London, Wordsworth and Blake

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I can't pass Westminster Bridge in London without thinking of Wordsworth's sonnet. "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3rd, 1802" is a poem in which the great Romantic applies the language and evokes the emotions more usually associated with his works about nature, particularly his beloved Lake District. In this piece Wordsworth describes the view from the bridge in the morning, and he speaks favourably of all that London has to offer the eye, the spirit and the mind. It is not what lovers of Wordsworth would expect to fall from his pen.

William Blake's vision of the city in his poem, "London", as a place of dirt and despair might seem to be more in tune with Wordsworth's outlook, but the Romantic's eye spots the beauty that exists alongside the grime where Blake sees only horrors. What would both men have made of the city today I wonder? People have sometimes asked me if I could live in London, and my answer has always been the same - yes, I'd love to for three or four years, but not for a lifetime. I think that in that period I could take from it in one long draught that which I currently experience in sips.

I recently spent some time around Westminster Bridge and today post a couple of the shots I took. The first shows the view upstream, and is a scene that is not as frequently photographed as the one downstream. Out of view, to the right are the Houses of Parliament. I took the shot for the foreground of the bridge parapet with the people (especially the tourist in red taking a photograph) against the background buildings and clouds. Millbank Tower on the right is an abomination that should never have been built, and the flats with the bizarre tops in the centre look better only when you're very close to them, so it was the colours and light as much as the details that appealed to me about this one.

The second shot shows the Houses of Parliament (properly called the Palace of Westminster) with the low sun about to set behind its prickly outline. There's no denying the distinctiveness of Barry and Pugin's Gothicised spires and towers, and the romantic way they pierce the sky. In this light Westminster Bridge can just be discerned, and I was grateful for the passing bus and gull on the left which helped the compositional balance. Though it is the opposite end of the day to when Wordsworth was on the bridge, and the Parliament buildings weren't yet built, this view offers the eye something of the qualities that must have led him to sing the city's praises.

photographs & text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1 (Photo 2)
Camera: Lumix LX3 (Olympus E510)
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12.8mm : 60mm/35mm equiv. (22mm : 106mm/44mm equiv.)
F No: f4 (f5.6)
Shutter Speed: 1/320 (1/1250)
ISO: 80 (100)
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV (-0.3 EV)
Image Stabilisation: On

High windows

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"Rather than words comes the thought of high windows;

The sun- comprehending glass,

And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows

Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless."

Philip Larkin (1922-1985), English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian

As I looked at my photograph of No 1 London Bridge, a monolithic office block pierced by large apertures, Larkin's final words from the title poem of his 1974 collection, "High Windows", came to mind. This powerful, characteristically dour work is, after "The Whitsun Weddings", Larkin's best known poem. It starts with a viscerally shocking observation that appalled many at the time, leads into a reflection on religion and life, and ends with the feeling that death is perhaps a welcome release from temporal concerns. I remember reading at the time of its publication that the poem was inspired by the ranks of faceless high windows he saw when he visited the Royal Infirmary at Hull, the city in which he lived and worked.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) is reported by his biographer, Boswell, to have said, "Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." Many people find that a visit to a hospital has a similar effect. Poets are no exception to this feeling, and use the thoughts such a visit provokes about their own mortality very effectively in their verse. One of the well-known poems of John Betjeman (1906-1984), "Before the Anaesthetic or A Real Fright", was inspired by a stay in the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford. It dwells on themes similar to those found in Larkin's poem, but revolves around the anguish of the poet's belief in Christianity.

The image above, one of several I have taken of this building, is cropped square, and is essentially symmetrical. I liked the overlapping reflections, the contrast of light and shade, the angularity, and the clouds glimpsed through the hole in the structure. When I looked up to take the shot I had no thoughts about life, death or religion. However, in a photograph of this building posted a while ago I did say it reminded me of a deeply boring Channel 4 (UK) station ident!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 40mm (80mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

I have eaten the plums

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Development in the arts often seems to follow the principle of Newton's Third Law of Motion: "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." Thus, Post-Modernist painting eschews traditional oil paint, technical proficiency and representation. In their place we find elephant dung, dead animals, diamonds and running men (among other materials), with teams assembling an "installation" or "piece" under the artist's direction, and works being described as "ideas". Similarly in music, the Minimalists led by Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass cast aside the complexity of Modernism for austerity, small ensembles and repetition.

In poetry, the British and American poets of the Imagist school of the early twentieth century reacted against the "genteel" style, florid description and imagery of the Victorians and their imitators, preferring pared down verse that captured the instant and used the natural object itself rather than an abstraction. This condensed poetry is best exemplified by Ezra Pound's work that (according to the author) began life as a thirty-nine line poem, was cut to half that length six months later, and a year afterwards achieved its final form as a single sentence:

In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

However, it wasn't Pound that came to mind when I was photographing the bowl of plums above, but another Imagist, William Carlos Williams (1883-1963). This, probably his best known poem, features that particular fruit:

This Is Just To Say
I have eaten
the plums... (click for full poem)

This work is also one of the most parodied of poems, particularly in schools, where pupils are frequently asked to write their "own version". What a dull task!

Oh, and yes, I have eaten the plums!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f16
Shutter Speed: 1.3
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off