tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65428297285672148982024-03-13T21:49:18.263+00:00Anthony CostelloAnthony Costellohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06557473977887230195noreply@blogger.comBlogger53125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6542829728567214898.post-32524173845802796552024-01-29T10:36:00.001+00:002024-02-02T17:56:56.584+00:00A Double Drowning<p> </p><p>from the autumn edition of <i>Pennine Platform</i>, 2023</p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">A Double Drowning</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><b id="docs-internal-guid-32164033-7fff-9d87-7be4-83faa80b3806" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Hunting in a wooded vale</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">a boy is drawn to a field</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">and a pond where, on a bed of reeds,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">his twin sister, Narci, lies.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Sticks floating in a trail,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">the sun-reflected rays, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">flies busy as rain,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">do not distract his gaze.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">In his time of grief</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">voices go unheard, as would-be </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">lovers walk from the trees</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">seeing in his stare endless vanity. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">(poem can be heard here)</span></p><div><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Garamond, serif; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">https://www.chapelfm.co.uk/elfm-player/shows/list/love-the-words/</span></div>luddpoethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11298375489407379252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6542829728567214898.post-53424181023177606452022-04-23T11:19:00.000+01:002022-04-23T11:19:24.986+01:00The Back Garden, March 2022<p><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">War is somewhere else.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Taking root over the fence, beyond the hill,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in another country so far away it doesn’t seem real.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mind your own business. Keep your thoughts to yourself.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Keep your side of the street clean.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These are things you say yourself.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Spring is happening,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">shrubs are coming into leaf,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">summer jasmine juts out of its winter sheath,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">chives erect, the lawn a mossy green. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On the garden step a bee washes itself clean</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">oblivious to everything else,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> birds sing lazily.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Outside the front door the street sputters and groans,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">bailiffs bang on doors with clenched fists,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">paramedics make a house call,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and through the kitchen window you catch </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">your neighbour’s bloodshot eye</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(you think his stare could shatter glass),</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">while restless boys play the game </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of pretending to play a game innocently, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">about to commit their first transgression,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that long term plot to slash the tyre </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of a good citizen minding his own peace at home, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">unaware that his - ‘EXPLODE’ - tipping point </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">will be judged as inappropriate, innocuous, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the theft of a hand-made bird box,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0.0pt; margin-top: 0.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a stone thrown at his blue porcelain cat.</span></p><br /><br /><br /><br />luddpoethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11298375489407379252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6542829728567214898.post-19702221310112890352021-11-06T17:32:00.002+00:002022-01-31T22:36:16.863+00:00On John Keats<p> </p><p>https://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2021/10/keats-search-home/</p><p><br /></p><p>https://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/tag/anthony-costello/</p>luddpoethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11298375489407379252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6542829728567214898.post-57613367683121323562021-09-07T21:56:00.000+01:002021-09-07T21:56:33.461+01:00On the Blue Parrot in Casablanca<p> </p><header style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="ContentPageHeader-module__main" data-analytics-id="Content Page - Header" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: auto; max-width: 88rem; padding-left: 4rem; padding-right: 4rem; text-align: center; width: 703.997px;"><div class="ContentPageHeader-module__titles ContentPageHeader-module__titles--poem" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; max-width: none;"><h1 class="ContentPageTitle-module__headline ContentPageTitle-module__headline--poem" style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 3rem; margin: 0px 0px 4rem; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-20ded9e5-7fff-5e36-b024-7b518869e06d"><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Other Café </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hearing ‘Caravan’ by Duke Ellington</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and I’m at the Blue Parrot in </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casablanca:</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the house bird perched outside </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">unfazed by whirring ceiling fans</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and the belly dancer’s creeping shadow. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The band playing jazz to a fluent clientele </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">leave the exotic bird unperturbed. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A street market unfolds under her gaze. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How simple the menu at the Blue Parrot:</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">pleasure, talk, a handshake, the deal.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No choice to be made about right or wrong,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ideals or love, one song over another. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Buying and selling is Signor Ferrari’s trade, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">attending to his business of the day,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a rake-off on sex, liquor, hookahs.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The patrons of the Blue Parrot, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">each going their own way to somewhere, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">outside into the busy street </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">heading for wherever home is, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">or through a crystal curtain at the Blue Parrot</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to the dark side of a mountain, desert. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ghosts in the dream song here. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- Anthony Costello </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: goudy-old-style, serif; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://www.spectator.co.uk/poem/the-other-caf-</span></p><br /></span></h1></div></div></header>luddpoethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11298375489407379252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6542829728567214898.post-53602711513043518392021-07-27T22:47:00.005+01:002021-07-27T22:58:40.086+01:00The saddest thing I ever saw: a poem<p> https://www.spectator.co.uk/poem/the-saddest-thing-i-ever-saw</p><p dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-0ac78d97-7fff-2c02-cd46-74dc97aac5e2" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The saddest thing I ever saw</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">was a down-and-out </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in awe of a pencil salesman</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in a café, midtown Manhattan.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Handsome like a movie star, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the salesman turns on his sales patter,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">speaking loudly </span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">peachy keens </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and</span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> aw shucks </span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and</span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I am fine here Sandra </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in The Big Apple, but honey</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">could you look in my</span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">…</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and the street guy’s envy</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">like a furnace, his eyes</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">like beads in a forge,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and then it happens...</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">just as sales talk goes the way</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of big smiles and </span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I gotta go Sandra</span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the balding bum, in a worn-out windbreaker,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">soiled loafers, shirt open </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">at the navel, stands up, walks across </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to the salesman’s table, and says: </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am going to be an actor</span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- Anthony Costello </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Published in The Spectator Magazine, July, 2021</span></p><p><br /></p>luddpoethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11298375489407379252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6542829728567214898.post-70068578478762606912020-07-21T11:07:00.001+01:002020-07-21T11:09:48.341+01:00GREEN, BLUE AND YELLOW:<br />
the use of colours as adjectives in <i>The Great Gatsby </i><br />
<br />
GOLD<br />
<br />
Perhaps surprisingly, given the 'gaudy' party scenes at Jay Gatsby's West Egg mansion, and the frequent mention of finance: money, bonds, stocks and securities, Gold as an adjective is only mentioned three times in the novel, and two of those in the epigraph
'Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
if you can bounce high, bounce for her two,
Till she cry "Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
I must have you"'
- Thomas Parke d'Invilliers
<br />
<br />
and once to describe Gatsby wearing 'a gold-coloured tie'.<br />
<br />
SILVER<br />
<br />
Used wistfully to describe Gatsby 'standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars' and once to describe his 'silver shirt'.
