David wrote:
> I guess that two of the poets really to get to grips with on
>this tack would be the Vallejo of the last book, where the public and
>private at times almost fuse indistguishably one from each, and yet at other
>times show the cracks; and the Celan of the middle period onward, who is
>most definitely 'inwardly of tongue' yet sometimes more eloquent in voice
>against what blocks people's mouths, and for what is threatened in the
>'West', speech's true freedoms of association. Do you think so? I write as
>someone who can, to a degree, speak freely here, and to a greater extent,
>say more openly behind 'closed doors', and barely say anything in other
>spaces of my daily world.
Hurriedly:
Mayakovsky wasn't attacked as a "petty bourgois individualist and
anarchist" for no reason (sounds like a fair description of most poets).
No doubt for lines like this:
As a matter of fact,
one time I found her -
the soul.
She came out
in a blue housecoat
and said:
"Sit down!
I waited a long time for you.
Won't you have a glass of tea?"
And then there are Neruda's Elemental Odes, which are about tomatoes and
other simple things, the ignored things, but which are deeply political
in their intentions. (I've by no means read all of Neruda either,
there's just so much of it...) And by attending to what is most commonly
left out of public speech, either erased by cliche (like love) or simply
overlooked, the mysteries of things are restored, their otherness, their
right to be, and with those our own rights also. Is it their opacity
which is given them? The rights of people and things to be other than
how they are perceived? And this is surely a question hanging within the
problematic of censorship in all its meanings, these delicate rights:
(I'm thinking of those freedom-of-speechers who defend the rights of
Nazis or paedophiles to obliterate the existences of others, but that's
another issue).
I'm not at all sure that "rights" is the right word. But will do for now.
Vallejo, Celan - somehow I can't help feeling their freedoms are the same
or at least closely related to those I admire in less "obscure" poets
(you know, I find most poetry "obscure", even the allegedly plainest).
But no time to tease this out...
Best
Alison
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