Posts Tagged Constable

DEDHAM VALE REVISITED

Posted by David Selzer in Poetry on October 30th, 2009

Dedham Vale, John Constable, 1802

Dedham Vale, John Constable, 1828

September touches the Vale like a sigh,

a mellow, fruitful suspiration

edging from green to lemon, agitating

gently the skieyest leaves. The Stour

meanders to a sea of clouds vanishing

over an unimaginable Europe.

Dedham Church, a testament to wool,

focuses an especial scene: Saxon names,

corn marigolds, skylarks and enclosures.

After Napoleon, Peterloo and his wife’s

slow death, another canvas shows the same

landscape. New buildings exploit the river

and the church tower is luminous yet

vulnerable, not focal, to a whorl

of cumulus billowing from beyond

the horizon over dark, distressed elms.

Crouched under the overgrown bank of a lane,

the last you see of the painting, with her tent

and her cooking pot, a tramp woman

nurses a child under the tumbling sky.

Constable, cumulous, Dedham Vale, distressed, elms, marigolds, Napoleon, Petersfield, Saxon, skylarks, Stour, tramp, tumbling

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Posted by David Selzer in Screenplays on April 14th, 2009

THE MEMORIAL is a feature length screenplay. Set in the immediate aftermath of the First World War (against a background of mutinies and the influenza pandemic), it is a love story, which explores class, religious prejudice and anti-war issues through the eyes of Captain Edward Standish.

Much of the action takes place at Edward’s country seat, an east Midlands village dominated by a colliery, as well as in London where Edward falls in love with an artist, Clara Zeligman. Edward has to choose between Clara and and his fiancée, the Honourable Charlotte Antrobus.

The story also takes us to Flanders where Edward faced the toughest choice of his military career – an event which haunts him throughout the story.

You can download this screenplay as a .pdf

1919, 20th century, abattoir, accidents, Anger, Armistice, Athenaeum, Bolsheviks, British Museum, Canada, chauffeur, chignon, colliery, Constable, cruciform, Durham, East European, Embankment, firing squad, First World War, Flanders, fox trot, Germany, High Victorian Gothic, Horse Guards, Household Cavalry, influenza, Jews, Limestone, Lithuanis, London, memorial, midden, Midlands, miner, mining disaster, mourning, mutiny, pacifist, Palladian, Parish Council, Peace Conference, pernicious anaemia, river, Rools Royce, Russia, shetl, Soho, suffragette, swifts, Tate, trenches, Unkown Soldier, Victoria Cross, Victoria Garderns, War Office, whisky, Whitehall, winding gear, wine

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David Selzer

Posts Tagged Constable

DEDHAM VALE REVISITED

THE MEMORIAL by David Selzer © 2008

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