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Monday 7 March 2011

Urban Pastoral Scene (mid-1940s)


.

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8a25000/8a25100/8a25177v.jpg

A child of white migrant in her playhouse. The rusted scales represented a clock to the little girl. Near Harlingen, Texas
: photo by Russell Lee, February 1939 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection)





In time we find three children, two pleasant girls,
one dumb boy, enjoying modest picnic mid junk
strewn vacant lot in life's brief eclogue of
passage through ambient mixed creation.
In the photo torn from the old album
the blank kid in the middle's me, sucking on
some milk, while the two girls -- script verso
in some anonymous ancient hand
identifies them as Jane and Suellen,
grimy cherubic charmers, imperfectly
recalled, fair, brown-haired, freckled secret
sharers of archaic lunch time -- munch huge
sandwiches that dwarf the tiny fists which
hungrily clutch them, much as life's to be clutched,
as though a whole world were there to be eaten.





http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8a25000/8a25100/8a25178v.jpg

A child of white migrant in her playhouse. Near Harlingen, Texas
: photo by Russell Lee, February 1939 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection)

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8a25000/8a25100/8a25179v.jpg

A child of white migrant. Near Harlingen, Texas
: photo by Russell Lee, February 1939 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection)

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8a00000/8a00100/8a00145v.jpg

Small girls sitting in doorway of house in Georgetown, Washington, D.C.
: photo by Carl Mydans for US Resettlement Administration, September 1935 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection)

2 comments:

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Tom,

Something about these Russell Lees (always moving, elegaic -- everyone 'here' most likely no longer still here. . . .

"as though the whole world were there. . ."

3.8

grey whiteness of fog against invisible
top of ridge, green of leaves on branch
in foreground, sound of wave in channel

memory of the appearance of,
body of consciousness

given objects, construction,
dimensional phenomena

sunlight reflected in windblown channel,
whiteness of gull flapping toward ridge

TC said...

Steve,

memory of the appearance of,
body of consciousness

given objects, construction,
dimensional phenomena

prompted A. to think of that little girl's "rusted scales [that] represented a clock".


As Issa did (not) say,

The world of representation
is the world of representation
and yet... and yet...