Enno's Frenched Beret

Enno's Frenched Beret: Object Post 107

Source? This is how Enno chooses to appear

Significance? The term and the image conjure Enno as a rather detached soubrette

 Fate? Like Enno, it’s eternal

Author’s inspiration? I wanted something stylish, off-beat and continental

***

gibsoned clogs and frenched beret 

Enno is the wistful spirit of the city. She’s not a ghost per se, but more like a genius locus; a minor goddess created by and through the city’s dark alleys and neon lights.

Nineteen or so? She'll grow no older;

lingeried in theatre flies; 

in the wings, in soubrette's pose

Enno is a natural around the theatre. She likes jazz clubs but not bars. She makes a lonely figure, but her sense of style is all her own and in a way that’s what she is; a style, an idea, an image of the evening.

Enno saunters through the close,

 with leather skirt and kohl-dark eyes,

 a teardrop bag swung over-shoulder,

 gibsoned clogs and frenched beret;

 crazy patterned, some do say.

Her face is pale and urchin-bright 

with nose tiptilted; double wings 

of hair in blackbird curve reflecting 

scattered light from corner signs.

That’s Enno, forever in present tense.

Enno’s name is as enigmatic as she is. It hints at the Italian, and she is surely continental. It’s a short little soubriquet, not-quite-a-palindrome, but beginning and ending with a vowel. The accent is on the first syllable.        However, it has belonged to Germans, Estonians and a Taiwanese singer. There’s nothing new under the sun.

ABOUT THE BLOG

Sally is Sally Odgers; author, anthologist and reader. You can find you way into her maze of websites and blogs via the portal here.(Sally is me, by the way.)

The goal for 2017 was to write a post a day profiling the background behind one of my books; how it came to be written, what it's about, and any things of note that happened along the way. 2017 is well behind us, but I ran out of year before running out of books. As of June 2018 I STILL hadn't run out of books, but many of those still to come are MIA by which I mean I don't have copies and remember little about them. There are more new books in the pipeline, and I'm certainly showcasing those, but in between times, I'm profiling some of my characters, places, objects and themes. Thank you so much to everyone who's come along on this journey so far!