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ABSTRACT
Started by Ian Hamilton Finlay and Jessie McGuffie in 1962, the little magazine Poor. Old. Tired. Horse. – along with the Wild Hawthorn Press which launched in 1961 – was an influential (and combative) presence within the small press milieu of the 1960s. Both magazine and press displayed a ‘constructive’ sensibility that encompassed geometric abstract painting, Russian constructivism, Op art, and concrete poetry. This constructive aesthetic often appeared in the context of relatively ‘square’ themes – teapots and old tired horses – that in the countercultural climate of liberated mind and body, seemed quaint. ‘Square’ therefore denotes a tendency toward the orthogonal (as opposed the curvilinear) and a sense of propriety that is deliberately unhip. In both cases, the ‘square’ nature of POTH was a critical incitement aimed at the Dionysian excesses of contemporary poetry, art and the Mimeo Revolution that propagated them.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Arthur Schopenhauer, The World As Will And Idea, trans. R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp (London: Kegan Paul, 1909), p. 455.
2 Simon Cutts, Some Forms of Availability: Critical Passages on the Book and Publication(New York: Granary Books, 2007), p. 77.
3 Cutts, p. 78.
4 Edwin Morgan, ‘Poor. Old. Tired. Horse.’, in Alec Finlay (ed.), Wood Notes Wild: Essays on the Poetry and Art of Ian Hamilton Finlay (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1995), pp. 26–27.
5 Morgan, pp. 26–27.
6 For a detailed account of Finlay’s relationship with the Scottish Renaissance and how he combated its parochialism, see Ross Hair, Avant-Folk: Small Press Poetry Networks from 1950 to the Present (Liverpool Liverpool University Press, 2016), pp. 70–74.
7 Morgan, p. 26.
8 Stephen Bann, ‘Ian Hamilton Finlay: An Imaginary Portrait’, in Alec Finlay (ed.), Wood Notes Wild: Essays on the Poetry and Art of Ian Hamilton Finlay (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1995), pp. 55–79, p. 59
9 E. M. de Melo e Castro, ‘Poetry Prose and the Machine’, TLS, 3143 (25 May 1962), p. 373.
10 Augusto de Campos, Haroldo de Campos, and Decio Pignatari, ‘Pilot Plan for Concrete Poetry’, in Mary Ellen Solt (ed.), Concrete Poetry: A World View (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968), pp. 71–72, p. 72.
11 De Campos, et al., p. 72.
12 Ian Hamilton Finlay, A Model of Order: Selected Letters on Poetry and Making, ed. Thomas A. Clark (Glasgow: WAX366, 2009), p. 16.
13 McGuffie’s involvement with the Wild Hawthorn Press ceased in December 1963 when she moved to New York. Shortly after, Finlay met his future wife Sue MacDonald-Lockhart who succeeded McGuffie as co-editor.
14 Ian Hamilton Finlay to Ronald Johnson, February 3 [1964], Box: 24, Folder: 12. Ronald Johnson papers, MS 66. University of Kansas. Kenneth Spencer Research Library.
15 In 1959 Turnbull started the Migrant magazine (followed by the Migrant Press in 1960), while living in Ventura, California. Situated in Worcester, Turnbull’s friend Michael Shayer was Migrant’s UK editor.
16 Ian Hamilton Finlay, letter to Cid Corman, Origin, 6 (1962), pp. 1-2, p. 2.
17 Jonathan Williams, The Magpie’s Bagpipe: Selected Essays, ed. Thomas Meyer (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1982), p. 12.
18 Bill Vaughan, Hawthorn: The Tree that Has Nourished, Healed, and Inspired Through the Ages (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2015), pp. 5–6.
19 Ian Hamilton Finlay, untitled insert, Poor. Old. Tired. Horse., 3 (1962), np.
20 Ian Hamilton Finlay, Selections, ed. Alec Finlay (Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), p. xx.
21 Quoted in Gael Turnbull, More Words: Gael Turnbull on Poets and Poetry, eds. Jill Turnbull and Hamish Whyte (Bristol: Shearsman, 2012), p. 35.
