Pithy, evocative imagery in three-legged microcosms of meaning. Having coined the term ‘triologism’ I believe this to be the only collection of these tum-tee-tum phrases in the universe. Updated Tuesdays … triologism day!
Grey-eyed Athena
Much is made of Athena’s beautiful eyes; elsewhere they have a ‘prussic glare’ and are ‘wide-apart’. Remember, Athena is the...
Lacquer-black Vltava
Lovely vowel harmony in that 'lacquer-black', it deserves to entirely supplant the boringly bog standard 'pitch black'. Do me a...
Under-song voices
How lovely this idea, a bird's soft, sweet, seldom heard 'under-song'.
Shhh! Switch off the music, the television, the radio,...
Silver-plated water
I have seen beaten-bronze and copper-coloured water, but never silver-plated.
'The cool, placid, silver-plated water at even coolly awaits the...
Purple-streaked stems
I never knew that hemlock grew alongside English fields,
Of purple hue, it poisons you, and life to death it...
Beam-borne planks
A poetic description of an ancient and abandoned bell tower; somehow 'beam-borne' implies flying rather than static, and I liked...
Modern weapons meet ancient war
Logue regularly brings modern imagery into an account of ancient war. The Trojan war was a Bronze Age fight, yet...
Time as a hovering hawk
I am fascinated by perspectives of time, and here it’s memorably described as a rough-legged hawk, or, when it implodes,...
Deer-nibbled grass
We've been wondering if there is a way to deploy a sheep, goat or deer to mow the lawn without...
Well-disciplined eye
John Stilgoe describes Thoreau thus in his preface to the journals, highlighting Thoreau's well-disciplined eye and his awareness of the...
World-class Achilles
World-class Achilles – as a warrior yes, but as a man, there are other Homeric heroes more admirable, though most...
Dark-named destiny
Another term for death, the fate of Asios who, horse-proud, insisted on driving his chariot into the fray where he...
Like the pigeons in St Mark’s
An unusual way to capture ever-present memories, likening them to pigeons underfoot in the Piazza San Marco, cooing and strutting...
Star-streaming claws
Williamson's book is about otters and water, as the medium in which they thrive, mate, hunt, play and escape, bubbles and...
Bandy-legged mongrel
This is from a wonderful fictional account of the (real) first dog sent into space by the Soviets. Her life...
Tissue-thin vulnerability
Among other things, Sea Room is a study of human strategies for survival over millennia, of the fragility and tenacity...
Tempest-haunting birds
I picture scurf-surfing cormorants and carrion birds buffeted by winds in anticipation of sailors' corpses washing up on the wind-blasted...
Dull-eyed neutrality
A fine description of the impartial and indifferent gaze of age that has seen it all, in this case attributed...
Half-mummified rubbish
I am sure I have some of this down in the cellar. But what treasures can be unearthed from half-mummified...
Horn-pronged gables
This reminds me of some of the pointed and upturning gables and eaves in traditional Chinese and south-east Asian architecture.
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Interesting! Your triologisms remind me of the two-word kennings in Beowulf.