Acrostic poem

Stanley wrote acrostic poems the way some people do The Times crossword.
Inspired by an exhibition at the National Portrait gallery.

Julia Margaret Cameron

For the Birthday of Ian Prickett

Fourth of April 1990

 

Jarry was born about the time that these

Unfocussed  and eccentric portraits were

Let loose upon the world  - a living frieze

Inspired by more than love: beards framed from fur:

Angels with wings slipped off like bathing suits;

Majestic manes; frowns; stares; close-clustered hands;

Archaic crumplings covering buttoned boots;

Real characters from lost romantic lands

Glimpsed through their pupils' commas; essayists

And painters in cocoons of velvet folds

Rounding-off corners... They exhaust the lists

England's scribes scribbled. Sepia shines with golds

To light ways back a century or more.

Creating fresh Freshwaters in the mind.

Aunts, parents might have looked like this, their poor

Mortality hedged in with leaves she'd find

Eavesdropping; earmarked bookwormed buds that spring

Rings still round roads today. Science and art

Overtake time, despair and each new thing.

No face, once captured here may dare depart.

31 March 1990

Victoria - Hyde Park

Heathrow - Windsor

Stanley Chapman 1925-2009

This blog is dedicated to Stanley Chapman, pataphysician, Oulipian, poet, translator, designer, artist....

I'm helping to tidy up his archive with Juliet Wilson-Bareau, the art historian. However, there are things we don't know about Stanley and his life and work. We'd be delighted to receive reminiscences of Stanley to publish here eventually,

We'd also like to hear from people with letters, writings, translations, pictures by Stanley for future reference- but we don't want them sending to us yet. We have problems enough sorting and ordering what we do have.