Tuesday, November 08, 2022

Happy centenary …

Ronald Blythe at 100: ‘A watchful, curious and gratefully amazed vision of life’. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

A life rooted in East Anglia has given Blythe a rare depth of vision. His writing is attuned to the physicality of existence, attentive to the world around him, and always listening to people and other species, as here, in June:

Early morning in the heatwave, the air still and sullen, the trees cardboard shapes, the birds silent. One can almost hear the dead rose-petals falling. David’s corn is a motionless bluey-green sea. At the moment, the day is holding back its potential and seems uncommitted, but in a little while the sun will spin up in the east like a gold coin. Yesterday, the washing dried in an hour.

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