Chris Murray

A Saturday Woman Poet , Margaret Atwood.

February 21st, 2009

The Chorus Line : A Rope-Jumping Rhyme

“we are the maids
the ones you killed
the ones you failed

we danced in air
our bare feet twitched
it was not fair

with every goddess, queen , and bitch
from there to here
you scratched your itch

we did much less
than what you did
you judged us bad

you had the spear
you had the word
at your command

we scrubbed the blood
of our dead
paramours from floors, from chairs

from stairs, from doors,
we knelt in water
while you stared

at our bare feet
it was not fair
you licked our fear

it gave you pleasure
you raised your hand
you watched us fall

we danced on air
the ones you failed
the ones you killed.”

Taken from The Penelopiad 2005, Canongate.

The maids were of course the young girls who helped Penelope spin her endless threads, the abused, raped and disenfranchised women of Odysseus’ court. Well they got hung in a line. Atwood is very good on mythos.

Chorus Line.
Anna Politkovskaya: August 1958- Oct 2006.

February 19th, 2009

No Charges in the murder of a Writer.

The Anna Politkovskaya Murder trial has ended in accquital. Ms Politkovskaya was shot on October the 7th 2006. RIP.

CPJ

NY Times

Bloggie.

NYT Twitter
Circuit XI: ‘The Monuments’ By Padraic Colum

February 14th, 2009

Above me stand, worn from their ancient use,
The King’s, the Bishop’s, and the Warrior’s house,
Quiet as folds upon a grassy knoll:
Stark-grey they stand. wall joined to ancient wall,
Chapel, and Castle, and Cathedral.

It is not they are old, but stone by stone
Into another lifetime they have grown,
The life of memories an old man has:
They dream upon what things have come to pass,
And know that stones grow friendly with the grass.

The name has crumbled-cashel that has come
from conqueror-challenging Castellum-
Walls in a name ! No citadel is here,
Now a fane the empty walls uprear
Where green and greener grass spreads far and near.

The Poet’s Circuits, Collected Poems of Ireland. Padraic Colum.
Dolmen Press. 1981 , Centenary Edition. Introduction by Benedict Kiely.

Tara Nomination.
Excerpt from “Notes on Fear” by Ágnes Nemes Nagy

February 14th, 2009

Stanza 7

Pinned on the fieldpark
stand saplings stark,
their boughs drawing the eye skywards
to find, then, night has not come
yet, sky is still green, edged in chrome,
the bare branches outline
unknown ebony letters
and between above in sliced green
the evening star glitters.

and a bunch of tulips inside.

Stanza 8

Weathered like a traveller
so battered they are
these sweaty envoys
mumbling the lost lines
of their message made flesh:
their beauty launches – (through the slash

of the knife the knife that cut them
through the hand that bought and washed
the shop that sold them
through unbreachable mesh
of a cordon the heart’s startled cries
and hands’ hand’s-off clutch) –
their beauty launches the sizzling
thunderbolt into water, into my eyes.

From Between by Ágnes Nemes Nagy, Trans Hugh Maxton. Publ. Corvina Press Budapest and Dedalus Press, Dublin.
Chorus Line.

February 11th, 2009
Musicians in the Orchestra a Wiki image- Degas

This small post is about the chorus line and in keeping with the tone of the blog can include both the unhinged (and hung): The Maidens from Atwood’s Penelopiad, and the solo singer who creates the most wonderful antiphons from her weird isolation and her tithing to the Church: Hildegard of Bingen. I shall include links to all at the end of this post.

For days now I have been rooting through my books to find Murder in the Cathedral by T.S Eliot. The chorus therein is composed of the poor women of Canterbury who both delineate the action and act as witnesses to disaster. They are the voices of the dispossessed as much as the women of the islands in their keening , or the voices of women poets who are marginalised in Irish academia (at least) and the reason why I initiated this blog in the first place.

The amount of blog hits have surprised me, and I would like to thank those who regularly read. I would also enjoy developing outward.
A Singing Woman: RIP Eulana Englaro.

February 10th, 2009
Picasso, Blue Nude : RIP Eulana Englaro

I suppose that the name of Englaro would never have reached my consciousness were it not for the inhumane remarks made by the leader of Italy regarding her condition:

“Physically at least she is in the condition to have babies”,

The woman had been in a coma for seventeen years and last night she died peacefully. I have written before on my dislike for Senor Berlusconi (I shall link it at the bottom of the page); but that remark that he made whilst intruding in a dying has no answer .