The Great Gatsby is a claustrophobic novel. Perhaps this little sprinkle of silver dilutes the more cocksure display of bolder colours. Gatsby looking at the stars allows brief respite from the noisy, stifling drama of the novel.<br />
<br />
PINK<br />
<br />
The fly cover to my Penguin Classics edition (2006) of The Great Gatsby is a soft pink, but the colour is used only three times, twice in adjacent chapters, albeit movingly and pertinently, where pink links Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan. In the chapters following Myrtle Wilson's death, Nick Carraway describes Gatsby as wearing a 'gorgeous pink rag of a suit' and notices 'the pink glow from Daisy's room' at her mansion in East Egg. Pink is silence. Pink is loneliness. Both Daisy and Gatsby are alone and silent at the moment of the narrator's description. Famously, in chapter five, Daisy says to Gatsby she would "like to just get one of those pink clouds and put you in it and push you around." Pink is wishing, wistful, pink is possibility.<br />
<br />
GREY<br />
<br />
Grey is linked to yellow and yellow leads to grey. Jordan Baker is described by Nick Carraway as washed-out: 'Her grey sun-streaked eyes looked back at me'. On his first meeting with Gatsby: 'We talk about some wet, grey little village in France'. Clouds are 'small, grey clouds'. 'Grey cars crawl' along the 'grey land' between West Egg and New York. In a City ensemble piece there is 'a grey (scrawny) Italian child' and an 'old grey man' sells the puppy dog to Tom Buchanan. 'Grey windows' give way to illuminated light at Gatsby's extravagant parties. If the aftermath of the first world war is grey, then it is perhaps foretold that grey will also follow the yellowing drama of the Roaring Twenties, the 1928 stock market crash happened three years after the publication of Fitzgerald's novel. Eight greys.<br />
<br />
RED<br />
<br />
Red is versatile. Red (including Crimson) stands out at a distance. No more so than in the beautiful and deceptively simple description of the landscape between Long Island and New York: 'where new red petrol pumps sat out in pools of light'. This image prefigures the America represented in the paintings of Edward Hopper. Red is used effectively in description of character: Catherine, Myrtle Wilson's sister, is portrayed as 'a slender working girl of about thirty with a solid sticky bob of red hair...' and place: 'the crimson room bloomed with light'. Red is used for the fourth time (dramatically) as the outline of the mattress Gatsby was lounging on before he was murdered: 'a thin red circle in the water'.<br />
<br />
GREEN<br />
<br />
A colour of omniscient significance for the author. In one of the most revealing statements about his hero Fitzgerald utilises green thus: 'Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us'. This quote is a leitmotif for the novel. The use of green striking and, yet, difficult to comprehend. Not green manifesting as envy, or naivety; nothing to do with the environment or protean growth. But green used in the same sentence to suggest sex and recrudescence? Today the Green Card suggests a future in the United States for the recipient; for Fitzgerald green is something of an oxymoron...the receding future. Placed at the end of the book, this quote reminds us of the two occasions where the word was used previously. Nick Carraway tells us: 'I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock'. And Gatsby to Daisy: 'You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock'. Daisy tells Nick to present 'a green card' if he wants to kiss her. Daisy 'giving out green...'. Gatsby's car has a 'green leather seat' and the stretch of water between East and West Egg is 'the green sound'. Green is magma, undercurrent, centrifugal momentum, the mysterious life and death force running with subtle menace through the novel. Used six times.<br />
<br />
WHITE
Is used to describe minor characters, some introduced by name only. Mr Mckee (from the flat below but attending the infamous party hosted by Myrtle Wilson in New York) is described as having a 'white spot of lather on his cheekbone' and never mentioned again. Nick Carraway describes himself and Gatsby matter-of-factly as 'wearing a white flannel suit', there is a 'white plum tree' and Myrtle Wilson wears 'a cream-coloured chiffon'. Catherine's face in the same description of her detailed in Red is powdery 'white'. There are 'white steps' up to Gatsby's mansion, we see 'white moonlight' and 'white banners'. Like the colour itself, these usages fade into the background. Perhaps this is why white is often thought of as a non-colour. But white is used to suggest innocence and purity when Daisy reminisces about her (and Jordan Baker's) adolescence: our 'beautiful white', 'our white girlhood', 'our beautiful white...' There is also a sepulchral description of George Wilson. In shock at Myrtle's death and the seeds of revenge sown...'a white ashen dust veiled his dark suit'. Thirteen whites.<br />
<br />
BLACK appears once in the novel, perhaps anti semitically to describe a 'Jewess with black hostile eyes'.<br />
<br />
BLUE<br />
<br />
Blue is used as an adjective ten times. This colour creates and casts a series of atmospheric shadows throughout the book. Without this use of blue The Great Gatsby would be an inferior novel. Blue gives the book a blue tone, blue moods, blue atmosphere, blue delights. Blue tends to permeate more than any other colour. It seeps through the surrounding pages. Blue is a long term investment for the author's ambition in this novel. If yellow is the plotting and characterisation, then blue is its structure and style. Cast in a blue light the novel resembles something like a fable or a fairy tale. Describing the grounds of Gatsby's mansion and the people coming and going Fitzgerald writes this humdinger of perfect prose: 'In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars'. Blue is the colour that Nick Carraway associates with Gatsby as a self-made man: 'He had come a long way to this blue lawn'. The novel moves through the 'blue smoke of brittle leaves'. The dress of Lucille, an uninvited guest at one of Gatsby's nightly parties, is 'gas-blue', a chauffeur's uniform is 'robin's egg blue'. About Myrtle: 'a streak of hair lay like a dash of blue paint across her cheek', Gatsby has an '(Indian) blue shirt', a character has 'a blue nose', George Wilson has 'light-blue eyes'. The pivotal part of the plot line before the climax of the novel revolves around misunderstanding about the colour of two cars. Tom Buchanan's is a 'blue coupe'.<br />
<br />
YELLOW<br />
<br />
Gatsby's car is yellow. Yellow is not symbolic of gold or wealth but the color of the dark side of the American dream, and also the colour of locomotives! Delving into the past of the narrator, Fitzgerald writes of 'murky yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St Paul's Railroad'. The approach to George Wilson's garage where 'the only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick'. Yellow is the end of summer. Jordan Baker has 'autumn-leaf yellow in her hair'. The soulless and decadent picture of a city that never sleeps at Tom and Myrtle's party in New York. Nick Carraway mentions that 'big over the city is our line of yellow windows'. At Gatsby's parties, symbolising an increasing level of decadence and meaninglessness, 'the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music'. Two girls are wearing 'twin yellow dresses'. Decay and shallowness are suggested by the easy preponderance of yellow. The fetishising of the (yellow) automobile. The motor car as a status symbol. Why is Jay Gatsby's car yellow? Because in the way that F.Scott Fitzgerald appropriates yellow elsewhere it is the perfect and logical colour in which to tempt fate through accidental slaughter. Yellow had been increasing in speed and intensity throughout the novel. After Myrtle is killed by Gatsby's yellow car (with Daisy at the wheel - intoned by Gatsby but never corroborated), the police are investigating the local protagonists and the colour yellow is on the lips of characters and in the ears of readers.
'It was a yellow car'
'Big yellow car'
The negro 'began to talk about a yellow car'
And again...'it was a yellow car'
George Wilson 'has a way of finding out who owns the yellow car'...
Providence abounds in yellow. Fitzgerald could have chosen a dozen other colours for Jay Gatsby's car. As author, Fitzgerald knew of Gatsby's fate, and allowed us to believe, with the solemn rituals of his preparation for bathing in his swimming pool, that Gatsby himself knew. Nick Carraway's last description of Gatsby is 'and in a moment disappeared among the yellowing trees'. Ten yellows.<br />
<br />
Green, Blue and Yellow are the novel's primary colours. Blue and yellow interplay throughout. Blue sets the tone and yellow forces the action. Yellow foretells death and is symbolic of decay, blue gives a sense of lustrous security in the myth of its own promise. If yellow is ugly, blue is (often) beautiful, if blue is mysterious, yellow is honest. Blue and yellow are not opposites. They complement each other like they do on the colour wheel. The magic is that ten yellows and ten blues in the hands of Fitzgerald stretch across the novel like an illuminated modern manuscript. The strange use of adjectival green, the meaning of green, underpinning everything.<br />
<br />
Addendum
Lavender, apple-green and orange are the other colours used to describe Gatsby’s shirts.
<br />
<br />
* This article was published in The Great Gatsby Anthology (Silver Birch Press, 2015)luddpoethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11298375489407379252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6542829728567214898.post-84213050528186832002020-04-20T21:10:00.002+01:002020-07-21T10:37:38.630+01:00A Film Poem: The Twentieth/AnimationIn collaboration with the animator Christian Kupra<br />
<br />
<a href="https://vimeo.com/393490741">https://vimeo.com/393490741</a>luddpoethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11298375489407379252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6542829728567214898.post-7968103500393925112020-01-30T10:38:00.000+00:002020-01-30T10:42:10.404+00:00Postcard Art“What a message! what a picture!/all pink and gold and classical/a romantic French sunset for a/change. And the text could not/but inspire—with its hint/of traduction, renaissance and/Esperanto: verily The Word!.../”.
