unhemmed

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2010-10-20T13:27:00.001+01:00

part of ch 1

Hugh of St Victor

2009-08-26T09:52:00.002+01:00

“There are those who wish to read everything. Don’t vie with them. Leave well enough alone. It is nothing to you whether you read all the books there are or not. The number of books is infinite: don’t pursue infinity! Where no end is in sight, there can be no rest. Where there is no rest, there is no peace. Where there is no peace, God cannnot dwell. ‘His place,’ says the Prophet, ‘is in peace, and his abode in Sion.’” (Translated from the Latin by Jerome Taylor)

Thanks to Stephen Burt's blog.

fao: everybody

2008-07-14T16:02:00.002+01:00

unhemmed is taking an undeserved break of undetermined length.

Until next time!

star-nosed moles

2008-06-29T13:51:00.002+01:00

puddle

2008-06-20T23:17:00.002+01:00

motyl

2008-06-17T09:53:00.001+01:00

The New York Times

2008-05-26T11:53:00.001+01:00

Tips

To find reference information about the words used in this article, double-click on any word, phrase or name. A new window will open with a dictionary definition or encyclopedia entry.

Robert Rauschenberg's 'Odalisk'

2008-05-15T15:25:00.003+01:00

poopookarian

2008-05-01T22:28:00.002+01:00

Edinburgh Man

2008-05-01T21:03:00.001+01:00

A link.

sawhorse

2008-04-20T21:53:00.000+01:00

Splodgkin

2008-04-13T20:54:00.000+01:00

A Small Thing, But My Own

The Fall of the Rebel Angels

2008-04-04T15:16:00.002+01:00

Pieter Bruegel, 1562

2008-04-01T10:18:00.002+01:00

2008-03-31T11:26:00.002+01:00

a nematode gushes

2008-03-23T21:38:00.002Z

A wonderful, wonderful article. Not least because it takes the time to explain what 'off piste' means. Don't miss the slideshow.

2008-03-22T21:08:00.002Z

wgw1

2008-03-18T11:44:00.004Z

How fluent is yr txting?

The Turning Road, L'Estaque

2008-03-12T17:57:00.003Z

Andre Derain, 1906. If you're ever in Houston, Texas, you could take it in.

no

2008-03-05T22:12:00.002Z

St Jerome

2008-02-24T16:55:00.003Z

Reading this about the British Library prompts unhemmed to take a peek at St Jerome.

Buzz

2008-02-14T09:23:00.001Z

home sweet home

2008-02-07T16:55:00.000Z

Max Pechstein, Meadow at Mortziburg, 1910

Z for effect

2008-01-31T12:04:00.000Z

The last poem in Hugh Haughton's Chatto Book of Nonsense Poetry (1988) is Paul Muldoon's 'Quoof'. Here's the last-but-one (a version of which is a favourite with my grandpa):

An English Alphabet

A for ’orses
B for mutton
C for yourself
D for dumb
E for brick
F for vescence
G for police
H for retirement
I for an eye
J for oranges
K for restaurant
L for leather
M for size
N for a penny
O for there
P for relief
Q for ticket
R for mo
S for you
T for two
U for mism
V for l’amour
W for a shilling
X for breakfast
Y for Gawd sake
Z for effect.

Haughton writes: ‘Based on the alphabet published in the Daily Express on 20 June 1936, probably derived from the surrealistic alphabet performed by the cross-talk comedians Clapham and Dyer, with interpolations from other alphabets recorded in Eric Partridge, Comic Alphabets, Their Origin, Development, Nature, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961.'

Strine

2008-01-25T16:11:00.001Z

(From 1965. Does 'Afferbeck Lauder' translate into English?)

will they make it big in 2008?

2008-01-24T14:26:00.001Z

sklepik

2008-01-19T10:35:00.000Z

treeptych

2008-01-19T10:25:00.001Z

This one goes out to all the dendrologists, arborophiles, shrub-people, bark-rubbers, twiggers, copse-swains and branch managers. Thanks for welcoming me into the fold! When's the next social?

