Category: Poetry Journals
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It seems that muses, those shadowy goddesses who influence writers, are limited under current editorial and employment injunctions to give inspiration alone to great male poets. Or so Simon Gough would have us believe.
Muses apparently perform some type of quasi-sexual inspirational function and it doesn’t matter if they are girls or boys, once the poet is a dude and his inspiration is carried through the ages to the makers of poetry. I wonder (aloud) if the linked article had been written by a female poet, a woman writer – would the muse issue be a bit more interesting, or complex ?
“There’s no reason on earth why a muse should have to be female. Whatever the truth of the matter (and uncertainty still rages in the higher corridors of intellectual power), the identity of “the fair youth”, to whom Shakespeare dedicated so many of his sonnets is almost immaterial. The one certainty is that he had a muse, who provoked
‘But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death drag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st.’Here is Simon’s top nine list of great poets and their muses :
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Catullus – Lesbia
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John Keats -Fanny Brawne
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Thomas Hardy – Emma Gifford/Florence Dugdale
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W.B Yeats – Maud Gonne
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F. Scott Fitzgerald -Zelda Fitzgerald
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Bob Dylan – Sarah Lowndes
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Neal Cassady -Jack Kerouac
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Robert Graves – Margot Callas
The woman muse (or sometimes the young boy muse) provides the meat and torture of poetic inspiration to a succession of male writers in Gough’s imagination. He makes no mention of the muses of Elizabeth Barrett-Browning, of Adrienne Cecile Rich, of Sylvia Plath. The entire list of writers produced by Gough includes not a single woman poet !
I’d like to see a woman poet’s perspective on the muse. Maybe that will happen in a century or so when the literary establishment comes round to the idea that women write rather excellent poetry. I have to say that I rather prefer the idea of the Duende anyway. Writers interested in the idea of the muse and of the Duende should look up Federico Garcia Lorca.
The muse who features on Poethead is called Euterpe.
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Issue 22 of the Southword Literary Journal of the Munster Literature Centre is now online. I am adding one of my published poems from Southword 22, a contents page from the journal, and a link to the Munster Literature Centre’s homepage. Please do visit the poetry, review and essay pages, as well as the other three poems on my page.
Issue 22 of Southword, the editors and contributors
- Poetry in English is edited by Leanne O’ Sullivan.
Poetry written by , Jeffrey Alfier, Fióna Bolger, Tomas De Faoite, Kevin Graham, Richard Halperin, Brian Kirk, John Liddy, Mary Madec, Afric McGlinchey, David Mohan, Paddy Moran, Sue Morgan, Christine Murray, Paul Ó Cólmain, Caitríona O’Reilly, John W. Sexton, Michael Sheehan, Knute Skinner, Fiona Smith, Gerard Smyth, Matthew Sweeney, and Ken Taylor.
- Short Stories are edited by Ian Wild.
Short Stories are by , Lane Ashfeldt, Armel Dagorn, Seán Kenny, Kieran Marsh, Danielle McLaughlin, and Nuala Ní Chonchúir.
- An Ghaoth Aneas: Forlíonadh Gaeilge. Eagarthóir, Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh
Filiocht : Colm Breathnach, Clíodhna Cussen, Biddy Jenkinson, Dairena Ní Chinnéide, agus Séamus Barra Ó Súilleabháin
Prós : Mícheál Ó Ruairc
Léirmheastóireacht : Eilís Ní Dhúill agus Muiris Ó Meara
- Reviews and Criticism , edited by Patrick Cotter.
Contributors are ,Sara Baume, Philip Coleman, Dave Lordan, Jennifer Matthews, Thomas McCarthy, Eugene O’Connell
As If
“It had not once occurred to her to ask (who) ?
Wherefrom is grace , and to whither it goes when
it departs ?High-wordedness has stymied her sense of longing
in every colour from indigo to amber, amber to indigo.As if , as if the jewels caught up in the blades of grass
were instead attached to the lashes of her eyes,
skewing her not-vision.She peeked at herself in walking again and again
in that place. Only to be torn there,
back from those things most fiercely desired,those hollowed-out things of indigo and amber,
amber , indigo, their very shadows mired by the
not-lighttrees maybe,
© C. Murray , all rights reserved.
The Munster Literature Centre -
Roxy
Bonny Sandy breaks my heart
no coming to couch the night
& his blade red wine& his thrapplejammer white wine
bonny Sandy brooks my hurt
this ae nightilka night
& the horns of young green wine
bonny Sandy brakes his hart.Love whinges & crines. The bonny knight
in ague sweat & his ain shite, unhurt.© Kit Fryatt, all rights reserved.
nanna slut’s long close summer
Dance the lamb
ra-ra
lamb
ra-ra
mutton hunks
It’s a shame the way we carry onThe streets stink tonight; my skullpan’s pounding
for rain or riot, I’m not so young, scarred from mound
to sternum, childless pale citadel of bravado and competence;
though if it gets too tasty I’ll hitch my mobile home
and flit this meatpacking warehouse district
but for now I’m hanging in there, for a sniff at the grinding bliss
the brazen looter children have, this year’s corn kings─
with sordid cold, blanket, galvanise tray, comes the morning in.Dress the lamb
rare-rare
rare-rare
mutton bird
It’s a shame the way we carry onCome sisters, these Lammas shiftless we could use, straw
men to our hags, the blintering braggarts will fight our wars
and decorate our palaces, symbolize in their dying
everything that comforts people, and stupefies.
The estate we lost thirty grand years ago, tonight we take
ground, we rise, inhale, we’re scary cunts, tonight we tear
spoil through locked wards, mindless, knowing that
our chicken limbs may splinter, falter; like, a freedom act
like, do whatever you want
mate
do
the mutton flap
It’s a shame© Kit Fryatt, all rights reserved.
Kit Fryatt writes and performs poems at Spoke, Wurm in Apfel and Can Can. I met her at the Mater Dei launch of Post III Magazine and being well-impressed with a card-carrying poet, I begged some poems for my Saturday Woman Poet blog. I got three unpublished poems , which would be considered over-generous, so I am publishing two of them today and returning the third with the proviso that if they are published online, they are Published work. Thanks to Kit for her generous contribution to Poethead. Copyright of the above poems remains with the author.
Two Poems by Kit Fryatt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at wurmimapfel.net.
Chris Murray 