‘A Postcard From John Ashbery’, Frank ‘O Hara<br />
<br />
I went to see postcard art at an exhibition at the British Museum last year. The exhibition was curated from the private collection of Jeremy Cooper, and included work by Susan Hillier, Gilbert and George, and Tacita Dean, and covered art movements such as Fluxus (Joseph Beuys, Klaus Staeck) and the Vancouver 71 /77 projects (postcard correspondence between artists).<br />
<br />
The exhibition was curated thematically: Feminism, Performance, Conceptual, Graphic, Political, Collage, Art and Language, etc. The postcards were displayed as pin boards inside glass cabinets; but just as a lepidopterist’s collection of dead butterflies is a world away from butterflies in flight, so the erstwhile life of these postcards were devitalised.<br />
<br />
The exhibition was wide-ranging: from the work of Richard Hamilton (‘Witley Bay, 1966’, ‘Five Tyres Remoulded’) to the conceptual work (red typography on a white card) of Gilbert & George, from the postcards recording performance by Stelarc and Chris Burden, to the use of postcards as political propaganda (“War Is Over!/If You Want It”…) in the the bold typographic art of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, which made the journey from postcard to billboards outside movie theatres.<br />
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Dieter Roth’s traditional ‘tourist’ postcard, an arresting work called ‘120 Piccadilly Postcards’, an eerie collage, managed to be nostalgic and postmodern at the same time.<br />
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I was intrigued by Susan Hillier’s artists’ postcards, with the subject of rough seas in British coastal towns, a sample from a bigger exhibition of Hillier’s work at The Tate in the 1970s called ‘Dedicated to the Unknown Artists’, which amounted to 300 original artists’ postcards depicting rough seas around Britain displayed on fourteen panels. Hillier’s curated art demonstrating the importance of the past, memory and heritage in how we see the world and view art: how objects become artefacts, the artefacts revivified, what was unnoticed or lost, is seen again, found or re-discovered and presented in a new dimension as art.<br />
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The American artist Stephen Shore was an avid collector of postcards until he decided to make his own from photographs of Amarillo in Texas. The work, ‘Greetings from Amarillo: Tall in Texas, 1971’, was an attempt to pay homage to postcards because they (in his words) ‘conveyed cultural information without the pretence of art’. His work was originally unsuccessful and none sold, so he printed thousands of copies and over several years deposited the postcards around the U.S., in drugstores and on newstands. This sense of art uncontained and on the move, the wireform stands miniature galleries, and the potentially wide, albeit disparate, audience gives a dynamism to postcard art that it is difficult to imagine from his postcards here encased in glass.<br />
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Elsewhere there were portrait postcards by David Hockney from his early sketches and drawings, a display of graphic postcards from Peter Doig, a cabinet for Language postcards (‘The World Exists to be put on a Postcard’, by Simon Cutts), and Altered Postcards— a postcard by Yoko Ono where she’d clipped a circular hole in a blank postcard and written “A Hole to see the sky Through”. The postcards by Ono and Cutts showed the diverse range of art at the exhibition, which included postcard invitations to the opening night shows from a variety of artists, including one from Andy Warhol.
luddpoethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11298375489407379252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6542829728567214898.post-75733285096399644002019-10-26T08:38:00.000+01:002019-10-26T08:38:00.082+01:00Rilke & Mahler<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
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<b id="docs-internal-guid-e06c1104-7fff-6944-07c8-9efc4d5e5208" style="font-weight: normal;">(from <i>Picture, Mirror, World, </i>a collection of ten poems inhabiting and interpreting Rilke's <i>Duino Elegies </i>and Mahler's ten symphonies - to be published in November, 2019 by Calder Valley Poetry)</b><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">The Fourths</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">O trees of life when does your winter come?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">We are left standing, </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> non-migrators, we wither</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">& flower each year, conflict constant </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">as appearance & reality, life in death, </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">death in life, world as eternal present.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">All the World’s a Stage––Rilke & Mahler players, </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Rilke with his puppets as superior to human beings, </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Mahler's Once Upon a Time … </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">sleigh-bells, the hunting boy’s magic horn.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Look, that puppet on a string is Freund Hein,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">a skeleton leading the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">danse macabre</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">playing solo violin (behind us) in the mirror;</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Rilke craving angels to become </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">players,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">breathe life into stuffed dolls, good riddance </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">to half-empty masks—Mahler’s welcome adagio </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">transports our souls across the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Jahrhundertwende …</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">more than the past but not the future …</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Mahler states when man, now full of wonder,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">asks what all this means, the child </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">is</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> the answer … </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">‘</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Das Himmlische Leben’</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, a weightless world </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">children are the nearest to, Mahler’s response </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">to Rilke’s who shows children for what they are </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">is a child’s sunny, saintly, feastly heaven.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Anthony Costello</span></div>
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luddpoethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11298375489407379252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6542829728567214898.post-91452207832726400532019-06-04T00:31:00.000+01:002019-10-26T08:12:22.521+01:00On Muriel Spark<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I felt quite unsettled after reading this novella - a character, Lise, travels abroad to choose the right person to kill her - which is disturbing in itself, but the voice of the narrator also finds its way to the inner ear, storytelling that takes the reader hostage, and makes them somehow complicit, as if they were a character in the novel and controlled by the author, just as Lise controls and puts other characters at risk in her quest for a gruesome self-annihilation. Spark hypnotises the reader in this way by laying the motive bare, going to the heart of the matter, to the jugular; the uncompromising truths, as dark as they are, are inevitable and unstoppable; the spareness, starkness, of the chrome-like, plot-driven, prose doesn't allow the reader to come up for air; the narrator attracts, seduces, enervates, renders the reader passive as if they were suffering from some form of locked-in syndrome, a horrible entrapment where they have no choice but to witness the story inevitably unfold.<br />
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It's a counter-cultural book, antithetical to the swinging sixties (Lise's deliberately gauche clashing attire is the opposite of the Mary Quant look); a satire on the commercialism of human life, the portmanteau scenes in the municipal department store a kind of dystopia-in-the-making, the future in all its banality about to explode. This is less a novella and more a dark film. It shows us the pitfalls of insanity but not how to avoid it. The voiceover-like narration works as if to document our naive outlook. The book is a bleak and beautiful private relations disaster. It is also a feminist book.luddpoethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11298375489407379252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6542829728567214898.post-40935588026943642402018-11-04T17:00:00.000+00:002018-11-04T17:06:31.399+00:00The Eyes of ColeridgeAn essay on Coleridge can be read here at <i>The Fortnightly Review</i><br />
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<a href="http://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2018/10/eyes-coleridge/">http://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2018/10/eyes-coleridge/</a>luddpoethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11298375489407379252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6542829728567214898.post-85384635893475845192018-10-09T00:09:00.000+01:002018-10-11T01:27:45.672+01:00The Poems of Vincent van Gogh<br />
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<b style="background-color: white;">Anthony Costello</b><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><br />
