#derivation2

  The typewriter has six lines of a poem on ruach. Dust on the piano.   ₁   as if the words, like leaves, like dust stumbled against a break in the pavement, congress of weeds and shadow.   ₂   after a pause spent in puttering about   ₃ puttering in mud with his head down we enter the area he calls the cropped meadow.   ₄   “puttering” and drawing.   ₅ as much about concrete as about the woods.   ₆ He drew a few lines to indicate the streets   and it looked like the branch of a tree with names standing out in the twigs. The writing on it had muddled for him.   ₇   He stared out of the window and appeared to be watching the clouds above the trees.   Sometimes he closed his eyes.   ₈

—

sources :

1 Julius Horwitz. “The Voices,” in The City (1953) : 184-196 (185) / more at putterings 604 Abstract painting has given dignity to people’s puttering with colors. / 190 2 2901a 20250204 3 Helen Van Valkenburgh. “The Little Grey Car.” The Black Cat 21:3 (December 1915) : 32-37 (34) / more at putterings 619 4 Hatsy Shields. “In the Garden / Plots and Plans” (on Ken Druse his garden). House Beautiful : 141:5 (May 1999) : 68, (86), 89 / more at putterings 618 5 Steven W. Naifeh. Jackson Pollock : An American Saga (1989) : 819 / more at putterings 602 6 Susan Glaspell. Ambrose Holt and Family (1931) : 27 borrowable at archive.org : link 7 Anne Ryan. “The Darkest Leaf.” Botteghe Oscure 22 (1958) : 272-306 / paragraphs 34 and 31 transcription at asfaltics 2953_ryan-darkest-leaf.htm 8 Robert Seethaler. The Last Movement (2020; Charlotte Collins, trans., 2026) : 43

—

The aphasic patient, with his involuntary use of ready-made sentences unadapted to what he wants to express...   ₉

9 Th(éophile) Alajouanine. “Aphasia and Artistic Realization,” Brain 71:3 (September 1948) : 229-241 (230) archive.org : link  

  she enjoys puttering around the house with minor repairs and is a whiz at plumbing  ₁ puttering, painting, puppets, performing and infinite variety of off duty occupations   ₂ Low Budget. Woodsy country living.   $14,750 plus some puttering & painting   ₃ puttering, painting, exchanging jokes... writing copious letters   ₄ dropped the pencil he’d been puttering with, and said “A man’s got to eat.”   ₅   Soup is a puttering affair.   ₆

—

sources :

1 Anne Gisonny on “A ‘Real’ Heroine,” in chapter “Category Romance Mini-Course,” in Kathryn Falk, ed., How to Write a Romance and Get It Published : With intimate advice from the world’s most popular romantic writers (1983; Signet revised edition 1990) : 182-196 (191) / more at putterings 601 2 Rod Young, “Punch’s Mailbox,” in Puppetry Journal 9:1 (July-August 1957) : 28 / more at putterings 605 3 “Homes For Sale / Marin County,” in the (San Rafael, California) Independent-Journal (March 11, 1966) : 24 / more at putterings 606 4 Ed Kiester, “Canada’s Chester Ronning : One Man’s Attempt to Bring Peace to Vietnam” in the Parade supplement, (Long Beach, California) Independent Press-Telegram (Sunday, June 6, 1967) : 21-22 / more at putterings 607 5 Samuel Hopkins Adams, The Clarion; illustrations by W. D. Stevens (1914) : 124 / more at putterings 610 6 Wings of Life : Vegetarian Cookery by Julie Jordan (1976) : 139 / more at putterings 614  

                                          puttering around the kitchen   ₁   unironed                                 puttering about his little garden and among   ₂                         puttering and sputtering about some inconsequential                 method   ₃   hustling puttering sputtering         snappy every pain seems to start   ₄ midday clouds of nothing   ₁

—

sources :

1 “Still Life,” the first of three Ciné-poèmes (“Shine-poēmu sanpen”) by Kawaji Ryūkō, in Aishō 4, no. 12 (1929), 10–11. translated by Andrew Pasquale Campana in his Poetry Across Media in 20th-Century Japan (Harvard dissertation, 2018) : 38-39 / more at putterings 600 2 Susan M. Griffith, “Uncle Simon’s Turkey,” in The Christian Herald (New York; November 27, 1907) : 1013, 1027 / more at putterings 599 3 A. E. Winship, LL.D., Danger Signals for Teachers (Chicago, 1919) : 187 / more at putterings 598 4 Frank Kraft, M.D., “The Therapeutics of Diarrhea” (conclusion), in The American Homeopathist 22:2 (New York; January 16, 1896) : 27-32 (31) / more at putterings 597  

₁

puttering by the sink, cleaning up some — an odd thing to do, something that could wait   ₂   All her life   she had been hurrying and sputtering, as if she had been born behind time and had been trying to catch up.   Now   ₃   enough time for puttering; enough thin books of   ₄