Instamatic

2008-01-18T15:42:00.001Z

a friendly face?

2008-01-15T21:19:00.001Z

them spooky eyes

2008-01-10T20:43:00.001Z

Goya - El sueno de la razon produce monstruos - 1798

1904

2008-01-08T17:31:00.000Z

Photo by Edward Curtis

Furgg

2008-01-07T17:53:00.001Z

everyone needs a favourite motorway

2008-01-03T21:11:00.001Z

As is the case with a good ten-elevenths of unhemmed posts, this was inspired - if that's quite the word - by something in today's paper. I can't find it on the web, but it was about Martin Parr's most precious objects, one of which was a black-and-white M1 postcard.

In the meantime, why not have a shot at identifying all five panels?

happy noo year

2008-01-02T20:05:00.000Z

natural nasality

2007-12-30T21:52:00.000Z

From the sleeve notes in Nelly Furtado's Loose:

Thanks Dave Pensando Jr. for actually liking my natural nasality.

chucky stone on beach

2007-12-30T12:11:00.000Z

Meet Me In St Louis

2007-12-30T12:05:00.000Z

a genius for upholstery

2007-12-17T22:42:00.001Z

OMG! It's Henry James.

turkeys

2007-12-15T17:23:00.001Z

(This one's being stubborn and won't rotate.)

name me!

2007-12-13T18:40:00.000Z

two songs

2007-12-13T13:29:00.000Z

Two songs going down really well with the unhemmed team. A new one here ('A Wailing Kind of Thing') & an old one but new to us courtesy of the tireless team over at GMS. Enjoy!

Ben

2007-12-10T17:59:00.000Z

books of the year 1968

2007-12-08T18:04:00.001Z

deary deary me

2007-12-08T07:09:00.000Z

'We never thought to ask how will our lives, our way of thinking, be changed by the internet, which has seduced a whole generation with its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that, once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging.'

from Doris Lessing's Nobel speech

in which Mr A, Mr B & Mr C drop by

2007-11-20T22:50:00.001Z

normal service resumed

2007-11-16T12:23:00.000Z

too early for this kind of thing, i know ...

2007-11-16T12:14:00.001Z

new neighbour paying birthday visit

2007-11-16T11:51:00.000Z

look out, Nigel Short

2007-11-15T20:49:00.000Z

naturewatch

2007-11-15T08:53:00.000Z

First frost! Break out the sprouts.

And the first birds I've seen on our bird-feeder? A chaffinch and a great tit, taking turns to prod the peanuts.

Connoisseur of Chaos

2007-11-03T10:44:00.000Z

The first of five sections of Wallace Stevens's 'Connoisseur of Chaos' from Parts of a World (1942):

A. A violent order is disorder; and
B. A great disorder is an order. These
Two things are one. (Pages of illustrations.)

it all comes flooding back

2007-11-02T23:19:00.001Z

Em saw a 'strange bird' out the back the other day. After some discussion, we think it was probably a green woodpecker.

On Certain Wits

2007-10-04T12:43:00.000+01:00

who amused themselves over the simplicity of Barnett Newman’s paintings shown at Bennington College in May 1958

When Moses in Horeb struck the rock,
And water came forth out of the rock,
Some of the people were annoyed with Moses
And said he should have used a fancier stick.

And when Elijah on Mount Carmel brought the rain,
Where the prophets of Baal could not bring the rain,
Some of the people said that the rituals of the prophets of Baal
Were aesthetically significant, while Elijah’s were very plain.

Howard Nemerov (click on his name to get to one place that this poem hides out in the interweb; it also seems to have been posted on a number of blogs - working together, me and Google make it 3 - does that constitute a virtual bandwagon?)