<b style="background-color: white;"><i>I Freeze, Turn to Stone</i></b><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">October 2018. 43 pp. ISBN-13 978-3-901993-69-5 </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">£7.00 (+ 1.50 p&p), €7.00 (+ 1.50 p&p), US$10.00 (+ 2.50 p&p) </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">http://www.poetrysalzburg.com</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">“Anthony Costello here joins the company of Charles Reznikoff, John Seed and others, who have transformed documentary or personal prose into resonant free verse. Such a process doesn’t just slow the prose down, it elicits a different kind of attention. Reading it, we are less focused on the human story, and more on human perception, sense, and predicament, in themselves, which as a series of semi-detached moments reach further into Van Gogh’s being. Instances of common pain and hope are set in sequence with his obsessive observations, repeatedly making lists of coloured things wherever he was: houses, rooms, fields, clouds, cups and saucers … In the poised rhythmic measure that Anthony Costello provides, the simplicity of these lists by which he clings onto life, finally matches the simplicity of the heart-felt appeal for normality: that same night one single star a large friendly one, // and I </span><br />
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<a href="http://www.poetrysalzburg.com/">http://www.poetrysalzburg.com/</a><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">thought of you all and my own past years // and our house, and in me, these words …”</span><br />
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Peter Riley</div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">“</span><i style="background-color: white;">I Freeze, Turn to Stone</i><span style="background-color: white;"> is such an interesting and original project. I had no idea Van Gogh was such a poetic writer. These poems are vivid, joyous and melancholic; they chart an exquisite process of discovery and curation. </span><i style="background-color: white;">I Freeze, Turn to Stone</i><span style="background-color: white;"> deepens our appreciation of the relationship between visual, written and lived experience.”</span><br />
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Helen Mort</div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">“Anthony Costello has created from Van Gogh’s letters a collaboration across time: the painter finds a language for what he sees; the poet engages the reader in the painterly work of looking, and seeing. Costello’s poems are alive with a sensuous intensity of seeing: the blue of an enamelled coffee pot and of the Milky Way; how red floor tiles and the green of a garden shine alongside each other. The language is exact and transparent, as attentive to nuance and rhythm as a painting is to texture and pattern. The poems become a portrait of the artist and a reimagining of his art.”</span><br />
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Judith Willson</div>
luddpoethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11298375489407379252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6542829728567214898.post-73458530589246556462018-09-13T12:41:00.001+01:002023-02-27T12:54:04.531+00:00<br /><br />Frank O’ Hara & the Desecration of a Classic Poem<br /><br />By Anthony Costello<br /><br /><br />Is there such a thing as a finished poem? In the digital age, is the erstwhile finished poem up for grabs? Until about 30 years ago and the emergence of the internet, a published book was, with some exceptions, indelibly fixed in print, bound in covers where it sat unchanged (and unchallenged) for centuries. But now many books are free to read online from sources such as The Gutenberg Press, The British Library, The American Poetry Foundation. The once hallowed words of classic texts can be easily cut and pasted, adulterated, referenced casually by anyone, used for so-called ‘found’ literature. These poems, once they reach a google doc system, can be re-worked, re-envisioned, edited. Text is not sacred anymore.<br /><br /><div>
Writers, especially poets, have a habit of making changes to long-established work. Self-revision. When poets are selecting poems for a Selected or a Collected they edit, sometimes quite dramatically, sometimes for the good and sometimes for the bad, poems that had not only been deemed finished, but poems that had a fixed readership. Should a poet have the right to do this once a work has been published? They do, often against the advice of an editor and publisher, sometimes risking the chagrin of once satisfied readers. Elizabeth Bishop and Derek Mahon, Robert Graves and Rita Dove are just a few of the many poets who have made (and make) changes to their earlier work. Poetry is, seen in this light, a work in progress, something that can be continually revised. One thinks of W.B. Yeats’ late revisions of his earlier work, Robert Lowell’s radical re-working of the poems published in Notebook 1967-68, or Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass published in 1855 but constantly added to and self-revised right up to his death. <br /><br />If, as Helen Vendler suggests, changing one word in the edit of a poem is a ‘complex act’ then we can understand the ramifications of wider revision. Writers edit their own work and editors edit writers’ work (again sometimes for the good or bad). Often there is a tacit agreement between writer and editor about the ‘finished’ work to be published, but what of the injudicious heavy-handed editor that does not serve the writer (or literature) well. Gordon Lish dramatically reduced Raymond Carver’s early stories to a point that could be called minimalist. There are many writers and critics who prefer the Lish-free Carver, the original ‘longer’ short prose. And what of John Taylor, the publisher of John Clare, who edits (erases) the essential natural dialect and rustic phonetic spelling of the Helpstone poet to suit a London-centric cosmopolitan readership. At least these writers were alive when changes were made to their work, they had a chance to protest. And then there is Shakespeare, seven years deceased when the First Folio of his plays were published in 1623. A Folio published from the extant quartos to achieve what scholar-editors thought was the definitive edition of his work. A precedent set.<br /><br />Art and Literature is protected by copyright laws, but these are often flouted and when the copyright expires art and literature is up for grabs. In a dystopian horror worthy of H.G. Wells or J.G. Ballard, there could be a future where classic texts are re-written by readers. Teachers of literature often encourage students to copy out passages of great writing so they experience at first hand the physical embodiment of the writer’s craft, perhaps an identification with the thought process of the writer. In the virtual world the reader becomes a powerful critic, making changes to the poems they read, at will, taking away, revising. In the digital age everyone is potentially an editor.. If everyone is an editor, then everyone is a critic, everyone has judgement, taste. In the hypertextual world text is mobile, language is for everyone, an egalitarian ownership of the written word. It was in this dystopian spirit that I edited Frank O’Hara’s ‘The Day Lady Died’, a [sacrilegious] re-working of a dead poet’s work, the desecration of a classic poem.<br /><br />I love O’Hara’s filmic poem, the pitch-perfect narrative (a voiceover), its roll-call of directions and images, it’s immediacy, its day-freshness, the movement of mind and body in real historical time, the casual references to art and artists and his personal friends, the restraint, the honesty, the emotional choke at the end of the last line, which leads us back to the title. However, on re-reading the poem again after twenty years I became fascinated by the indented line that starts the third stanza. Why this staggered enjambement? How fat this third stanza is compared with the others. The preceding and following stanzas are alternate six and four line stanzas and that is no accident. Despite the despotic looseness of the language, the structure is tight, regular, except for the third stanza? <br /><br />I split the nine line third stanza into two quatrains with a natural break after ‘Verlaine’ at the end of each stanza and deleted the line <br /><br />‘after practically going to sleep with quandariness’<br /><br />before the next sestet; now, there were six stanzas instead of the original five, 28 lines instead of 29, and one deleted line. These are the changes I had in mind. Anything gained? What is lost in this experiment? I egotistically thought there might be a small gain and nothing lost. But I was wrong. I feel the edited poem is just adequate as a mixture of sestets and quatrains, but the indented line ‘I go on to the bank’ looks lost in a quatrain, the three lines underneath not weighty enough to sustain it. The structure of the edited version is solid enough, but the shape isn’t. In the deleted line the word that was reminding me of its pivotal importance was ‘quandariness’ which has something of Louis MacNiece’s ‘variousness’ and sums up the dizzying world of O’Hara’s New York in one day, until he his stopped in his tracks by a picture on the cover of the New York Post. <br /><br />I also noticed the numeral balance to O’Hara’s original poem compared to the edited version. The original is on the left below: <br /><br />6 6<br /><br /><br />4 4<br /><br /><br />9 4<br /><br /><br />6 4<br /><br /><br />4 6<br /><br /><br /> 4<br /><br />I came to realise the nine line stanza is the heart and body of the poem, perfectly placed, 9 lines of 29, two equal-lined stanzas either side of it, a centrifugal weight for the thoughts and movement and feelings spinning off it. In trying to change the third stanza I saw it was the most important, central to the build up, central to the pay off. The indented line serves as a pre-echo of the dramatic pause at the end of the poem /…’and I stopped breathing’. The poem is also an historical document as well as priceless poetry. To edit this poem would be to alter history. In this sense, the poem is unrevisable. We can’t go back to the future with it. This sacred text is protected by its own creative mechanism. Frank O’ Hara, had he lived to an old age, wouldn’t have wanted to change it? <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
