Showing posts with label Richard Hamilton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Richard Hamilton. Show all posts

Saturday 2 March 2019

From unpublished notebooks of L v. K


In a deserted room


the mirror shows 

a hyacinth

above

the fireplace


hyacinth

fireplace


a circumstantial affinity

the glass

does not

deny


L v. K  (Paris 1937)                                            


In a previous post . . . 
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/dotty-premature-embalmment-of-anti-art.html
. . .  is found mentioned a particularly recherché (even prophetic) example of la poésie concrète from The Eleven Surviving Works of L v. K.  It prompted me to add a further example of L v. K’s ‘deep continent’ brand of polymathy, see . . . 
https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2016/04/circo-perfuso-fato-sanguinis.html
The eleven works are exhibited at the Arts Council Poetry Collection website administered by the Poetry Library at Royal Festival Hall in London’s Southbank Centre:



The Eleven Surviving Works of L v. K 
(1902-1939)

A Memoir of a Numeromaniacal Futurist



Saturday 16 April 2016

Dotty? The Premature Embalmment of an Anti-art? Ian Hamilton Findlay and la poésie concrète.

I suppose I was first struck by the possibilities of la poésie concrète when I encountered in my youth the delightful verses of Ian Hamilton Finlay, a first impression that must have been significant in my emotional life because I still have the faded clipping here on my desk, a survival of so very many idle decades that I hesitate to number them.

Nevertheless, that regret aside, I don’t have to explain to you the reasons why I was refreshed by the clarity of expression and by the simplicity and immediacy of the poet’s vision . . .  you can see at once for yourself why I was hooked

(Rousay refers to the small, hilly island
about 3 km north of Orkney’s Mainland,
off the north coast of Scotland,
where Hamilton lived a
fter WW2.)

So I claim this first reading as a defining moment and, reflecting on this memory, I realise it must have been the seed from which many years later sprang my curiosity to restore to readers the Eleven Surviving Works of L v. K, including his prophetic concrete sonnet of 1938, Exhibit V, displayed as his memorial in the reception room of his apartment in Avenue d’Iéna, Paris, shortly after his death following the signing of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Treaty (23 August 1939). 

See the eleven exhibits at the Arts Council Poetry Collection website administered by the Poetry Library at Royal Festival Hall in London’s Southbank Centre:
http://poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/recordbfb6.html?id=9440



The Eleven Surviving Works of L v. K 
(1902-1939)
A Memoir of a Numeromaniacal Futurist

 V
‘FELDSCHUSTEREI’* – SONNET IN METRICAL FEET WITH MASCULINE AND FEMININE ENDINGS (1938): 112  miscellaneous unmatched items of abandoned footwear, including children’s slippers and orthopaedic boots, arranged in 14 rows of 8 items, with additional line endings as follows: Lines 1, 4, 5 & 8 – knieschützer†; Lines 2, 3, 6 & 7 – women’s satin dancing pumps; Lines 9 & 12 – schaftstiefel‡; Lines 10 & 13 – wooden clogs; Lines 11 & 14 – young girl’s gilded sandals.
*   Field shoemender’s shop
†   Parachutist kneepads (half rhymes noted by L v. K)
‡   Jack boots or Marschstiefel


Not all British critics, though, at the time of Hamilton Finlay’s witty innovations were entirely tolerant of the revival of these Dadaistic forms, according to my clippings file   . . . and the question remains: Was the ‘anti-art’ of ‘anti-print’ prematurely embalmed?

  

See also, poésie trouvée, the unsought text:
and