Poets Going Pop

2007-09-29T14:41:00.000+01:00

When I first heard that Paul Muldoon (poet, role model, old enough to be my dad) had started playing guitar and writing lyrics for a band called Rackett, I was horrified. For some reason, it really got to me. If I gave my brains a good rack, I could probably remember when exactly I found out - a couple of years ago, I think. I'm over it now, though I've not become a fan of his 'three-car garage rock' outfit. (For one thing, I don't like the lazy boast of wealth that fuels the 'three-car garage rock' gag.) I met someone this summer who had been to one of Rackett's few gigs. What did she make of it? Well, she thought the lyrics were good.

Just this afternoon I've been reading about the rock'n'roll adventures of Simon Armitage (poet, role model, almost old enough to be my dad). And my reaction to his band, The Scaremongers, is pretty much the polar opposite of the way I felt about Rackett. The new sounds from New Jersey, and the very concept of Muldoon's combo, made my stomach turn; The Scaremongers, and their story-so-far, make my heart beat faster. Not that their record is so wonderful, although it's certainly worth a listen, and I am quite taken by Armitage's northern croon.

I have a few ideas as to why I feel so differently about these two middle-aged poets dabbling in indie-rock, and enacting a teenage dream or two to the accompaniment of some measure of self-deprecation. But I shan't bore you with them right now, partly because they have so much to do with my own teenage dreams, and so could quickly get embarrassing. I just hope that my enthusiasm for The Scaremongers holds up: with Rackett, the journey from distress to indifference was a short one. Indifference is a miserable place to end up. In the meantime, I'm looking forward enormously to the debut LP from Huddersfield's finest!

(Having said all that, I do really enjoy Muldoon's delivery of the lyrics - and the lyrics themsleves - to Rackett's song 'The Sideman' .)

best Bahnhof?

2007-09-28T07:57:00.000+01:00

they have come to save us

2007-09-20T21:45:00.001+01:00

boy, we know how to have some fun

2007-09-20T21:43:00.001+01:00

horchata

2007-09-20T08:16:00.001+01:00

Not, strictly, a milkshake. 'This chilled almond milk is on tap in heaven.' Who said that?

Kielce

2007-09-18T11:06:00.001+01:00

Concealed by the woman's head: the word 'you'. Sometimes you're in a hurry and you can't find a 'native speaker' to run your new slogan by ...

ea

2007-09-12T12:52:00.000+01:00

A strong contender for '2-letter Word of the Year 2007'?

From the OED: 'A river, running water. Still in use in Lanc.; in the fen-country applied to the canals for drainage, in which sense it is usually spelt eau [as if a. F. eau water].'

Unlike many of the two-letter oddities with which internet scrabblers have been confounding me of late, this one I could see myself getting some use out of.

who really is the patron saint of the milkshake?

2007-09-11T21:40:00.001+01:00

just a little axolotl

2007-09-09T21:09:00.001+01:00

(molto) ben trovato

2007-09-07T11:47:00.000+01:00

se non è vero è (molto) ben trovato wł., jeśli to nie jest prawdziwe, to jednak (bardzo) dobrze wymyślone.
	Etym. - z Giordana Bruno (Gli eroici furori; 1585 r.).

I didn't know what ben trovato meant. Now, thanks to this place, I do! It's probably the best Italian phrase of all time, wouldn't you say?

two poles

2007-08-20T14:57:00.001+01:00

stook convention

2007-08-17T15:57:00.001+01:00

thanks, Andrew!

2007-08-16T07:43:00.001+01:00

your starter for 10

2007-08-14T16:05:00.000+01:00

rewir mój

2007-08-13T19:29:00.001+01:00

cutting and sticking

2007-08-13T19:25:00.000+01:00

unhemmed's new favourite blog.