<br /></div>
luddpoethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11298375489407379252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6542829728567214898.post-87144733400264234302018-01-08T16:10:00.001+00:002018-01-10T19:36:38.079+00:00Artists and their Physicians<br />
Here is a link to a recently published collaborative essay on the relationship between Vincent Van Gogh and Dr. Paul Gachet<br />
<br />
Hope you enjoy,<br />
<br />
Anthony<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2018/01/van-gogh-gachet/">http://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2018/01/van-gogh-gachet/</a>luddpoethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11298375489407379252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6542829728567214898.post-3754535629850944772017-11-21T17:54:00.002+00:002019-12-16T17:29:55.346+00:00The Heart is a Lonely Hunter<br />
A few weeks ago I re-read a novel - <i>The Heart is a Lonely Hunter</i> - that I had plucked from the bookshelves of a friend's flat I was staying in during a few days in Munich. I began reading it in Bavaria and finished reading it in England having inadvertently taken the book back with me in my backpack. It was a long, tight read. I read it slowly because it's a book rich in minute details and overlapping small-town story-lines that made me think of William Faulkner and especially Faulkner's book <i>Sanctuary.</i><br />
<br />
<i></i>It's a book hard to summarise easily. When I was reading it, I wrote notes and had plans for an essay (I did make some notes on white cards) but now, several weeks later, I can't think of any overall standout theme. The author, Carson McCullers, is like a documentary-maker getting to the heart and soul of a small, southern town in the US. Her camera goes in close, uncomfortably close, to a populace of misfits and the damned.<br />
<br />
The examination of the characters' lives is unremitting. The taut prose gleams boldly and is heroically unforgiving of its subjects, precise and cutting like a surgeon's knife; the narrative is film-like, the scenes like minimalist paintings, the honesty of the emotions pared back to a raw richness, until the burst of defiant expression. The characters are so hard on themselves. The heart is a ruthless hunter, maybe.<br />
<br />
And yet, out of the bleakness, there is a progressive reach, truth is somehow nearby, and the lowest of the low are ennobled by their immense struggle. I can think of no other novel that, chapter by chapter, could be a contender for a cut and paste treatment. You can read these chapters any which way and still feel the pull of the book's power.<br />
<br />
I have to post this yellowing spine-broken book back to Munich. It is an easy book to let go of, a hard novel to surface from.<br />
<br />
On one of my white cards I wrote:<br />
<br />
Benedict Mady Copeland (Dr Copeland)<br />
is a precursor to:<br />
<br />
Malcolm X<br />
Martin Luther King<br />
Rev. Jesse Jacksonluddpoethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11298375489407379252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6542829728567214898.post-69629031939257913942017-08-26T20:02:00.000+01:002017-08-28T09:25:52.675+01:00Ex Nihilo<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>EX NIHILO</i></span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-75adc025-1fe3-772f-28c9-79ba0769b7bd" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is no such thing as nothing.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I prefer </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>creatio ex materia </i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to explain </span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the mercy of peace and wonderment</span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">that punctuate our damned lives.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Those poor Judes, their artisan talents,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the pitfalls of class, the fostering </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">of hope </span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nietzsche felt the worst myth </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">in the box.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I read Shelley in spring and need no-one.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the wildlife garden I make wood piles</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and know tonight the dung beetles</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">will navigate by the moon and stars</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to clamber aboard the turd I've left them.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sunbeams dancing on the stream by day, </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">dung beetles rolling around in shit at night.</span></div>
<br />
AC<br />
<br />
* Those poor Judes (the Obscures)luddpoethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11298375489407379252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6542829728567214898.post-50864094667650422282017-05-21T19:30:00.000+01:002017-05-21T19:30:14.827+01:00Summer PoetryDear Readers,<br />
<br />
Welcome to the Summer issue of The High Window. We are delighted by the growing international interest in our online journal and printing press. This issue sees work from across the age spectrum, from Sophie Reissbort, aged 15, to Maurice Rutherford who is 95, with a range of ages in between!<br />
<br />
In previous issues detectable themes have appeared in the submissions accepted, but the poems in issue 6 are incredibly diverse. What strikes us is the language that crackles at sometimes subtle and sometimes loud decibels, and that the poems are profoundly confident in themselves, as if the poets had chiselled their thoughts to the point of no return: this is what I have to say. As Peter Daniel's writes in Down and Up<br />
<br />
On the upper side of the cloud cover, God sits deciding<br />
what’s on the cards, sharpening the moon like a sickle.<br />
<br />
In this issue we have six book reviews of work by Peter Sirr, Gerard Smyth, Adam Wyeth, Michael Crowley, Ruth Sharman and the recently deceased Roy Fisher.<br />
<br />
The essay is a homage (if not elegy) for the recently deceased Sam Gardiner, and the featured American poet is the wonderfully talented Richard Hoffman. Get to know him more 'in conversation with'...<br />
<br />
Our resident artist, Angela Smyth, has illustrated the poems of Anne Irwin, Sue Burge and Daniel Marshall. previous poets who have had their work illustrated have been interested in buying the original art work from Angela. This service she is happy to provide.<br />
<br />
The translation feature focusses on Dutch poetry: seven poets' work are featuring here and four translators. This feature was guest edited by David Colmar and with help from the Dutch Foundation for Literature. We are deeply grateful for their interest in The High Window as a platform for poems in Dutch/English.<br />
<br />
The High Window summer publication is The Edge of Seeing by John Duffy. We are proud of this book and have immense faith in this poet. John's book can be bought here or via the Press page.<br />
<br />
Finally, a heartfelt thanks to our reviewers, essayist, American poet, David Colmar, Angela Smyth and to the fabulous poets who submit their work free gratis. We would not have The High Window without you.<br />
<br />
See the whole issue at:thehighwindowpress.com<br />
<br />
Happy Summerluddpoethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11298375489407379252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6542829728567214898.post-56158372776624047442017-04-16T18:36:00.000+01:002017-04-17T00:32:25.476+01:00Notes on Dr GachetExtract from 'Vincent Van Gogh & Doctor Gachet'<br />
<br />
Paul Gachet, born in Lille in 1828, had studied for a BA at the University of Paris and earned his medical degree for his thesis 'Etude sur le Melancolie' in 1858 after working in two mental institutions at Bicêtre and the Hôpital Salpetrière, The famous French physician Philippe Pinel (1745-1826) had been medical director at both hospitals where he had introduced what became known as ‘moral treatment or therapy’ based on a psychological interpretation of the patient’s symptoms. This enlightened approach to the mentally ill led to the removal of restraints such as chains and straitjackets that had been commonly used in the asylums. Also banished were the dubious practices of bleeding, purging and blistering. In their place, Pinel recommended a therapeutic relationship that involved close contact with and constant observation of patients. He visited them every day, took extensive notes and tried to determine the natural history of their condition. Previously, the understanding of mental health problems was very limited. Anyone deemed to be insane or a threat to society was likely to be locked up in an asylum built at some distance from the city centre.<br />
<br />
The topic of Gachet’s thesis on ‘melancolie’ suggests that he had already developed an interest in nervous disorders as a young doctor, perhaps influenced by Pinel’s humanitarian approach. However, he also worked as a front line doctor with the National Guard during the Prussian siege of Paris in 1870, a brave and risky enterprise in which his surgical skills would have been tested. Gachet moved to Auvers-sur-Oise from Paris in 1872 in the hope that the country air would benefit his wife who was suffering from tuberculosis, a common and often fatal disease at the time. Sadly she died in 1885, a major loss that Van Gogh suggested had partly caused his friend’s low mood and sad demeanour, evident in both of his portraits of Gachet.<br />
<br />
