Tag: Literature
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Wraiths
III. White Nights
Furrow-plodders in spats and bright-clasped brogues
Are cradling bags and hoisting beribboned drones
As their skilled neck-pullers’ fingers force the chanters
And the whole band starts rehearsing
Its stupendous, swaggering march
Inside the hall. Meanwhile
One twilight field and summer hedge away
We wait for the learner who will stay behind
Piping by stops and starts,
Making an injured music for us alone,
Early-to-beds , white-night absentees
Open-eared to this day.from, Human Chain , by Seamus Heaney , published by Faber and Faber 2010.
Note : I am attaching to this short post a link entitled : Feis Teamhar , a Turn at Tara because I was there to hear the poets and musicians on that day. I believe that the Newspapers under-reported the day and did not attend to Mr Heaney’s words. He was there to celebrate Tara as a cultural centre and to support the Campaign to Save Tara . He was also there to support his nephew who was and is a Tara Campaigner .
Since that time , there have been other feiseanna at Tara, this was the inaugural one organised by ” Paul Muldoon, Pulitzer prize-winner, will read his poetry to celebrate and honour Tara and will be joined by musicians: Grammy award-winner Susan McKeown, Laoise Kelly, Aidan Brennan and others “.
Save Tara Campaign release on Feis Teamhair
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John Hurst s Interesting books (with suit of armour). EDIT : 13/12/2010 : John Hurst died last night . Rest in Peace.
As always a visit to John Hurst’s Interesting books shop is a delight, a real treasure-trove, indeed, I have spoken of the shop before now. I thought to add a picture of the frontage (with the suit of armour) and though it cannot be seen in the pic, a foot acts as a door-stop!John has a good range of rare and interesting books that is not tailored to the tourist but to the local population, the writer and miscellaneous visitors, which is refreshing. Lots of contemporary bookshops require desperate rooting time to uncover a jewel but that’s not necessary here. Theres a well-stocked poetics and drama section and the rest of the shop is worth a mooch too.
The children’s area is guarded by a carved boar of indeterminate age, complete with bristles and moveable jaw. Books for children are wide in range but always of literary interest, a nice copy of Old Possums Book of Practical Cats was obtained along with a Three shillings and sixpence copy of Irish Classical Poetry (!!!) (which only publishes excerpts but provides food for thought and research).
On returning home from a very brief visit to Mayo , there was a book-offer on my email. I await the fruit of that one with some delight, as it involves the exchange of my address for a new imprint of Daragh Breen’s Latest book. His last book; Across the Sound is searchable on Poethead , along with a lovely Paul Henry painting to illustrate.
Whilst visiting the house and library of my old friend, I enjoyed some Francis Bacon essays and the music of Alphonse the Wise. It would be great to have a more extended visit sometime quite soon.
I am adding in the link to Daragh Breen’s book Review here :
‘Writing the Loved Word’.
Daragh Breen’s ‘Whale’ , with thanks to Daragh -
In the Storm of Roses
Wherever we turn in the storm of roses,
the night is lit up by thorns, and the thunder
of leaves, once so quiet within the bushes,
rumbling at our heels.
Source: In the Storm of Roses (translator unknown) by Ingeborg Bachmann. -
Mention has been made before on the Poethead blog of The Poet’s Circuits, Collected Poems of Ireland
But I will mention them again anyway, for those readers who have an interest in Medieval Ireland, the Guild System, and in Colum’s editing of this beautiful book.
Here are the Poet’s Circuits :
- Circuit One: The House
- Circuit Two: Field and Road
- Circuit Three: Things More Ancient
- Circuit Four : The Glens
- Circuit Five: The Town
- Circuit Six : Women in the House
- Circuit Seven: People on the Road
- Circuit Eight: Monuments
I suppose it was incredibly disappointing to me and many others to realise, with all their high falutin’ that our government between 2001-2006, in their rush to manipulate the property bubble did not understand the cultural heritage of our natural and built environment. The Circuits indicate a closed Canton and Guild system that tied together a people with words and songs . Not the type of people who would drive a huge motorway through Tara for the fun of it.
This is Colum’s dedication to his wife and to the book. The other circuit (8) is searchable through the search engine at the top right of this blog page.
Mary Catherine Maguire Colum, by Padraic Colum
They come to it and take
Their cupfuls and palmfuls out of it ,
The well that’s marked for use and gossiping.
Who know
Whence come the waters? Through what passages
Beneath? From what high tors
Where forests are? Forests dripping rain,
Branches pouring to the ground, trunk, bark, roots
Letting their streamlets down? Through the earth’s dark
The water flows and finds a secret hollow.
Stones are around it and a thorn bush
And so the well is made familiar ,
Marked , used , resorted to day after day.No users, gossipers, the half-moon above !
Come to the well, my own, my bright-haired one,
And let me hear
The rapture of your voice with some great line
Of verse your memory holds, the while your look
Ecstatic is your spirit is your spirit in your face,
And maybe in a depth below the depth
Touched by a pail, something desired will stir .
by Padraig Colum
- The Poet’s Circuits , Collected Poems of Ireland. Centenary Edition
- Preface by Benedict Kiely. Pardaic Colum. Dolmen Press, 1981.