—

sources :

1 photograph, found in 32 pieces, Market Basket parking lot (Somerville, Massachusetts, ca 2000) 2 W. B. Pescosolido, “Mother,” in Indiana Review (Fall 1993) / more at putterings 594 3 Willa Sibert Cather, The Song of the Lark (1915) : 299 / more at putterings 596 4 ex portrait of Robert Frost, in Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant her Fire Under the Andes : A Group of North American Portraits (1927) : 288 / more at putterings 595  

  What a difference a little puttering makes!

ex Ruth Murrin [Ruth Boyle Wiseman], “The Beauty Clinic,” in Good Housekeeping (1944?) : 153

more on, and from, and further from this, at putterings 593  

  cluttering, puttering  ₁ One of the things I puttering, and playing the hi-fi with that telepathy people develop when  ₂ complicated by a puttering   any puttering carpentry of squeezing words one labored sentence and I still puttering a puttering, part-time job  ₃   puttering, cluttering, making messes and leaving them about  ₄

—

sources :

1 Charles Godfrey Leland, “Pau-Puck Kee-wis,” in Mother Pitcher’s Poems for Little People (Philadephia: Frederick Leypoldt, 1864) : 49-50 / more at putterings 592

2 Diane DiPrima, excerpt from Memoirs of a Beatnik (1969) in June Skinner Sawyers, ed., The Greenwich Village Reader : Fiction, Poetry, and Reminiscences, 1872-2002 (Cooper Square Press, 2001) : 432-439 (438) / more at putterings 590

3 four instances, from Percy Shostac, 14th Street : A Novel in Verse. Illustrated by Kurt Wiese (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1930) / more at putterings 589

4 Dorothy Barclay, Understanding the City Child : A Book for Parents (1959) : 73 / more at putterings 591  

  Humph! Always puttering in his shop, tinkering with those impossible dolls,  ₁ puttering with oyster shells.   puttering, yes sir, tired of fiddling. What’s the use?  ₂ Sere wilderness puttering.  ₃   “puttering around” in the soil, shortening new growth, cutting away dead and injured wood.  ₄ I never run a lawn mower.  ₅

—

sources :

1 Harry L. Newton The Spark of Life, Fantastic Comedy in Three Acts (Chicago: T. S. Denison & Company, 1917) : 12 / more at putterings 587

2 Carabel L. Munger, Just Like a Woman, A comedietta (Chicago: T. S. Denison & Company, 1912) : 4, 5 / more at putterings 586

3 Elmer Willis Sere, “Mob Mind and Hysteria” (taken from “Neale’s Monthly”), in “Wisdom for the Times. A Weekly Searchlight on Thought and Ideas,” in T.P.’s Weekly (October 3, 1913) : 430 / more at putterings 585

sēr(e adj. — [a] Of plants: dry, withered; dead; also, bare; of a wooden idol: dried out; [b] of the body or part of it: dry, emaciated, shriveled; [c] appearing burnt in color, ?yellowish-brown; [d] brittle, easily broken; [e] of one’s soul, thoughts: barren, lifeless, useless; [f] in surnames. ex Middle English Compendium : link

4 Lucius M. Wilcox, Irrigation Farming : A Handbook for the proper application of water in the production of crops (Revised and enlarged edition, 1907) : 293 / more at putterings 584

5 “The Art of Puttering,” from the syndicated column “Along Life’s Trail” by Thomas Arkle Clark, encountered in The Urbana Daily Courier (Saturday, October 1, 1927) / more at putterings 588  

  “Like as not he’s puttering round, man fashion, washing up the supper dishes.”  ₁  still puttering about in characteristic fashion, debating the policy involved in  ₂ aandacht voor het vertoon   external signs  ₃ custom cutter, style or puttering clothes do make the man always puttering and fuming about trying   from which it will be seen that Spring is intensely practical.  ₄

—

sources :

1 Donald D. Garcelon, “Aunt Matilda’s Visitor,” The Harvard Advocate 69:9 (Cambridge, Mass., June 22, 1900) : 141-142 / more 2 from the second of eight public letters from the local newspapers, presented toward the end of James K. Shen, “The Arrest of Chinese in Cleveland,” The Chinese Students’ Monthly 21:3 (January 1926) : 39-54 / more 3 ex Sociological Abstracts 38 (1990) : 1096 entry for Loosveldt, Geert, Aandacht voor het vertoon: stijl of bricolage? (Attention to the External Signs: Style or Puttering?), Tijdschrift voor Sociologie, 1989, 10, 3-4, 479-507 / more 4 interview with Samuel H. Spring, Secretary, National Association of Merchant Tailors of America, in “Cleveland Chatter and Cartoons,” in Gentlemen’s Fashions (“Formerly Advanced Fashions and The Custom Cutter”) 8:2 (March 1913) : 82-86 / more