Tworki

2007-08-02T08:21:00.000+01:00

Almost a month ago (ach, how the summer slips by!) I went one morning on a mildly eccentric excursion with my friend, P. It was a lovely warm day and I thoroughly enjoyed the cycle into town - something I'm ashamed to admit I'd never done before (the journey was shorter and more pleasant than I imagined it would be - particularly the spruced-up chunk of park between the metro stations Pole Mokotowskie and Politechnika). We met at the foot of the Marriott Hotel and caught the suburban train southwest out of Warsaw, making sure to buy extra tickets for our bikes. Where were we headed? To visit the village of Tworki and the adjacent town of Pruszków. Why? Well, Tworki is dominated by an enormous psychiatric hospital that has more than you might think to offer a day-tripper on two wheels. And Pruszków is not only renowned for its gangsters, but also because P grew up there in the 1980s.
P tells me that when the hospital was built, before the Second World War, it was one of Europe's most modern. Today I would guess that it's one of the least (although that's a guess made purely on the grounds of a tour of the grounds - we didn't march into any of the wards). The imposing gates stand right by Tworki station. You get the sense that the hospital is the village: the church and a couple of shops are within its grounds. It's on a grand scale, with its red-brick buildings keeping their distance from each other, some of them hidden away in the forest, some seemingly abandoned and overgrown. Having said that, from the photos I took, the place looks in quite good nick ...
Tune in next month for Pruszków!

full steam ahead

2007-08-01T07:45:00.000+01:00

Bob on Balzac

2007-07-30T13:22:00.000+01:00

Shortly after first arriving in New York, Bob Dylan, if his Chronicles can be trusted, spent many nights on a sofa belonging to Ray and Chloe, and many hours reading in Ray and Chloe's extraordinary library. He was particularly taken by Thucydides. I like what he has to say about Honoré de Balzac:

'Balzac was pretty funny. His philosophy is plain and simple, says basically that pure materialism is a recipe for madness. The only true knowledge for Balzac seems to be superstition. Everything is subject to analysis. Horde your energy. That's the secret of life. You can learn a lot from Mr. B. It's funny to have him as a companion. He wears a monk's robe and drinks endless cups of coffee. Too much sleep clogs up his mind. One of his teeth falls out, and he says, "What does this mean?" He questions everything. His clothes catch fire on a candle. He wonders if fire is a good sign. Balzac is hilarious.'

a new face in town

2007-07-23T17:33:00.000+01:00

hollyhocks

2007-07-22T21:39:00.000+01:00

These hollyhocks have no idea we are here: they're looking in the wrong direction.

the baking heat led me here

2007-07-20T15:14:00.001+01:00

S-e-r-i-o-u-s local meteorology!

2 legs in the afternoon

2007-07-19T17:03:00.000+01:00

I'm taller: I've just been out to stretch my legs.
My legs are green: what could they be jealous of?

agresty

2007-07-16T10:41:00.000+01:00

crazy map

2007-07-06T12:04:00.000+01:00

Click here for a better view of this extraordinary map. What's your favourite metamorphosis? I like the idea of Missouri turning into Poland. And the Alabama-Iran and Wyoming-Uzbekistan pairings appeal.

Agnieszka Osiecka

2007-07-05T09:06:00.001+01:00

squint! you won't regret it

2007-07-04T21:35:00.000+01:00

Dudek

2007-07-04T20:25:00.001+01:00

In a roundabout sort of way, may I present the mighty hoopoe as a contribution to today's celebrations of American Independence.
As I type, the good pundits on Radio Trójka are chewing the fat over Bruce Springsteen. Blah blah blah surowy rockandroll blah facet z New Jersey blah blah blah. Super!

Falowiec

2007-06-27T13:42:00.000+01:00

To the best of my knowledge the Falowiec - which roughly translates as The Wave, and you can see why - is the longest continuous concrete block in Poland. Perhaps in the world. When we were in Gdańsk a couple of years ago, Emma's old Polish teacher took us on a detour to take in its awesome size. Its size, let me tell you, is awesome. For reasons not entirely clear to me, I had something like an epiphany when I saw a photo of Julita Wójcik's knitted version in this week's Newsweek. (Some photos of Julita wearing a traffic-light apron here.) I'm very pleased that her handiwork is going to be part of an exhibition about concrete and I look forward to admiring the Falowiec in the flesh. Or should that be in the stitch?

someone to bear in mind when you're choosing your Trombonist Hero

2007-06-21T11:37:00.001+01:00

Or perhaps what I mean is someone for me to bear in mind when I choose my Trombonist Hero. I've recently been claiming that Glenn Miller's principal instrument was the trumpet. How wrong I was. Never has it been more clear to me that I am no King of Jazz.