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Re-blogging this poem, I think its about time there was a bit more Edith Sitwell on the site. it was transcribed from *Facade*, so I have to find my notes to add in the Publication date etcetera.
‘The Octogenarian Leaned from his window, To the Valerian Growing below Said, ‘My Nightcap is the only gap in the trembling thorn where the mild unicorn with the little infanta danced the Lavolta (Clapping hands: Molto Lent Eleganta). The Man with the Lantern Peers high and low; No more than a snore as he walks to and fro… Il Dottore the stoic culls silver herb beneath the superb vast moon azoic.” From: Facade, by Edith Sitwell. … Read Morevia poethead
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There follow two links to the Dublin Writers Festival 2010.
Dublin Writers Festival Homepage.
The National Womens Council of Ireland and the Dublin Writers Festival. -
no earthly estate. I am recommending, today a book called No Earthly Estate: God and Patrick Kavanagh, an Anthology, ed Tom Stack, Columba Press 2004.
Excerpted , ‘No Earthly Estate , Kavanagh, Colum and Strong’ (December 2010) .
‘The wordsmiths mentioned above , Kavanagh, Strong, and Colum are but a tiny example of the triumph of art and literature against what amounts to a repressive and regressive approach to the Arts. They are not contemporary poets but provide for the new writer the amazing root-system which forms Irish Literature in all its wonderousness. Would only that those who claim to lead us politically were aware of their cultural heritage , story-telling and indeed the violence of words that make up this rich history of multifaceted voice and poetry !’
The Devil , by Patrick Kavanagh.
‘ I met the devil too,
and the adjectives by which I would describe him are these:
Solemn,
Boring,
Conservative.
He was a man the world would appoint to a Board,
He would be on the list of invitees for a bishop’s garden-party,
He would look like an artist.
He was the fellow who wrote in newspapers about music,
Got into a rage when someone laughed;
He was serious about unserious things;
You had to be careful about his inferiority complex
For he was conscious of being uncreative.” -
Poem with a Griffin, a Pike and Peacocks.
I am reading a poem while it rains.
The day blinks
through windows guarded by a griffin; its talons
flex, its tail switches.
Do you remember those summer showers high in the mountains?
The dull pop of a toadstool beneath your bare foot
in the dew-covered grass?
Under a crystal bell jar, the still life-fleshy ripe bananas,
cherries, lemons and the silver knife you bargained for in the bazaar
as the Bhosphorus sparkled at the feet of the one you loved.
On the wobbly kitchen table, with that very knife,
you slit open a pike.
And the hunting rifle, propped against stuffed peacocks-
has it turned into a lapdog
licking the other woman’s hands
as she weighs my pearls…?
In the Forest
I wrote the essential poem on an oar
just before setting out.
Perhaps long ago it’s been erased
or maybe the sea
knows it now
by feel.Like the woman in Rousseau’s painting
I shudder
at the sound of footsteps
-when the fear comes on too strong.The path I follow
is a knife blade.
maybe this is why
the sky behind the forest
is now so red.I wrote the essential poem on an oar
just before setting out.
These two poems are taken from the Bloodaxe published book, The Sky Behind the Forest by Poet Liliana Ursu. It is translated by Tess Gallagher and Adam Sorkin.
I really like the book, but I always make one suggestion when recommending it, and that is to read and absorb the beautiful writing before reading the introductory and translators essays. The essays are highly important in establishing the appalling context of censorship under which the poet suffered, but one can feel it also in the powerful writing.
The Sky Behind the Forest, Liliana Ursu. Trans, Liliana Ursu, Tess Gallagher,
Adam J Sorkin. Bloodaxe Books. 1997. -
I am glad I went onto the Nomadics Site [blogroll- P Joris blog] because in many ways it has been something that resonates with some of my own themes. I had put down a folder (in exasperation) four years ago based in the conditions of exile and loss.
When I went into read the ethnopoetics site and it touched off a whole reconnection with the original (largely unpunctuated) poems of a few years ago. One of them I have been re-working this morning : Goldfriend , which is
based in some lines from The Wanderer (Anglo-Saxon) , in which the exile from both the Lord’s Hall and his comrades is keenly felt . I could not rid myself of the image of the longed for friend as a Goldfriend and wrote it for inclusion into a MSS which I had shelved. (as usual retaining and re-working some of the images i.e; weeding and shelving being the busy work of a minimalist who really does not want to publish).So I re-wrote Goldfriend and may even get round to typing it in the next days. I am out of ribbon and there is only one little shop in Dublin that supplies the correction tape and ribbon (for the poems).
This Morning I was going to publish Mary’s Song from Winter Trees by Sylvia Plath. The image work is tremendous and Winter Trees is oft neglected in the Plath conversation. This morning then, has passed in the re-writing of an old piece that had found it’s way into a reject pile but would not quite lie still. Indeed, the mss of which it is a part has a few old songs in there that I had neglected for some time.
Chris Murray 