windows

The poem below is one I wrote for The Novelist's sixtieth birthday (you can read a version of the story behind it on her blog) and the responses she got to it there are one reason for my starting a blog of my own. I usually use some kind of structuring or text-generating device for what I write: here the rule was to take phrases that included the word 'window' from page sixty of sixty novels and simply arrange or re-arrange them, with nothing added.

SIXTY WINDOWS FOR JENNY

Tiny room whose window was never opened
Curtain for the window
On the cane chair under the window

    *

Pale green even in the window
Emptying the basin out of the window
Halts by the window and gazes

    *

Lay on the ground under the window, bellowing
Kneeling up to the window
An octagonal vaulted chamber with a balconied window

    *

Her bed had its back to the window
Through the curtainless window day stole in
She went to the other window

    *

Sitting at the table near the window, working
Opened windows into the wrong world
A gale, exploding against the window

    *

Muted by awnings lowered outside the windows
A reproduction of a stained-glass-window angel
Whistling up at vague windows

    *

Got up and went to the window. It was raining again.
Early light, coming through the uncurtained window
With its tiny windows looking on to the street

    *

Pat wandered from the window and took up the George Moore novel
He came out through the French windows
She got up and stood at the window

    *

There was moonlight in the window
There's a sharp rapping at the window
I am in the window, smoking

    *

They had seen it happen from a window
Then went to the window that looked on the street below
Watching you from the apartment window

    *

In my memory, at the window
The rain was still thudding against the window-pane
I think that I might open the window

    *

A camera is being held to the window
Silver things in the window
From the street the windows were in darkness

    *

His reflection could be seen in the front window
High up, from one of the small barred windows
His right arm through the open window

    *

I put all the lamps on and opened all the windows
A huge wall broken by gaping windows loomed above
Sordid glare of shop windows, made beautiful by distance

    *

A board nailed across a broken window
They opened all the windows
Sat and sewed by the window in the clear autumn afternoon

    *

The room was almost in darkness, the windows quite covered
The night I stared at from my window
A castle whose windows were glittering orange squares

    *

The windows, between lengths of white embossed satin
Our windows, on the second floor, overlooked the street
The butcher pulled down black window shades

    *

She had been sitting in her own window
The inner courtyard on to which my window looked out
The middle one of the three windows was half way open

    *

The sun filtered through the windows with remarkable subtlety
Rushed to the window, not to sail out of it
No lights behind its white painted windows

    *

Has to look out of the window at the elements, at nature
Draw down the upper frame of the window
The windows were shuttered. But there was a crack.

Comments

[jo]

What an interestingly structured love poem for my an author who has been my favourite for many years. A poem capturing filmic glimpses into the changing psyche of what could and so often is described (for lack of a better understanding) madness...I love it and I envy (in the most positive sense of the word) you both that you have found each other. Will now look into your work Ian...much more of the best, Jo

[jo]

What an interestingly structured love poem for my an author who has been my favourite for many years. A poem capturing filmic glimpses into the changing psyche of what could and so often is described (for lack of a better understanding) madness...I love it and I envy (in the most positive sense of the word) you both that you have found each other. Will now look into your work Ian...much more of the best, Jo

[Ms Baroque]

This is both lovely and fascinating - I've tried to write about windows in the past, in a consciously "trying-to-write-about-windows" way, and failed, really. They're so... clear... and have been written about so much! This is however almost as clear as a window, and the repetition gives it an insistence (and simplicity) - well, I'll stop.

Nice one. Beautiful.