11cm of siskin

2007-06-17T20:39:00.000+01:00

Wowsers! Check this out. It's Chizhik Pyzhik!

All credit to my dear sister.

Walter Scott

2007-06-09T09:50:00.001+01:00

I've never been to Edinburgh. I'd really like to go. My friend Dave lives there in a space-age bachelor pad. And I've just found out that they have this huge memorial to Walter Scott there:
Hideous. And awesome. But is it really 'the biggest monument to a writer in the world', as John Pemble claims?

And what's the smallest?

Gato Perez

2007-06-04T20:19:00.000+01:00

Southampton. 18 February 2006. Or thenabouts ...

2007-06-01T18:36:00.001+01:00

Information Centre, Szydłowiec

2007-05-31T16:25:00.000+01:00

tenfoots

2007-05-28T17:41:00.000+01:00

A very pleasing definition from urbandictionary.

heatwave!

2007-05-26T08:19:00.001+01:00

the Beats go on

2007-05-25T07:15:00.001+01:00

Konwalia majowa

2007-05-24T20:33:00.001+01:00

Little bunches of these available on every Warsaw streetcorner at the moment. They have a lovely stink! I wish I could tell you that I'd drawn the picture myself, but that would be a fib. We have these people to thank. If I were going to do some colouring-in, I'd turn my attention to the hollyhocks and the foxgloves. Oh, and the primroses.

Eric Ravilious

2007-05-23T08:58:00.000+01:00

Gouldian finch

2007-05-19T22:48:00.001+01:00

Image borrowed from this page. How did I wind up there? Well, Em and I have just been enjoying Warsaw's Noc muzeów. More than 90 museums and galleries are open into the small hours and have waived their entrance fees for one night only. You can ride between them on supercool antique buses! At the Ethnographical Museum we got down to a rousing Polish folk band with two girls singing great harmonies (the line-up included what i'll call a goatpiper, more of which in a future post perhaps). We'd hoped to hear an Australian band as well, but the hall where they were due to play was already fit to burst when we arrived and the doors were barred against us. (The last time we went to this museum we were very nearly the only people there; tonight was a real crush.) As a consolation we spent some time in the Australasia room, where most of the stuff is from Papua New Guinea. Many, many boomerangs. And some amazing photos of Aboriginal rock paintings - or rather some photos of amazing Aboriginal rock paintings. I was hoping that there would be an all-singing, all-dancing site about them somewhere on the interweb. Perhaps there is: I haven't found it yet, but I did find the finch. And what a glorious finch he is!

Stevie Smith

2007-05-19T10:43:00.000+01:00

Here's a useful poem to learn off by heart so that you can plumb any gaps in dinnerparty conversation:

NOURISH ME ON AN EGG

Nourish me on an egg, Nanny,
And ply with bottled stout,
And I'll grow to be a man
Before the secret's out.

Nourish me on an egg, Nanny,
With bottled stout to drink,
And I'll grow to be a man
Before you can think.

Nourish me on an egg, Nanny,
Don't wring your hands and weep,
Bring me a glass of stout
And close my eyes in sleep.

(the book)

cartography

2007-05-19T07:14:00.000+01:00

Nice map!

(Thanks to Cas for the link.)

whose dinner?

2007-05-17T16:53:00.000+01:00

famous for fifteen people

2007-05-16T21:07:00.000+01:00

"This essay, written by Momus in 1991, was published by the Swedish fanzine Grimsby Fishmarket in 1992 ..."

rock and roll band / Marty

2007-05-12T16:59:00.000+01:00

*** Unhemmed recommends ***

Pop in your earphones & get down to numberdan's brand new 'Rock and Roll Band'!

And here's an idea (maybe it's just a fraction of an idea) for the artwork:

"Poor old Marty!"

"Good old Marty!"