It is not clear when Gachet developed an interest in homeopathy, but this would not have been uncommon in the late nineteenth century when there were very few effective remedies available to treat common diseases. In Auvers, he apparently grew several medicinal herbs in his garden. An amateur artist, painting under the pseudonym Paul van Ryssel, he met and treated several famous impressionist artists including Renoir, Pissarro, and Cezanne, even teaching anatomical drawing to a young Georges Seurat.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
luddpoethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11298375489407379252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6542829728567214898.post-17992103068998127412017-03-21T23:03:00.000+00:002017-03-21T23:03:01.812+00:00On TranslationComparison and Provenance in Translation<br />
<br />
In the winter of 2013 I sat in a cafe in Pleneuf-Val-Andre with a French phrase book and a Larousse dictionary and began translating L'ondee (Rain-Shower) into English. What struck me was that translation had something magical about it. French words from L'ondee appearing in English on a blank white page. Words, phrases and then lines appearing, content and narrative revealed, detail, place...a garden at night, deserted, raining or having just rained, a strange mood, the narrator expecting to meet someone there or wishing he was meeting someone there. In three hours I had the first draft of my first translated poem. When I took my morning's work home to my girlfriend - Anita Marsh, one of the co-translators of Alain-Fournier:Poems (Carcanet, 2016) - she saw linguistic and grammatical anomalies in Rain-Shower when she cross-referenced with the French original in Miracles, (Miracles, Gallimard, 1924). Bi-lingual in written and spoken French she agreed to provide me with a crib, the litterals, of the 8 long poems in Miracles so I could work on the English versions. Three of the subsequent poems appeared in Acumen, Agenda, Orbis and one A Travers Les Etes in the Spring 2014 edition of The French Literary Review.<br />
<br />
These earlier versions are different to the later versions that appear in Alain-Fournier:Poems. By 2014 I had met the poet and writer Anthony Howell. He discovered six more poems of Fournier's that had been published in Livre de Poche editions in 2006 and 2011, and he became a third translator using Anita Marsh's original translations and notes. And we, Anita and Anthony and me, became a collaborative translation team. I think a collaborative approach to translation democratises the ego. In earlier versions my voice, my inly workings, and some of my default positions as a poet in English, held sway. Because I had been so immersed in the project, it's meandering provenance, and given that Anita had died in October 2013, I felt allied only with a successful conclusion, publication and Anita's and Fournier's names interlinked in posterity. I felt I knew Fournier. I was always saying: 'I know Alain-Fournier'. But how much of this understanding was hearing my own voice in place of Fournier's? Perhaps in translation there is a necessary projective identification, a merging of the selves of poet and translator at some deep intuitive level? The work looking in different directions at the same time, the original work and the translated work speaking in two languages simultaneously, the linguistic fault lines the range of interpretive space that is opened up when words, phases, clauses and signifiers journey from one country to another.<br />
<br />
A translator should never add or subtract from the basic signifiers in the original text, the essential content and narrative, but there are options for choices of determiner or logical constant or adverb and sometimes there are basic but important word choices in the translation process, and this word choice is paramount, because the choice of one word over another can affect the tone and mood and the meaning in the original. Ponderous or heavy, bent over or leaning over, for example. In the line 'et soudain d'apporter la fraicheur de vos mains' Anita translated as 'and suddenly (in the same instant, that moment) bringing (to bring) the freshness (purity or coolness or chilliness) of your hands' (Anita's brackets). Anita added further comments about this repeated word fraicheur as evoking the coolness of the evening and even frigidity. In the final version in Alain-Fournier:Poems we have 'and suddenly you have brought/the freshness of your hands', but how different the interpretation if the woman's hands were 'pure' or 'chilly'. I feel word choice means that translation is always at a point of variance. Throughout Anita's crib she offered word options for me.<br />
<br />
There are other significant differences between the Carcanet version of From Summer to Summer and A Journey through Summer that appeared in The French Literary Review (FLR). Depending on how you count the stanzas in Miracles (is a two line couplet separated from the main stanza but somehow relating to it in narrative terms a new stanza?) there are 15 stanzas. In the FLR version there are nine stanzas comprising 62 lines, in the Carcanet version there are 13 stanzas comprising 89 lines. Satnza 4 of A Journey through Summer condenses stanzas 3-6 in From Summer to Summer. The final stanza of the FLR version incorporates two stanzas in the Carcanet version, but even accounting for this it is apparent that the FLR poem is shorter, more concise. The repetitive tropes Fournier uses in the French are eschewed in favour of a rudimentary approach to narrarive and meaning. I think I fell under the spell of representing Fournier's poem in the fewest English words, and also maybe feeling that the English version could be slightly different to the French in terms of the impact on the page, a perspective on the original which would account for a modern reader who might not need the decorative aspects of la belle epoque. The Carcanet version has more fidelity to poetic detail and nunace line by line. One could argue that the FLR version is a stepping stone to the later version, the bare bones of the poem that the Carcanet version adds flesh to.<br />
<br />
The Carcanet version is fuller and truer, has more faith in Alain-Fournier, but I think the main thrust of obsessive longing and love is there in the FLR poem. Many of the subsequent differences are to do with the rhythm of refrains in one and sparse diction in the other. Other significant differences are to do with lines, in the FLR I retain the French 'a fete du saint sacrament', while in the Carcanet version we have the English 'festooned as if for a Saint's Day', with phases: 'a novel of old' (FLR)/ a novel of 'some noble age' (Carcanet), 'salon of sweet nothings' (FLR)/' ritual of sweet nothings (Carcanet) and especially word choice. What follows is the different effect of word choices running throughout A Journey through Summer/From Summer to Summer, respectively:<br />
<br />
Heavy/ponderous<br />
Solitary/loner<br />
I await you/awaited so<br />
I dream of love/lost in visions of love<br />
Summers of the world/summers of the earth<br />
Lady/damsel<br />
Slow-stepping/liesurely pace<br />
The turreted house/the turtle dove house<br />
Follow you always/dog your steps<br />
Chateau/castle<br />
Lady/chalelaine <br />
<br />
In choosing one word over another one could argue that there is no such thing as a literal translation. Then there are there factors to consider such as meaning. I think there is a focus on meaning and narrative in the FLR version whereas there is (in some of the poems) an emphasis in the translaton of poetic music (even at meaning's expense) as Anthony Howell elaborates on with regard to his explanatory note on Sur la nacelle in Alain-Fournier:Poems.<br />
<br />
There are many schools of translating poetry. Janos Csokits feels it impossible to recreate 'a poem in another language' and that one must take into account 'the artistic temperament and personality of the poets involved'.* I feel this true of the Alain-Fournier translations where there were three translators collaborating with Fournier. The Carcanet version of A Travers Les Etes is representative of a qualitative approach evident in the other thirteen poems in the translation. They may not always be (for stylistic and artistic purposes) identical to the originals as Anthony Howell points out, but they are faithful to Alain-Founier's poetry, his poetic vision, and his body of work. A translation doesn't necessarily have to begin, but once it has, and for better or for worse, it has to end somewhere. <br />
<br />
This article first appeared in the Spring issue of The French Literary Review, 2017<br />
<br />
* Translating Poetry, edited by Daniel Weissbort (Macmillan), 1989luddpoethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11298375489407379252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6542829728567214898.post-37251923333227540702017-02-17T23:04:00.002+00:002017-02-17T23:04:59.536+00:00Edgar Allan Poe<br />
<br />
My bedsit is split into two living areas; one room containing a cooker, gas fire, table, sofa and window, and a bedroom containing a small wardrobe, a sink, and shelves full of dusty books on literature and philosophy. These rooms suit my needs: food, whisky, gas fire, a sofa. Bedsitland.<br />
<br />
I think Edgar must have seen much of himself in this shabby abode and much of himself in me, obsessively reading and drinking alcohol (he would call it liquor) to the point of oblivion, seen at a glance my failed adulthood, my broken, literary dreams, my obsessive ritualising, solitude masking self-pity and dependency and said "kindred spirit, be mine". Edgar's inhabiting me was a form of loving me.<br />
<br />
It was a month ago Edgar first visited. I had always been aware of Poe as a strangely obsessive writer with a grotesque imagination. Like many readers over the years I had accumulated books by Poe: Al Aaraf and other poems, The Raven and other poems, Tales of Mystery and Imagination, Tales of Arabesque, and the entire tales and short stories in one collection or other. And his sole novel, typically titled by Poe Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. The stories in these books - William Wilson, The Gold Bug, The Tell Tale Heart, The Red Masque, The Pit and the Pendulum, and The Fall of the House of Usher - were tales of operatic fantasies, mysteries and mild, if not very obvious, horror stories. I perhaps marvelled at the obsessive and compulsive attention to detail of Auguste Dupin, Poe's detective in three crime mysteries, and was perhaps taken aback, if not concerned, by the notion of the splitting of the self, the doppelganger effect, in William Wilson, but that is all.<br />