RIP: Eulana Englaro, 1972-2009.
- “Time Uncovering Truth”: The Berlusconi Art Debacle.
Charming Little Book : V Sackville West

February 7th, 2009
This is just a brief note, given my current interest in our small bird population and this year’s lack of snowdrops in my own garden. Indeed it is related somewhat to another entry on Poethead . (cf bottom of this post for linkie)

Every year we wander to the National Botanic Gardens to take a look at the snowdrops in the rockery, this is utterly convenient because the rockery comprises a playground for the burgeoning and largely tame squirrel population; but I digress.. I bought the book for my mother in her early widowhood because she adores climbers, roses and scented stock. Our beautiful Sumac came down in a storm and though I only visit with her , its become obvious that the straggling offspring do not carry the same impact for the local birds or indeed aesthetically.

Thus this evening I am bringing home In Your garden by Sackville West to re-read, and Faber’s Collected Marina Carr Plays.
- In Your Garden by Vita Sackville-West, Frances Lincoln. Original text 1951.
- Marina Carr Plays incl. The Mai. Faber and Faber 1999
- The Brightest Jewel by E Charles Nelson and Dr Eileen Mc Cracken
She carried her body-cage like a delicate and brittle basket..

February 7th, 2009

We do not often get real sticky wet and slippy snow in Ireland.

Our older people (we will all be elderly soon enough) are carrying themselves with incredible delicacy. The paths present a patchwork of half-hearted sand thrown down and a web of glassy ice. the puddles make a satisfying crack when breached, but bones are delicate.

This is an excerpt from The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges. (I found it again, it keeps losing itself in my shelves)

before becoming a monster and then turned into rocks, Scylla was a nymph with whom Glacus, one of the sea gods, had fallen in love. In order to win her, Glacus sought the help of Circe whose knowledge of herbs and incantations was well known. But Circe became attached to Glacus on sight, only she was unable to get him to forget Scylla, and to punish her rival she poured the juice of poisonous herbs into the fountain where the nymph bathed.

(Borges then excerpts the Metamorphoses of Ovid, which btw are given a contemporary gloss and translation by the late Ted Hughes and are published by Faber.)

So, poor Scylla became a rock and well our nod to certain difficulties and words in common usage include the phrase:

“Between a rock and a hard place”

though I suppose that since our education system is more based on manual labour preparation and the globalised market, the provenance of such clichéd phrases or truisms gets lost in the translation.

Edit: 07/12/2019: Read H.D’s “Curled Thyme”. H.D was a much ignored and magnificent poet, whom the canon-makers eschewed due to her difficulty. One imagines the canon-makers as lovers of overt simplicity!
A Saturday Woman Poet: Eithne Strong.

January 31st, 2009
Sarah, In Passing

A Pair of bockety
legs went up
the street below county
tweed and haystack
hat, the waddling brains
inside.
‘Aren’t they most awfully
rich?’ the shaky Anglo
voice inquired.
‘O no,’ he said,
straight leg and cavalry
crease
suffering her infirmity,
slow pace
for pace.
‘Her father was
but she, she
lost it all.’

Words in the morning.

“Sarah passed
ingesting scene and situation;
imagining , assimilating;
seeing much she did
not see,
interpreting what she did
not hear: “
( Short Excerpted piece from what Sarah saw or did not see)

Girl on her Lover

“Like some god
too dark to live
upon the earth.
All beautiful , all evil,
all powerful over
me. No rest nor sever
from the dark hard tie”.
- Three excerpts from Sarah In Passing by Eithne Strong.
- Sarah, in Passing. The Dolmen Press. 1974.
How to Construct an Operating Vade Mecum.

January 26th, 2009

a) You need a notebook or set thereof.
b) A room of one’s own is not too much to ask.
c) A goodish pen, this is problematic if the only and best pen you have possessed for many years has been stolen/lost/misplaced. Ensuring an adequate replacement of the implement means a ready supply of good accessible Cartridge refills.
d) On the subject of typewriters (as opposed to easy keyboards), It’s nigh impossible to get ribbon and correction tape replacements in shops. There is one supplier of these articles in Dublin and he’s not always in his shop.
e)Read a lot on your subject, it helps if you are a bibliophile.
f) Be always aware that the visibility of women writers in any language is part of a huge struggle in multimedia and News Media.

Sarah, In Passing

Words in the morning.

Girl on her Lover