Friday, July 20, 2007

Flit and Sip

I know it happens to everyone: one day you come across a word you've never heard before. You find out what it means and soon enough, it crops up in the most unexpected places - advertising hoardings twenty feet high, gossip columns, on the back of cereal boxes (ok. I'm exaggerating. Unless the word you just learnt was some unpronouncable chemical).

Or maybe it's a name. Someone you'd never heard of, and suddenly they're being celebrated and feted and their name is (but oddly enough, not their photographs) everywhere.

You remember Joesph Cornell from this post? A day later, I get a mail pointing me to this article (do watch the slideshow). The same exhibition is mentioned in Ron Silliman's blog, which Vivek also draws my attention to. Then he sends me a link to an old article he'd written (read the last paragraph).

This morning, on Mumpsimus I find a lovely post and a number of links.

You know what I'm going to have to do, don't you? I'm going to ahve to read Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore and watch To Have and Have Not. (About how Bacall achieved The Look, see here).

8 comments:

km said...

Lauren Bacall, circa 1944.

A long, deep sigh.

Wait. Ingrid's getting jealous.

Falstaff said...

Dickinson, Moore, and the electricity between Bogart and Bacall. Throw in Fireman's Ball and you have the recipe for the perfect weekend there. I'm (almost) envious.

km: Let her. Bacall gets my vote.

km said...

Now I want to watch "The Big Sleep" again.

"She tried to sit on my lap while I was standing up" is one of the greatest lines in cinema.

Cheshire Cat said...

Did you mean "Sit and Flip"? Or perhaps "Sift and Lip"?

Elizabeth Bishop's poems are like Cornell's boxes...

equivocal said...

Oh and ubuweb has one Joseph Cornell film:
http://www.ubu.com/film/cornell.html
(see also writeup with its interesting anecdote)

.. of course watching films on ubuweb, as one friend said, is like watching them through a keyhole-- but what can you do.

Space Bar said...

KM: Agree with Falstaff here. Bergman only ever managed to get a slightly worried look on her face, without ever lining her alabaster brow with the suspicion of a frown. Bacall every time over Bergman.

Falstaff/Cheshire Cat: If Moore's there, can Bishop be far behind? So much catching up to do.

Equivocal: Thanks for the link. Will check out.

Cheshire Cat said...

And now there's an excuse to inflict this most beloved of poems on you and your readers:

Abacus, and Frown, and Ribbons

Space Bar said...

cat: 'inflict'?

i love 'Facts and skyscrapers glint in the tide'.

thanks!