We take other men’s knowledge and opinions upon trust; which is an idle and superficial learning. We must make it our own. We are in this very like him, who having need of fire, went to a neighbor’s house to fetch it, and finding a very good one there, sat down to warm himself without remembering to carry any with him home… What good does it do us to have the stomach full of meat, if it do not digest, if it be not incorporated with us, if it does not nourish and support us?

Rhetoric, simply put, is the study of how language works to persuade. So any writer seeking to make a case, or hold a reader’s attention — which is more or less any writer not in the service of the Democratic It does help to keep in mind that, as Aristotle wrote, you have three forms of power over the reader: ethos, pathos and logos. That is, roughly: selling yourself, swaying the emotions and In Libya, in the Sahara, the oilmen wouldn’t have been interested so Other Men’s Flowers was my private comfort. In Saudi Arabia there were times when stress levels were high and I needed to remind myself of the monumental pressures borne by others such as Wavell, and of the humanity that still shone through them.The project has produced an exciting and innovative publication that intrinsically embodies the elegant but underused printing technique of letterpress ... that has allowed and encouraged many hitherto solely image-based artists an opportunity to operate within the realms of ‘copy writing’, providing them with a platform from which to sound off any phrase, slang discovery, polemical essay or related literary form ... the participants produced works that responded to the given brief of a letterpress printed text piece. (Quoted in Cooper, p.116.) Jeremy Cooper, no FuN without U: the art of Factual Nonsense, London 2000, pp.10, 12, 30, 75-6, 78-9, 89-90, 114-21, 179-80, 184 and 221, reproduced (colour) p.119

stand for [good thing]”— disguised as a piece of argument. Note how it is inflated for musical reasons by the extra syllables “he does about” and the repetition of “America’s”; If the classical orators have modern counterparts in the realm of the written word, pre-eminent among those counterparts are the authors of opinion pieces. Here is persuasion overt, persuasion front and center. The These last 30 years in the UK, coping or not coping with national and international responsibilities, it’s been a pleasure and a release to delve into the anthology for words of support and strength and for echoes of fellow-travellers through the ups and downs of life. Right now, with my condition, I find solace. Other Men's Flowers is a portfolio of text-based prints by fifteen London artists curated by Joshua Compston (1970-96). It was printed by Thomas Shaw and Simon Redington and published by Charles Booth-Clibborn under his imprint, The Paragon Press. Compston took the title, Other Men's Flowers, from an anthology of wartime poetry compiled by Field-Marshal Viscount Wavell (1883-1950) of the same title (published 1944). Wavell had derived the phrase from a well-known quotation attributed to French moralist Montaigne (Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, 1533-92), 'I have gathered a posie of other men's flowers and nothing but the thread which binds them is my own' (quoted in Cooper, p.115). Montaigne's original sentence, published in his Essais ( Essays) in 1580, provided an apparently modest disclaimer, anticipating criticism of the originality of his ideas. For Compston, it provided an apt poetic metaphor for the role of the curator. Other Men's Flowers was launched at a party on 23 June 1994 in a derelict sawmill close to Hoxton Square, East London, a centre for young British artists at that time. Compston wrote in his press release:epistrophe— where the repetition comes at the end rather than the beginning of a sentence. But repetition applies at a subtler level, too. The memorable or resonant phrase, for instance, is often In the book the poems are arranged in themes: Music, Mystery and Magic ; Good Fighting ; Love And All That ; The Call Of The Wild ; Conversation Pieces ; The Lighter Side ; Hymns of Hate ; Ragbag ; Last Post. Now think about this: what part of our lives, our experiences, our triumphs and disasters, would not fit under those headings? Most of mine have, and still do. Over the years I’ve used the book often, with little attempt to memorise any of it but knowing where to look for favourites and answers. A few short ones have stayed in the memory however, and the rhythm of many others.