extracurricular activity -

Jo has been intrigued by the conjunction of animals and feral children - there are lots of representations of wolves (eg Romulus and Remus), but depictions of bears are rare -

 Sue has been making "wordless" labels for her preserves -

Hyde Park Corner rose garden

Yes there are roses, but there are also other flowers in the plantings - and the Rose Garden is looking its best at this time of year.

This is my favourite part of the "parks walk" from Green Park station to the South Kensington museums. Yes it adds 45 minutes to the journey (or longer if you sit down for a while), but it's time well spent, among greenery. Feeds the soul!

Sunday miscellany

First to the local farmers market for bread, cheese, and giant mushrooms, and on the way back I suddenly realised "the lumpy hedge" was actually topiary - a bassett hound, perhaps?

 Elsewhere, there had been some sort of incident involving a seat belt ... it remains a puzzle ...

 I've been reading Paul Wood's book on London street trees and thought this one looked familiar - sure enough, it's right round the corner, a purple crab apple on Marquis Road -

Now, though, the ivy has grown over the wall and all but blocks the path.

 Unusual plants in a florist shop -

 and in a garden -

 ... the garden of St Pauls, Stoke Newington, where I went to hear what the Grandes Dames of Food had to say about British food since the 1950s - Jill Norman was Elizabeth David's editor at Penguin Books; Claudia Roden is known for her book on Middle Eastern cookery, which came out in the late '60s; Elisabeth Luard has written about Spanish, and other, food since living there with her family.

Back in the 50s, when Penguin was publishing various cookbooks in print runs of 20,000 or 30,000, it wasn't thought that these were suitable to be in hardback. People didn't like to be seen eating, and it was almost taboo to talk about food. The cookbooks had short recipes - people who used them already knew how to cook and didn't need detailed instructions. Now, though, people seem to have forgotten that food is about pleasure, rather than innovation or careful eating - and a cuisine of "too much flavour" has developed.

One of the audience questions was about gadgets - which of the latest gadgets did they value? The lemon zester; the potato peeler; and the whizzy-stick blender.

With food on my mind I popped in to the nearby farmers market, which had some rather specialist stalls, including one selling only Scotch eggs - including a vegetarian variety ...

 Along the street, yellow watermelon! -

 And in the second-hand bookshop, a copy of a Nigel Slater book had some recipes for tinned sardines (I'm trying to eat more fish), including Sardine Butter, which can be spread on toast ... but then, what can't be spread on toast? -

 Clissold Park had a sprinkling of picnics etc -

 And then it was dinner in the garden at Rathcoole Gardens - an unfinished back garden - with the folding doors being put into place, a big step forward -

This garden, which is in a sorry state at the moment, will eventually look somewhat like this one, seen in an estate agent's window -

Raised beds and climbers up the walls, and comfortable seating, ready for gracious outdoor living ... but not just yet ...

Gardening here and there

In the morning, a couple of hours got my little front garden looking perkier. The view from the top of the stairs shows that, among the foxgloves and mexican daisies and geraniums and heuchera and lavender - and rosemary - there's room for a few new plants, which means a visit to a garden centre sometime soon....

In the afternoon I trotted over the hill to do some tidying and weeding in Tom and Gemma's garden - but managed to leave my phone at home, so ... no camera, no photo.

On the way home, there were many roses to admire and smell - not my favourite flower, and few if any bees visiting roses - but there are so many varieties, with so many subtleties of colour, shape, growth habit, etc, that they become quite fascinating. I found the bees, busy at work on the ceanothus and wiegela, riveting too.

An effective, if simple, floral display was a "lollipop" tree in a large pot, and all around the base were different colours of pansies - grouped by colour, and perhaps purchased as several trays of assorted colours. That stood in the middle of the small front garden, and the window boxes repeated the pansy treatment. (No camera, no photo, alas - but hopefully you get the idea.)

Amazing what a difference two weeks of sun, and a couple of lashings of ardent rain, make to a garden -

The "other" garden, two weeks ago

Lilac has finished, but everything else seems to have expanded in size, and there were so many new plants among the paving stones (including some self-seeded pansies) but mostly weeds. The wallflowers have finished, and I've cut them back in hopes of having them again next year (cream-coloured and heavily scented) - instead, delphiniums are getting very tall, and the grasses are reviving. The pansies in the window boxes are thriving, with regular watering and dead-heading. It's my delight to help nature along... and when a passer-by stops to comment and chat, that's so nice too!

Last year at this time, the garden was completely full of alkanet, with its deep perennial tap root (and pea gravel) but we don't have a photo of that either. Local legend has it that at one time those plants were growing into the windows - hmm, "legend" indeed.

Horses in the big city

This morning, as I walked north from Victoria Station, there was a clip-clop sound and this carriage appeared -

What's that about?

Continuing north, past Oxford Street, I heard another clip-clop sound -

that became the thundering of hooves, as dozens of horses, some with riders and some without, went along Wigmore Street -

 first the brown ones and then the black ones -

 dozens of them; each rider had two riderless horses alongside -

What was that about??