Saturday, July 2, 2011

Plain as Knuckles


Plain as knuckles, plain as sleet,
plain as nothing left to eat.


Phones are plain, that never ring,
toil's plain as anything.


The facts are plain as dentistry,
and numb all spontaneity.


Dump all plainness in a bin,
and get things un-plain happenin',


'Cause plains of sameness are a sin.



As I've made only too apparent, there's alot of work to do in my garden-in-winter, but it is not a photogenic site. Today I got a sequence of tasks done, and in-between, wrote this poem and composed these 'plain' pictures.


Plain as Knuckles

Plain as knuckles, plain as sleet,
plain as nothing left to eat.

Phones are plain, that never ring,
toil's plain as anything.

The facts are plain as dentistry,
and numb all spontaneity.

Dump all plainness in a bin,
and get things un-plain happenin',

'Cause plains of sameness are a sin.


Faisal Grant, 02 July, 2011.

12 comments:

  1. I enjoy your garden artistry... Thanks for the fun poem on my Saturday am.

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  2. Thankyou, Zoe. Your own blog is refreshing, sparkling, uncomplicated, always beguiling.

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  3. Something about your compositions reminds me of the work of Joseph Cornell. Very, very different. But there's something similar in the collection and composition of objects. I like the intentionality (is there such a word?) of the act of collecting and composing. Are these gardens?

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  4. Hi James. Looking back, I'd say I've always liked to draw out the unnoticed or unseen. I hope 'intentionality' is a word, because that is a key. I don't know if I'd want to argue these compositions are gardens as such, but they might be in the sense that any composition can be a garden, if you take 'garden' to mean a re-arrangement of a space with reference to nature. I'm not even too worried whether they're gardens or not...I simply enjoy working with the natural world around me, and, I hope, expressing some of its identity ( and, obviously, expressing some of my own, human identity, through it ).

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  5. James, yes, I know Joseph Cornell and like his work very much.

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  6. I love your created cameo pics, but I bet you can also make the unphotogenic garden photogenic, interesting if not beautiful. I like poems that rhyme, they are fun.
    Re intentionality and what is a garden - you must see the window box gardens at craft victoria, 31 Flinders st. I went last week and wanted to photograph them but the battery died so I'll go back. I think it's on for a while - you'll love it, Faisal.

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  7. Thanks, Catmint...I love Craft Victoria and pop in there from time to time, but I didn't know about this exhibition.
    Poems that rhyme can get a bit twee if you're not careful, but I enjoy the challenge of getting sound and meaning working together.
    I hope all is proceding well for your October opening.

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  8. thanks for asking Faisal, the challenge is twofold: how the garden is proceeding (growing) and how I am proceeding (growing?) in relation to this new experience.

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  9. the fifth photo
    loks like a VERY cheap fondu!

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  10. Who needs the correct equipment or ingredients, John, when all you need is a dose of imagination...

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  11. I love these photos but they kind of disprove the notion of the unphotogenic garden.

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  12. Thankyou, Thomas, I wasn't sure they'd gone down too well...perhaps the 'plainness' was too much. I have a real weakness for very plain anything, preferring it to over-emphasis.
    Might I say that I have been hunting for my copy of 'A Start in Life' ( "The Debut" ) for days on end, hoping to review it for you. It is my favourite Anita Brookner novel.

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