Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925–2006)

"It doesn't greatly matter to me whether I'm using plants or trees or stones or words or events," the artist, poet and gardener Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925–2006) once told an interviewer; "the impulse is always to make a coherent order out of things." Through a carefully edited selection from a voluminous correspondence, A Model of Order tracks the unique arc of Finlay's development, from poet writing in Scots dialect, to Concrete poet, toymaker and deviser of poems and inscriptions in glass, wood and stone, installed in parks and gardens. The title derives from Finlay's famous definition of Concrete poetry as "a model of order, even if set in a space which is full of doubt," a definition conceived in correspondence with poet Pierre Garnier. Poet and editor Thomas A. Clark's selection of Finlay's letters―to Louis Zukofsky, Robert Creeley and Ernst Jandl among others―explicates a rigorous and moral vision of the act of making.… (mehr)

As w/ everything I've ever seen by Finlay, this bk is nicely crafted - &, of course, Black Sparrow Press did a good job too. I mainly think of Finlay as a Scottish Concrete Poet - but, then, I haven't read any of his short stories or plays. As the short bio about him in the back of the bk explains, he's often lived on islands - & many of the poems I've seen by him have to do w/ the sea & boats. These poems are often little more than lists of things like boat names or registration numbers arranged in a somewhat pictorial pattern. Such techniques(s) are usually associated w/ the 'avant-garde' but in Finlay's case it seems more folkish - maybe b/c of the subject matter, maybe b/c he makes sundials, maybe b/c his work has a seaside & rural sensibility. He's unique &, as always, that makes me like him.… (mehr)