The Facts of Life in a Nutshell

 RED   --   NOW

MAMA -- HERE

-- Quine, bard of infant cognition and ontogenesis

TR monostichs

 

Upon the sudden assassination of President McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt is rushed to Washington, at sunset:

 

An old farmer, hearing the onrush of the train,

climbed off his harrow  and stood to attention,

his red shirt  indandescent

in the horizontal light. 

Children ran to cluster around him.

Their spindly shadow, leaping east,

briefly stroked the wheels of Roosevelt’s car.

For the next half hour,

Roosevelt sat with his elbow on the window ledge,

staring through his own reflection

at the speeding darkness.

-- Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (2001), p. 36 -7

 

hot   sun

beat   down

on bald heads

and bright medals

-- Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (2001), p. 110

 

light          sliced

through thinning  trees

-- Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (2001), p. 120

 

Light vertical, horizontal, and aslant.

 

 

 

Tableau!

 

The selections which appear on this site with the label “found poetry”, are so chosen by reason of a certain pithy verbal felicity, which makes the phrase (or sentence, or distich) stand forth from its prose context;  it may or may not reflect any excellence specifically visual.

Aesthetically  related, yet distinct, are “tableaux”, in which some striking, static,  visualization  sends a sight, or a passage describing it,  suddenly forth from its otherwise prosaic context.  

[Morphological footnote, for lexicophiles:  The English noun tableau  is borrowed from French, and retains the Gallic spelling, its plural in -x, and the oxytone pronunciation.  In French, tableau  is formally a diminutive of table, though its current semantics does not reflect that origin, and indeed tableau itself admits a further, double diminutive:  tabl-eau-tin.] 

But what lies specifically behind the selections that shall appear here so labeled, is the use of tableau as a one-word exclamation -- the rough equivalent of framing the scene with your fingers, displayed as cater-corner right-triangles.   This use is perhaps commoner in French than in English;  in any case, Harrap’s French-to-English dictionary  explicitly recognizes the idiom:

 

Hier on l’a surprise  assise sur les genoux du chauffeur; tableau!

Yesterday she was caught sitting on the chauffeur’s knee; tableau!

 

As a plain noun, rather than a holophrastic exclamation, this particular sense of a visually frozen, striking moment, is also denoted tableau-vivant (French pl. tableaux-vivants), literally a ‘living picture’.

 

An example, with picture-frame supplied:

 

She’d disappeared into the building, and a few seconds later  yellow light awakened the second floor, spilling through gaps between the shutters.  Her silhouette, disconcertingly large and bulky in her abaya, moved from one side to another, adjusting the shutters, then disappearing.

-- I.S.Berry, The Peacock and the Sparrow (2023)

 

And, again graphically framed (describing an escape, in semi-darkness, through serpentine and unfamiliar subterranean passageways, from the secret police):

 

He teetered at the top of a landing, reeling a bit as he peered down into the dimness of a steep wooden stairway, which then went black  as the door slammed shut behind them.

-- Dan Fesperman, Pariah (2025)

 

Another from a thriller -- an ominous sedan  looms into view:

 

She saw the Bentley and hesitated, watering-can poised in midair,  appearing every bit  in the late morning light  as if Renoir had captured her by surprise.

-- Elizabeth George, A Great Deliverance (1988)

 

Thus, in this case, a overt comparison to a painting.

 

For further examples of this toothsome micro-genre, try these:

    https://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/search/label/tableau

 

 

Gatsby monostichs

 

(1)  Wind & Wafting

 

Outside, the wind was loud, and there was a faint flow of thunder along the sound. …. The electric trains, men-carrying, were plunging home through the rain…

-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)

 

Wilson’s eyes  turned out to the ashheaps,

where small grey clouds  took on fantastic shape,

and scurried here and there

in the faint  dawn  wind.

-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)

 

 

(2) The Moon  Too  Illumines

 

The moon  soaked  with wet light

his tangled clothes upon the floor.

-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)

 

They were still under the white plum-tree

and their faces were touching

except for a pale thin ray of moonlight  between.

-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)

 

They came to a place  where there were no trees,

and the sidewalk  was  white   with moonlight.

-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)

 

And, one from his earlier work:

 

while   the   moon

at its perennial labor of covering the bad complexion of the world,

showered its illicit honey

over the  drowsy  street.

