Simon Armitage's poem "The Cinderella of Ferndale" (in "The Unaccompanied", Faber & Faber 2017) taught me the name of something by describing an activity I don't think I've seen in a poem before: "In that small town / there was hardly a foot she hadn’t dressed / or clamped and sized in the Brannock Device, / and barely a toe that hadn’t blenched / at the force of her thumb as she prodded and pressed." Charles Brannock patented his first prototype in 1925, and although I haven't put my foot in a Brannock Device for a long time, I remember the feeling of having my foot "clamped and sized" in one. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 20 August 2021)
 |
No comments:
Post a Comment