<br />
Several years ago when I worked in a bookstore, I ordered a book of Poe's Collected Letters and was shocked at groveling, begging letters to his adoptive parents, his cousins, and his friends. Poe's neediness and manipulative tone and dependency appalled me. I read the letters in one sitting and then threw the book away swearing I would never read Poe again. Years past and I kept my word, years where I have married and divorced, suffering the second of what used to be called nervous breakdown, and five years as a gardener where I read very little. In fact, nothing at all. Preferring to sit in my bedsit and drink alcohol, to reach oblivion, to forget that I was George, the gardener.<br />
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That is, until about a month ago. I was walking past a second-hand bookshop and there was Poe or, rather, his daguerreotype on the front cover of a biography by Wolf Mankowitz called The Extraordinary Poe. It was the sad plangent look on Poe's face, his beseeching, big, dark-brown, needy, piercing eyes, a look that gave human visual texture to the letters I had read all those years ago that has lead me here. I started drinking again and read Poe's stories again, but this time at night, and under the influence of whisky.<br />
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Poe visited. I still found it odd when he appeared for the first time in the mirror above the gas fire. He became Edgar to me and not Poe. You may laugh at the mirror point of entry. Very Edgar Allan Poe! But it is true, nonetheless. For three nights I had been drinking and reading Poe's oeuvre, story after story, tale after tale, only stopping to look at the photograph on the cover of Mankowitz's biography. I stood up swaying a little bit from the bottle I had just finished, turned to the mirror and there he was, Edgar, a hologram in liquid glass, a little like the photograph, but more alive, blood and veins in his countenance. At first I felt embarrassed and not afraid, the figure eye-balling me, the high, intelligent forehead, black piled up, lacquered hair, the contemptuous smile, the pained, beseeching, sometimes angry black eyes.<br />
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We swapped selves. I became Edgar and he became me. It felt like I was the younger brother in an older, stronger brother's mind and body - we weren't one and the same like William Wilson; I was being led and I saw things as Edgar that I can't repeat, ever. What he did or saw as me I have little recollection. I woke one day and remembered I had been out the night before, we in Edgar's dark coat and high starched collar, walking with a silver-topped cane to pick up liquor from a local store. I was aware of the strange and petrified looks we elicited from people.<br />
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I woke yesterday and realised that weeks have gone by and I haven't been out of my room, except at night with Edgar. I haven't been to work, nor have I been contacted by anyone. I decided to end it. I stayed sober yesterday and Edgar did not appear. I am sober today, and feel if I write this letter before dusk and refrain from drinking until then he will not appear. When he does appear this bottle of whisky and this batch of pills will kill us both.<br />
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<br />luddpoethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11298375489407379252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6542829728567214898.post-73673239605163981012017-01-18T01:27:00.001+00:002017-01-18T01:27:38.724+00:00Alain-Fournier (2)Extract from Introduction to Alain-Fournier:Poems<br />
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...In the way that J.D. Salinger was able to maintain the voice of 13 year old Holden Caulfield throughout Catcher in the Rye, so Fournier gives his narrator a younger teenage persona, albeit a perceptive and intelligent one. Fournier was always looking back, and I think he was already setting his recent experiences with Yvonne de Quiévrecourt in the poetic past, the narrator given a naïve outlook, an innocence and an unworldliness that Alain-Fournier's real life disavows. The poems are powerful and effective given this distancing, and free-floating in some ideal place and time. Despite the powerful outpouring of spontaneous feelings and the symbolism attached to certain objects in the poems (the chateau, the parasol, the path, the garden, etc) they are not Romantic in the German or English sense of the word. The poems owe something to the dreamy sense of fantasy attached to French Symbolism, but perhaps ultimately they are shaped more by impressionism and the phenomenology of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty than by the standard preoccupations of 19th century European poetry...<br />
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Three years in the making...<br />
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This book is available now from Amazon, Waterstone's, from me...<br />
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Merry Christmas to my readers,<br />
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Best Wishes,<br />
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Anthonyluddpoethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11298375489407379252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6542829728567214898.post-83358942764272139972016-11-20T22:39:00.000+00:002016-11-20T22:39:00.091+00:00Byron and PolidoriExtract from one of the Kava Poetry Lectures...<br />
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Polidori, either through a feeling of rejection or an idiosyncratic approach to medicine, exhibits (to Byron) the macabre. Byron writing that 'when he was my physician he was always talking of prussic acid, oil of amber, blowing into veins, suffocating by charcoal and compounding poison'. Ironically, Polidori shows signs of hypochondria on the journey to Geneva, frequent headaches, nausea, fainting fits, and so on. On a few occasions, Byron has to play the role of doctor and administer to him, albeit unenthusiastically. Polidori, sensitive to environmental conditions whether it be perfumed tea or a freshly painted room.<br />
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'I have a pain in my loins and languor in my bones' is one example of many medical self-diagnoses in Polidori's diary. Polidori, nevertheless, is the doctor to Byron and Byron's guests at the Villa Diodati, administering ether to Shelley at one point, treating Byron with magnesium and opiates; he is also (initially) a participant in the daily social engagements, visiting soirees, attending balls, boating. With letters of introduction, Byron plays the role of friend and facilitator, therefore enabling the doctor's acceptance into Geneva society.<br />
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The doctor is present on that infamous night when the gathered party are challenged by Byron to write a ghost story. Byron has the pamphlets given to him by Coleridge. Byron gives a copy for Shelley to read in the August of that cloudy summer. Could it have been the ghostly moats and the ghostly oaks and the ghostly castles, the mastiffs and the serpent eyes and the jagged shadows that give Christabel its eerie atmosphere that tipped the balance of sanity that night? Shelley, as Polidori would have it, running from the room in a fit of nausea at the images of Geraldine's deformed breast and snake-like torso. The curse of Christabel affecting the party in Geneva while Coleridge finds relative peace as the 'Sage of Highgate'? Between July and August, Polidori has both angered Byron and Shelley and become ostracised, parting company with Byron in September. The diary entries cease, which is indicative of a troubled time for Polidori and question marks about his behaviour. Polidori writes retrospectively in September:<br />
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'Had a long explanation with Shelley and Byron about my conduct to Lord Byron. I threatened to shoot Shelley one day on the water'<br />
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We learn from Byron and Shelley that Polidori had challenged Shelley to a duel on another occasion, that he quarrelled with Byron and Genevan doctors (about inferior magnesia given by an apothecary to Byron), Byron having to vacate the Villa Diodati during one of Polidori's moods, and he was dismissed from his position in September, Byron writing to John Murray years later that<br />
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'I never was much more disgusted with any human production than with the eternal nonsense and tracusseries and vanity of that young person'<br />
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But in another letter he concedes Polidori had manners, honour and talent, perhaps a frustrated talent. He had mixed feelings about Polidori. At one point he is a friend and companion and then he can treat the Doctor demeaningly and disparagingly.<br />
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'He is clever and accomplished but his faults are the faults of a pardonable vanity and youth' and then 'his remaining with me is out of the question. I have enough to do to manage my own scrapes'<br />
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It seems for all of Byron's guests at the Villa Diodati, that nothing was the same for any of them after the night of ghost stories, and Byron's reciting of Coleridge's Christabel, including Polidori, who had already been relegated in Byron's affections with the arrival of Shelley's circle and who, perhaps, through writing was able to establish an identity strong enough to withstand the strong characters in the group, and also, tired of the demeaning jokes at his expense, begins to fight back, passionately forgetting his responsibilities as a doctor and his presence as an employee.<br />