-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned (1922)

 

.

Aubades et Sérénades

 

Aubades:

 

Dawn made itself felt

in a gathering whiteness

eastward  over the river.

-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned (1922)

 

tatters of night lingered,

diluted to blue

-- Cornell Woolrich, I Married a Dead Man (1948)

 

The sun  bubbled up  from the horizon,

and shone through the haze of floury dust

sighing down from the Sahara.

-- Neil Stephenson, The Confusion (2004)

 

Lights began to snap on

in bedrooms, then in kitchens.

In the growing lavender of daybreak, the carny took shape.

-- William Gresham, Nightmare Alley (1946)

 

 

Sérénades:

 

The long procession of lamps

on the beautiful street

was flaring  in the clear  red  of the sunset

towards which it marched . .  .  .    .

-- Wm Dean Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham (1884-5)

 

a rich golden light  clung to the leaves  like batter

-- T.  Coraghessan Boyle,  World’s End (1987), p. 129

 

Archetypes and Acolytes

 

After the prophet

come the disciples;

after the disciples

comes the church;

and with the church 

comes the hierarchy.

-- Max Eastman, Love and Revolution (1964)

 

For a recap of that progression  in the epic cases of Freud and of Chomsky, together with personal recollections of the towering Romance Philologist, Yakov Malkiel, see:

 

=>   https://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/02/chomsky-freud-and-problem-of-acolytes.html

 

Wintry Light

 

It was one of those chilly and empty afternoons 

in early winter,

 

when the daylight is silver

  rather than gold,

and pewter    rather than silver.

-- G.K. Chesterton, “God of the Gongs” (1914)

 

~ ~ ~

 

People were wearing

lace shawls of snowflakes.

A low dark cloud was sitting there,

thinking of some way

to unload snow  over the city.

-- Len Deighton, Funeral in Berlin (1964)

 

Fleeing over fluids

 

 

Snipe / zip:

 

The snipe  zip  away   over the frozen bogs

into a sky of  Neapolitan enamel.

-- V.S.  Pritchett, The Living Novel (1946)

 

Departing speedboat:

 

They would skim and turn  far off,

tantalizing small shapes

on the shiny  silky sea.

-- Pamela Frankau, “The Duchess and the Smugs”

Forsyte monostichs

 

The sunlight  played through the leaves

on that little party of three generations

grouped tranquilly under the pear-tree,

which had long   borne   no fruit.

-- John Galsworthy, The Man of Property (1906)

 

The little garden had fallen into shade,

the sun now only reached the wall,

whereon basked  a crouching cat.

-- ibid

 

the pear-tree, with its

  top

  branches 

still gilded by the sun …

-- ibid

 

Love is no hot-house flower,

but a wild plant,

born of a wet night.

A wild plant that,

when it blooms within the hedge of our gardens,

we call a flower;

and when it blooms outside

we call a weed.

-- ibid

 

for the swarming stars

the night sky

had hardly space.

-- ibid

 

The glow  died

above the river;

the singing  ceased.

The young moon  hid

behind a tree,

and all was dark.

-- ibid

 

Along the pathway of sky

between the hedges of the tree-tops,

the stars  clustered forth.

-- ibid

 

The fog  was worse than ever --

crowned with the weird excrescence of the driver,

haloed by a vague glow of lamp-light

that seemed to drown in vapour

before it reached the pavement…

-- ibid

 

On Irene’s face, a smile wandered up,

and died out

like a flicker of firelight.

-- ibid

 

The wind had got into the sou’west, too --

a delicious air,  sappy!

-- ibid

 

 

Barnabystichs

 

Home itself

was but another bead

in the long rosary

of his regrets.

-- Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge, (1841)

 

The sun went down,

and night came on,

and he was still

quite tranquil.

-- ibid

 

He looked back, once, before he left the street:

a sight    not     easily  to be   erased,

even from his remembrance,

so long as he had life.

-- ibid

 

every light shadow

thrown by the passing clouds

upon the daisied ground.

-- ibid

 

the cat sat moping

on the ashy forge

-- ibid

 

as day   deepened into evening,

and darkness   crept into the nooks.

