From Pen to Hook: Part 19

"Well, we have come this far." is the ending of "Cirque d'Hiver," the early Bishop poem that inspired this delightful rug. The poem is about a mechanical toy: a cantering horse with a twirling dancer on its back -- an object that seems both inanimate and animate at the same time. It is the penultimate image I will post. We have come quite far in this series and this charming image is one of my favourites. Seemingly purely descriptive, this poem carries with it a good deal of mystery, evoked in the very motion of the object, which moves in the poem without any apparent assistance from a human hand. I love that big key under the horse's belly.