22 Duncan Glen, ‘Some Thoughts and Reminiscences’, Chapman, 78–79 (1994), p. 27.
23 Glen, p. 27.
24 Hugh MacDiarmid, The Letters of Hugh MacDiarmid, ed. Alan Bold (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1984), p. 813.
25 Finlay, untitled insert, np.
26 Giles Gordon, New Saltire, 4 (Summer 1962), np.
27 Robert Creeley, Collected Poems, 1945–1975 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), p. 156.
28 Ian Hamilton Finlay, review of The Scots Literary Tradition by John Speirs, New Saltire, 4 (Summer 1962), pp, 79–81, pp. 79, 80.
29 Finlay, Selections, p. xx.
30 Anton Chekhov, The Short Stories, ed. Robert N. Linscott (New York: The Modern Library, 1959), pp. 108–109.
31 Finlay, Selections, p.xx.
32 Ian Hamilton Finlay, The Dancers Inherit the Party and Glasgow Beasts: Early Poems and Stories, ed. Ken Cockburn (Edinburgh: Polygon, 2004), p. 126.
33 Robert Tait, ‘The Concreteness of a Wild Hawthorn’, Extra Verse, 15 (Spring, 1965), pp. 1–13, p. 1.
34 Cutts, p. 78.
35 Finlay, letter to Corman, p. 2.
36 Quoted in Michael Davidson, The San Francisco Renaissance: Poetics and Community at Mid-Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 49.
37 Davidson, p. 49.
38 Michael Horovitz, ‘Afterwords’, in Michael Horowitz (ed.), Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), pp. 316–77, pp. 317, 349.
39 Friederich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy or Hellenism and Pessimism, trans. Wm. A. Haussmann (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1923), p. 21.
40 Nietzsche, p. 169.
41 Michael White, ‘Nietzsche and the Artist’, in Paul Smith and Carolyn Wilde (eds.), A Companion to Art Theory (Oxford: Wiley, 2002), pp. 183–95, p. 185.
42 Nietzsche, p. xix.
43 Nietzsche, pp. 25–26.
44 Nietzsche, p. 128.
45 Nietzsche, p. 128.
46 Nietzsche, p. 129.
47 Nietzsche, pp. xviii–xix.
48 Nietzsche, p. 41.
49 Nietzsche, p. 98.
50 Daniel Belgrad, The Culture of Spontaneity: Improvisation and the Arts in Postwar America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 15.
51 Nietzsche, p. 42.
52 Michael McClure, ‘From a Journal’, in Donald Allen (ed.), The New American Poetry, 1945–1960 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), pp. 421–24, p. 423.
53 Frank O’Hara, The Collected Poems, ed. Donald Allen (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), p. 498.
54 Quoted in Frank O’Hara, Art Chronicles: 1954–1966 (New York: George Braziller, 1975), p. 39; Donald Allen, ‘Preface’, in Donald Allen (ed.), The New American Poetry: 1945–1960 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), pp. xi–xiv, p. xii.
55 Evelyn Toynton, Jackson Pollock (New Haven and London; Yale University Press, 2012), p. 53.
56 Toynton, pp. 52, 53.
57 Alan Fowler, Towards a Rational Aesthetic: Constructive Art in Post-war Britain (London: Osborne Samuel, 2007), p. 6.
58 Stephen Bann, ‘A Context for Concrete Poetry’, in Francis Warner (ed.), Studies in the Arts: Proceedings of St. Peter’s College Literary Society (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1968), pp. 131–49, p. 132.
59 Fowler, p. 6.
60 Stephen Bann, ‘Introduction: Constructivism and Constructive Art in the Twentieth Century’, in Stephen Bann (ed.) The Tradition of Constructivism (New York: The Viking Press, 1974), pp. xxv–xlix, p. xxviii.
