The Quintains
Revised and Republished
I have just produced a revised (and much-improved) version of The Quintains, excerpts of which I’ve posted here over recent months. The full collection can now be read in the attached pdf.
The text is print-ready and tablet-friendly, so I encourage you to take an hour or two (it is ‘only’ 40 pages) to absorb it in isolation.
If The Quintains have a unifying theme, that theme is agnosticism—of more than one kind.
Thanks for reading.
When I got to the lines ‘Sometimes, one should be mystified,| and wonder over contents, truly wonder;| as though one glimpsed the passage of an ark’, I thought yes that’s what reading these quintains feels like, though perhaps it’s a flotilla of small mysteriously lit arks. I read them aware of much not understanding on my part but nevertheless appreciating the light and shade running through the earlier ones, the intent gaze at death later, and the way so many thoughts were crystallised into fascinating images. Just to pick out a few: the ‘lizard’s dream luxuriating’, the ‘black-clad men of dawn| who pass you going through revolving doors’, brushing strands of hair for managing the paths of life, the ‘carving of a profound absence’, ‘hare of the mind, hopeless tortoise heart’.
I’m guessing this mysterious and beautifully lit flotilla passing slowly in and out of sight is still searching for its destination. Which makes it all the more interesting.
congratulations, Huck!