Not Even The Rain

We’ve been watching series one of The Hour recently, the missus and I. For some reason we missed it first time round but then watched series two, so we’ve been catching up. In episode three there’s a part where smartarse Freddy quotes some poetry. I recognised it and later realised it was the last verse of an E E Cummings poem. It goes like this…

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

…which is quite lovely really, especially the last line. E E Cummings wrote thousands of poems, playing about with syntax and form, wilfully disregarding punctuation and spelling. Having an art and design background he liked to think about how poems would look on the page.

I like this naughty one too…

The problem with Cummings is his stuff has turned into the kind of faux-philosophy quotes you see on fridge magnets, mouse mats, cloth bags and ‘inspirational’ posters, and worse the kind of thing some folk get tattooed on their inner arm. Not Cummings fault but still.

This is a picture of French actress Lizzie Brochere, who plays smartarse Freddy’s wife in series two of The Hour.

And this is some jazz…

Slim’s Jam