Text Literature

This competition seems like a really interesting idea. Each month one must write a story on a theme. But the story can be no longer than a text. Of course Ernest Hemingway outdid this in his six word story:

'For sale: baby shoes, never worn.'

There is more about very very very short fiction in this article. Can any of you write a story in six words. I think I might give it a try.

          

              Typewriter

Swimming man

Sparse wet hairs age his foetal form,
Suspended in liquid
A metamorphic man-baby.
Swimming.

Words

I paint a picture with words,
The colours stir and splash.
A thick line and a thin one,
A dot, a ragged dash
Syllables, blue consonants,
Come pouring from my pen,
A textured vowel, an open 'o',
Sibilance, and then,
The poem seems to peter out.
The flow of words has ebbed.
As we will meet our maker soon,
Each 'a' will meet its 'z'.

Hampton Court Palace


I found some photographs, which I took two summers ago, of the resplendent Hampton Court Palace. I think they do it some justice. These reminded me of a poem I've studied, a mock-epic by Alexander Pope, called 'The Rape of the Lock', in which the Palace is described:

'Close by those meads, for ever crown'd with flow'rs,

Where Thames with pride surveys his rising tow'rs,

There stands a structure of majestic frame,

Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its name.

Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom

Of foreign tyrants and of nymphs at home;

Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,

Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea.'

Macbeth

Found a piece of schoolwork that I was so proud of aged 14. I love Macbeth, and this is an illustration of a quotation from the play. 

'look like the innocent flower

But be the serpent under't'

These two lines  (spoken by Lady Macbeth in Act 1, Scene 5, when she is convincing Macbeth to murder King Duncan) are splendid, as is the whole play. There was an amazing - and very bloody- production of it in 2010 at Shakespeare's globe. The Roman Polanski film, although very naked, is also worth watching.

Diary

My first post on Crucial Detail was all about my diaries, and the level of excitement in them didn't bode very well for blogging. But now I'm one week older, so much wiser, and I've found my very first diary. It is almost a parody of a little girl's diary: fluffy, purple and sparkly. And inside it are some real gems: 'I had a party';  'I don't now', which I assume is supposed to read 'I don't know'; and 'I kissed the baby'. Rocking from an early age. 

Tiny

A person so tiny and shriveled and small,

That their clothes seem to flap around nothing at all.

My favourite poem in the world. 


Celia Celia


When I am sad and weary, 
When I think all hope has gone, 
When I walk along High Holborn
I think of you with nothing on.


Adrian Mitchell

I've been reading 'Foulsham's Fortune Teller and Guide and Success', and it's full of superstitions and beliefs which I find fascinating. It tells the reader how to interpret a personality through hand-writing, and even has sections on palmistry and crystal-gazing. What I thought I'd share, though, was these talismans for good luck. Whether or not they're effective, the graphics are so lovely.

Story?


An interesting thing just occurred;
A tow truck just drove past,
Two burnt-out police cars perched
On its great big back as it lurched,
Riding to repairs, or to the Krushinator,
There's a story there
But no narrator.


Phoebe

Gap years


Sunburnt, sweaty teamwork,
Meat and drinking beer, 
Boasting to your friends about
The views in Tanzania


Wearing a bikini,
And jumping off a pier.
And everybody tells you 
its a boost to your career.


Watching people suffering,
But smiling right on through, 
In their situation,
You don't know what you'd do.


Showing all your snapshots,
And grinning ear to ear,
No thanks mate, I think I'll pass,
I don't want a gap year.


Phoebe

There's been a lot of hype around the Yayoi Kusama exhibition at the Tate Modern. Understandably so, her work is engaging, exciting and weird. So inspired am I that I've been polka-dotting all weekend. It is obviously very repetitive, which could drive you dotty (what a joke). Here are the results of my labour, most of them are actually pretty ugly, which is a pity. But at least I had a 'productive' weekend.

Top image courtesy of:  http://theredlist.fr/wiki-2-351-382-1160-1284-view-japan-profile-kusama-yayoi.html

 I'm just coming to terms with quite what blogging is, and there have been a lot of comparisons made between the 'blog' and the old-school diary. So, I took a look at my diary from when I was younger. An entirely futile exercise: seems I did absolutely nothing of interest, take a look. It doesn't really bode well in my whole blogging plan, does it?