61 Ian Hamilton Finlay to Ronald Johnson, August 2 [1964], Box: 24, Folder: 77. Ronald Johnson papers, MS 66. University of Kansas. Kenneth Spencer Research Library.
62 Finlay, A Model, p. 38.
63 Anonymous, Tarasque, 9 (1970), np. The tone and biographical detail of these comments, cited as part Tarasque’s editorial, suggest Finlay is the author.
64 Stephen Bann, Midway: Letters from Ian Hamilton Finlay to Stephen Bann 1964–69 (London: Wilmington Square Books, 2014), p. 110.
65 Ian Hamilton Finlay to Ronald Johnson, October 10, [1964], Box: 24, Folder: 6. Ronald Johnson papers, MS 66. University of Kansas. Kenneth Spencer Research Library.
66 Anonymous, np.
67 Bann, Midway, p. 99.
68 Ron Loewinsohn, ‘After the (Mimeograph) Revolution’, TriQuarterly (Spring, 1970), pp. 22–36, p. 222.
69 Anonymous, np.
70 Ian Hamilton Finlay to Ronald Johnson, September 21st [1967], Box: 24, Folder: 26. Ronald Johnson papers, MS 66. University of Kansas. Kenneth Spencer Research Library.
71 Piero Sanavio, review of Concrete Poetry. An International Anthology, by ed. Stephen Bann, and Height Texts + One, by Jean-François Bory, Leonardo, 1.2 (April 1968), pp. 203–204, p. 203.
72 ‘The Beatnik in the Kailyard’ is the title of Edwin Morgan’s essay in New Saltire Review, 3 (1962), pp. 65–74.
73 Alec Finlay, ‘The Dewy Glen’, in Ian Hamilton Finlay and Alec Finlay (eds.), The Dancers Inherit the Party and Glasgow Beasts (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1996), p. 100.
74 Edward Lucie-Smith, ed., The Liverpool Scene (London: Donald Carroll, 1967). All three poets were included in the Liverpool poet Pete Roche’s anthology, Love, Love, Love: The New Love Poetry (London: Corgi Books, 1967).
75 Tait, p. 8.
76 Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems (San Francisco: City Lights, 1956), pp. 9, 10.
77 Ronald Johnson, ‘T Poem’, Poor. Old. Tired. Horse., (teapoth), 23 (1967), np.
78 Gael Turnbull, ‘Brewed’, Poor. Old. Tired. Horse., 23 (1967), np.
79 Finlay, Selections, p. xx.
80 T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1921), p. 53.
81 Jandl and Finlay, p. 38.
82 Writing to Ronald Johnson in 1964, Finlay recounts ‘a visit from John Silkin of Strand magazine, and his frightful wee poet friend Ken Smith, the ultimate in blue-jersied young bitter angry poets, very masculine fucking profile and all […]. They’re all worried about people or something, so you’re not allowed to talk about football or pop records […] or culture or beauty or music or painting, or anything except them. Ian Hamilton Finlay to Ronald Johnson, August 13, 1964, Box: 24, Folder: 5. Ronald Johnson papers, MS 66. University of Kansas. Kenneth Spencer Research Library.
83 Nietzsche, pp. 128–29; c.f. Cleanth Brooks, The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1947).
84 Reproduced in Finlay, Selections, p. 116.
85 In his poem ‘landsman’s tea / fisherman’s tea’, Finlay emphasises the strength of the latter by squaring the letter ‘t’. Fisherman’s tea is ‘t2’ whereas landsman’s tea is ‘t’. Finlay, Poor. Old. Tired. Horse., 23 (1967), np. Thanks to Alistair Peebles for this insight.
