Originally published in Points West magazine
Summer 2016
Shakespeare’s Musing at the Antique Barbed Wire Convention
a.k.a. Fencing with Shakespeare
a.k.a. Bard learns barb
By Kelli Grinich
Ed. Note: In 2015, Oregonian Kelli Grinich received a fellowship from the Buffalo Bill Center of the West for research related to her upcoming book of poetry and essays titled Meditations on Barbed Wire and Western Landscapes. As she traversed the West through the Center’s collections, photographs, and historical documents, she came across a brief detour named “inspiration” that created the piece below.
Kelli’s muse was barbed wire, and it soon had her juxtaposing fences with fencing, and barbs with bards—as in Shakespeare… It’s a bit different than our usual content, but a clever and whimsical take on barbed wire that we’d like to share.
“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will.”
lug
arch
notch
zig zag
take-up knots
twisted oval
interlace
crimp
“Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.”
corner cut
undulating
double coil
spiraling groove
cross wire
slot joint
“Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.”
serrate
pie-twist
fluted strand
razor ribbon
perforate
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
horns
tack-studded
swinging plate
Lord’s spinner
channeled wire
clip-on
“When Love speaks, the voice of all the gods makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.”
hitch
ring locked
grip mounted
diamond point
central tongues
visible spread
friction lock
laced on
“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.”
traps
knife-edge
auger-pointed
warning blocks
military entanglement
spear-point barb
thorns
“We know what we are, but not what we may be.”
expansion, contraction
projection, looping
parallel, opposing
corrugated, smooth
“Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.”
metallic bur
sheet metal star
twelve point barb wheel
spur rowel
caduceus
“Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnight till it be morrow.”
descending square
riding wire
S-shape
wave
turn
fin
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