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Polidori attempts a kind of slave revolt through literature. Humiliated repeatedly by Byrons penchant for sadistic put downs, he tries to write through conflict and achieve an equable status through literature. Feeling inferior in the brilliant company he constantly seeks approval, showing Shelley his plays (Shelley feels they are not good), participating in the literary competition to write a ghost story on a par with the french-translated German fantasmagoriana and Coleridge's Christabel recited to such powerful effect by Byron.<br />
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Polidori wants to be the artist (Byron) but, in this case, wants to simultaneously overthrow him. In a boating incident recounted by Mary Godwin, Polidori accidentlally strikes Byron with an oar. Byron, in deep pain, and grimacing retorts:<br />
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'Be so kind Polidori, on another time, to take some care for you hurt me very much<br />
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To which the doctor replies<br />
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'I am glad of it. I am glad to see you suffer pain<br />
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Hardly the words one expects from a doctor to a patient! The medical profession is ethically based on the Hippocratic oath, but Polidori's moral position is undermined and clouded by his role as a commissioned diarist, employed by Byron's publisher, John Murray, to observe and write about his employer and patient.<br />
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In being with, and tending to, and writing about Byron, his own sense of self is in danger of being eclipsed. So he writes The Vampyre; the main character like Byron, indeed a version of a character, Augustus Darvell, that Byron had created for his abandoned ghost tale and published by John Murray as Mappeza: Fragments of a Novel. The main character bearing some resemblance to a character in Lady Caroline Lamb's Glenarvon, a roman a clef with its Byronesque anti-hero, Lord Ruthven. In writing The Vampyre Polidori can gain control of a fictionalised Byron and achieve literary fame. Fiction is therapy for Polidori, because only a week or so earlier he had felt anguished and vulnerable enough to attempt suicide...luddpoethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11298375489407379252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6542829728567214898.post-67884050070644607612016-10-18T13:52:00.000+01:002019-12-13T19:04:42.553+00:00David Constantine's The Loss<br />
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David Constantine's short story The Loss reads like an animated film shot in monochrome. It has the bleakness of Barton Fink with none of the comedy; it has the blandness of a business conference where every hollow speech effortlessly delivered receives a collective anodyne round of applause.<br />
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This story is preoccupied with the soul, or the loss and lack of it, and with those who have lost it and, perhaps, never wanted it, or ever felt they needed it. These people are, in a sense, anti-angels or 'unrecording angels'. They live by body and (unquestioning) mind alone and life is purgatory, despite outward signs of success and achievement.<br />
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Mr Silverman, a business executive and the epitome of the soul-less human, travels between New York, Singapore, Frankfurt, London (convention after convention), is chillingly aware that he has no soul, or has lost it, and that he has the ability to recognise other soul-less humans. Even Silverman's infidelities are soul-less (i.e, love-less and passion-less); his wife's passive acceptance of his transgressions add to his state of loss.<br />
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This story, with the symbol of ice used as a running motif, and ending with a scene with an ice-pick (I won't spoil the ending) is perhaps too beautifully written for the subject matter. I think the writing could have even been more concise, brutally spare.<br />
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In The Loss Constantine says something philosophically interesting about the concept of the soul. Here he suggests, quite profoundly, that the soul is something we can choose to have. For some characters, (and some humans) like Silverman's wife, the 'soul is necessary'. Salvation might be down to choice. Soul is not a given, or God-given, not attached to a logos or rich psyche. Those who don't have it, or have lost it (and for Silverman it is too late to get it back), have in its place 21 corporeal grams of something like a blob of lead within the body, within the mind, within consciousnesses; this ingot of irritating metal, kidney-shaped in the story, which moves about the body at will, never lets the soul-less human settle into anything like basic satisfaction. The title reminds us that Silverman possibly once had a soul, and that, therefore, the soul can be irrevocably lost, and that one might even have a choice with regards its passing.luddpoethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11298375489407379252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6542829728567214898.post-19095248576137639952016-09-21T00:41:00.001+01:002016-09-21T21:26:25.320+01:00Ambitious Failure in Literature<br />
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<li>Ambitious Failure in Literature</li>
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I have always been deeply moved by Jude Fawley's return to Christminster with ambitions to enter, as a scholar, one of the prestigious colleges. An artisan, a stonemason, Jude is, essentially, self-educated. Jude writes to five professors in order to realise his ambition, but he is rebuffed. In a night scene, Jude walks around the grounds of one of the colleges (Biblioll, if I remember correctly) of Christminster (Oxford to us) and, using the technical language of the stonemason, describes the architectural features of a building he will never set foot inside. Education, class, (and class divide), fate and, perhaps, the flaw of ambition are intensely merged in this beautifully bleak and heart-rending chapter. One can't help but feel that had Jude been born into the Gentry he would have been accepted as a scholar in Christminster. In this sense, Jude's intellectual ambitions and his miserable plight are of social and political relevance.<br />
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Is Jude's ambition noble or delusional?<br />
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Literature gives us many examples of (often) male characters ultimately dissatisfied with their intellectual striving. Most notably Casaubon (Middlemarch) with his interminable 'Key to all Mythologies'; Richard Phillotson (Jude The Obscure) and his grand and uncompleted '...Antiquites of Wessex', his failure to become a Parson; the fire insurance clerk Leonard Bast (Howards End) whose philosophical ideas and literary ambitions are treated as social experiment with disastrous effects by Helen Schlegel.<br />
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How writers treat working class characters and, indeed, how modernist writers treat the reading masses was the subject of John Carey's book The Intellectuals and the Masses: pride and prejudice among the literary intelligentsia 1880-1939. Carey accused twentieth century modernist writers of arrogance and superiority with regard to the masses; to the intellgentsia, the mass of lower classes were interested in nothing more serious than common newspapers and, at best, penny dreadfuls, the working class autodidact was a pseudo-intellectual, made more pathetic by a trivial literary ambition above his class. In fiction this ambition is often fatal. Carey points his finger at, among others, George Bernard Shaw (Pygmalion) and E.M. Forster (the oeuvre), seeing Arnold Bennett as an exception to the rule, an author to undermine the snobbish, Nietzschean elitism in British modernist writing.<br />
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It was as late as the 1960s for literature in Britain to redress the balance, the working class novels, kitchen sink dramas, the literature in the 70s and 80s that dealt directly (across the class divide) with the often difficult road to intellectual emancipation (Educating Rita, A Chorus of Disapproval, Vote Vote Vote for Nigel Barton), culminating in the unabashed confidence in subject matter and style of writing of a contemporary writer like James Kelman.<br />
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The working class aspiring intellectual should not be haunted by the fictional failure of literary ambition. He or she is a part of a great tradition of self-educators that goes back (at least) as far as the Roundheads in Cromwellian England, learning on the hoof by bits of passed around bible, broadsides and ballads. We autodidacts are unique. We have a reading history like no-one else's, we carry a portable library with us wherever we go, our study is a holy place and the most important room in our homes. We may, in the early days of self-realisation, mispronounce Goethe or Titian or Gide, but soon the tide is ours, we no longer are bound to the patronisng and tragic misrepresentations in life and literature. Modernism, in particular the English novel, becomes just another a piece of literary cake. And we can either take it or leave it.<br />
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*Disclaimer...the writer's library is in its fourth year of being packed in boxes. Of course, I have built a smaller impromptu library, but much of the information above is from memory and is, therefore, not a work of scholarship, even of the street kind!<br />
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