-- ibid

 

Light, Losing it

 

a     wan   sun

  appeared

in the   gray  sky

 

-- Janet Malcolm,

 

 

From gaol:

 

Outside,

the day may be blue and gold,

 

but the light that creeps down

through the thickly muffled glass

of the small iron-barred window

beneath which one sits,

 

is grey and niggard.

It is always  twilight  in one’s cell.

-- Oscar Wilde, De Profundis (1897)

 

 

The Reading Room of the British Museum:

 

Some of the fog had seeped into the great domed space, increasing the gloom, so that the desk lamps seemed like so many street lamps in a miniature city of crecents and circuses  as he prowled in search of Amber.

… gaslamps, each with a halo  of irradiated fog.

-- David Lodge, A Man of Parts (2011), p. 241-3

 

 

Atom-bomb test:

 

A hundred-times-sun-sized sun

mottled itself with lesser whiteness,

 

bulked up,

became the perfect sphere…

 

Tumors of light   more brilliant than the sun

sprang up on the mathematical sphere;

yet these,  less blazing than the fireball,

appeared as blacknesses.

-- Philip Wylie, “The Answer”

 

Light in Flight

 

Transmitted light:

 

 

He talked on,

raising and lowering his glass

to admire the light  through it ..

 

-- James Gould Cozzens,  Ask Me Tomorrow (1940), ch.5

 

 

light   

sliced

 

through thinning trees.

 

--- Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (2001)

 

 

The sun was beaming  through the window

in   bright  squares

 

-- Zona Gale, “Bill’s Little Girl”

 

-------

 

Probing light:

 

The sun was pouring in,

creeping   in stealthily-lengthening squares

across his desk.

 

-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The I.O.U.” (1920)

 

 

The cell door opened and

blinding bars of light

burst in …

 

-- David McCloskey, Damascus Station (2021)

 

 

Now and then     a searchlight

fingered the bellies of the clouds

 

-- James Jones, From Here to Eternity (1951)

 

 

Eos / Aurora

 

the shining   spring morning

-- Irwin Shaw, The Young Lions (1948)

 

this peachy morning-light

makes your face  more radiant

    than any flower,

and more succulent

   than any fruit …

-- Neil Stephenson, The System of the World (2004)

 

We try,   when we wake,

to lay the new day

at God’s feet   .  .  .

-- C.S.Lewis, The Problem of Pain (1940)

Sick Okie (fixin’ t’ die)

her eyes        wide        and  bright

-- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

Okies on the Run (Impending Weather)

 nervous as horses     before a thunderstorm

-- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

The Creation of Eden

le  premier  soleil   sur le  premier  matin

-- Charles Péguy, Eve

Subsequent manifestations:

By this time, the eastern sky  was gorgeous with light

-- Hamlin Garland, A Son of the Middle Border (1917)

Even before the sun gave light, dead day was creeping  from bush to bush,  watching man.

-- Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

the washed-out, bird-bedeviled dawn

-- T.  Coraghessan Boyle,  World’s End (1987), p. 17

Intruding Light

She woke up in time to see this sun sending up spies ahead of him  to mark out the road through the dark.  He peeped up over the door-sill of the world  and made a little foolishness with red.  But pretty soon, he laid all that aside, and went about his business  dressed all in white.

-- Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

A thin needle of sunshine

came probing in

between the drawn curtains.

-- Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point (1928), p.  240

Light upon White

low-hung, blazing,  the stars light the sky,

and over the diamond-dusted snow-crust

the  moon beams       splinter.

-- Hamlin Garland, A Son of the Middle Border (1917)

Okies Roasting a Rabbit over a Campfire

the  evening   bats

flashed into the fire-light

and out again

-- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

T-T-T-Time Monostichs

the ticking no-noise

of the night

-- Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men (1946)

 

a big grandfather clock  offered us

the slow ,      small,

in-di-vid-u-al   pellets   of

time .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .  

-- ibid

[A few pages later in the novel, that pithy abstract characterization  is fleshed out in its impact on the narrator’s consciousness:]

The grandfather’s clock, I suddenly realized, wasn’t getting any younger.  It would drop out a tick, and the tick would land inside my head  like a rock dropped in a well,

and the ripples would circle out and stop,

and the tick would sink down in the dark.

For a piece of time which was not long or short,

and might not even be time,

there wouldn’t be

an-y-thing…

Then the tock would drop  down the well,

and the ripples would circle out  and finish.

-- ibid