All is revealed. The Poet's project worked, it turned out, but not until he'd examined over a thousand novels to find what he was looking for, while I padded (part of the time) behind him yelling 'What the fuck are you doing?'. It also turned out that it was a poem for my birthday. Ooops. It was related to the present he gave me (as if a poem wasn't enough): an etching of a rectangle divided into four on white paper in a white frame, by Linda Karshan. So beautiful and exactly what I want to look at. Also somewhat like a window on a window. The poem is below. His byzantine method of making the poem is explained in a note at the end.
Also, the cake was alarmingly delicious.
60 WINDOWS FOR JENNY BY IAN PATTERSON
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
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
*
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.
A note
60
WINDOWS FOR JENNY is composed entirely of phrases taken from page sixty
of sixty novels, for Jenny on her sixtieth birthday, 8 July 2007