86 ‘I will tell you something that is not natural’, Finlay writes Johnson: ‘the angel. Mondrian was the great artist of the Right-Angel. The Right-Angel is the Archangel’. Ian Hamilton Finlay to Ronald, Johnson, April 20, 1967, Box: 24, Folder: 21. Ronald Johnson papers, MS 66. University of Kansas. Kenneth Spencer Research Library. See also Ross Hair, ‘Models of Order: Form and Cosmos in the Poetry of Ian Hamilton Finlay and Ronald Johnson’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 56.2 (Summer 2014), pp. 181–225.
87 Poor. Old. Tired. Horse., 5 (1962), cover.
88 Alec Finlay, p. 104.
89 Quoted in Alec Finlay, p. 107.
90 William McGonagall, ‘The Famous Tay Whale’, Poor. Old. Tired. Horse., 5 (1962), insert.
91 Gertrude Stein, Picasso (New York: Dover, 1984), p. 23.
92 Finlay, A Model, p. 22.
93 Nietzsche, pp. 24–25.
94 Kasimir Malevich, ‘Suprematism’, trans. Howard Dearstyne, in Robert L. Herbert (ed.), Modern Artists on Art, (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 2000), p. 119.
95 Malevich, p. 117.
96 Finlay, A Model, p. 22.
97 Finlay also produced a version of the poem that reproduces six of these square blocks as a cruciform. See Finlay, Selections, p. 136.
98 Susan Howe, “The End of Art.” Archives of American Art Journal, 14.4 (1974), pp. 2–7, p. 7.
99 E. H. Gombrich, Mediations on a Hobby Horse and Other Essays on the Theory of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 3.
100 Gombrich, p. 3.
101 Gombrich, p. 2.
102 Gombrich, p. 4.
103 Gombrich., p. 4.
104 Donald Kuspit, The Critic is Artist: The Intentionality of Art (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984), p. 155.
105 Malevich, p. 118.
106 Plato, Philebus, trans. J. C. B. Gosling (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), p. 51.
107 Josef Albers, ‘The Artist’s Voice’ (1962), in Josef Albers: Minimal Means Maximal Effect (Madrid: Fundación Juan March, 2014), p. 288.
108 Albers, p. 287.
109 Finlay, A Model, pp. 27-28.
110 William C. Seitz, The Responsive Eye (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1965), p. 7.; Finlay, A Model, p. 28; Ian Hamilton Finlay, ‘Three Optical Poems’ Lugano Review, 1.1 (1965), pp. 61–64.
111 Jeffrey Steele, ‘Cicerone’, The Anglo-Welsh Review, 16.38 (Winter 1967), pp. 55–67, p. 56.
112 Steele, p. 56.
113 Steele, p. 56.
114 Ian Hamilton Finlay, ‘ajar’, Poor. Old. Tired. Horse., 12 (1964), np.
115 Steele, p. 58.
116 Natalie Ferris, Abstraction in Post-War British Literature, 1945–1980 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), p. 83.
117 See Ginsberg, title page.
118 Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception (New York: Harper & Row, 1954), p. 191.
119 William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (Boston: John W. Luce & Co., 1906), p. 26.
120 Finlay, Selections, p. 120.
121 Wallace Stevens, ‘Anecdote of the Jar’, Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, 15.1 (October, 1919), p. 8.
122 Ian Hamilton Finlay to Ronald Johnson, 21 Sep, Box: 24, Folder: 26. Ronald Johnson papers, MS 66. University of Kansas. Kenneth Spencer Research Library.
123 Greg Thomas, Border Blurs: Concrete Poetry in England and Scotland (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2019), p. 51.
124 Ian Hamilton Finlay to Ronald Johnson, February 13, 1969, Box: 24, Folder: 36. Ronald Johnson papers, MS 66. University of Kansas. Kenneth Spencer Research Library.
125 Bann, Midway, pp. 300–301.
126 Finlay, A Model, pp. 39–40.
127 See Hair,‘Models of Order’, pp. 214–15.
128 ‘Temple of Apollo’ description, Little Sparta: The Garden of Ian Hamilton Finlay. https://www.littlesparta.org.uk/temple-of-apollo/. [Accessed June 28, 2022].