Which above is a Shakespearean phrase, from on the Sonnets, perhaps Robin,
as pedant-in-residence, could kindly trace the word-history of 'millions' in
what seems to be the modern usage, i.e. an awful lot, as far as I know WS
was the first to employ it poetically in our shambluage I mean language
(more about that later).
The poem also follows with 'on you do tend', which phrase seems to be very
much to the nub of the way of presentation of poetry in list-groups like
this. I am sure I am making myself clear on this, let's muddy perception and
understanding a little more in the vague hope that it might result in
comprehension:
version 1:
a much admired Australian poet who, although a professional writer, is
willing to share her work with the ad-hoc and unprofitable and unpredictable
world of internet discussion groups, has presented a poem that displays an
exquisite self-questioning which was publicly received with admiration by an
English writer of no particular, an odd attack by a strange Italian poet and
a triumphantly accurate appraisal by an American editor of international
standing. The poem talks about, while addressing itself, the paradoxes of
self and self-fictionalisation, yet brings these abstractions to home in
arresting physical imagery. It is a deeply satisfying development in the
writing of a poet whose status is being perceived in the literary world at a
level which has been overdue, admiration her work has consistently received,
but not the official acknowledgement it deserves.Fortunately this state of
affairs is now becoming resolved.
version 2:
if anything illustrated the shenanigans of the so-called poetry community
more perfectly I would have difficulty in thinking of a better example than
this. I barely know where to begin, such is the inchoate rage all this stuff
awakes. Let's see: this list is +supposedly+ focused on British and Irish
poetry (contemporary) of an innovative kind. Ms Croggon, who occasionally
evinces an interest on those lines, and Ms Seiferle, who never does, have
used the moment, when presumably most readers would be in a post-festive
daze, in that tiny world of poetry, as an opportunity for self-promotion,
Alison as the originator and Seiferle as ever her henchwoman. It was
received with particular joy by an English (i.e. British) poet who was
expelled from list run as a court of obeisance by Ms's AC and RS on, of all
days, Christmas Day, for, as far as he can work out, the terrible crime of
writing a poem about the plight of the elderly at this time of year. Said
dismissal was accompanied by legalistic burblings about the crime of
'cross-posting', of which Ms AC's poem is an example. It followed on from
personal abuse of a most extraordinary kind from a writer who had made a
most peculiar advance (photo enclosed, it was) to the exiled character and
was afterwards flavoured by another personal attack, which had no right of
reply, by another which was greeted by a 'Thanks' by Croggon and a new
meaning of the word, previously unknown to human language, 'Generous' by
Sefeirle AND some very unwelcome bullying private messages from a prominent,
in the literary status-quo, member of this list, again on Christmas Day.
Seasons greetings all round. It is very hard not to notice the irony of a
poem about self-fictionality being received with such pompous asservations
of support from Sefeirle, who had displayed a singular incapacity to deal
with such a conceit, nor too to wonder at Alison's phrase "speaking like a
bad novel" as she has, apart from displaying what is definitely an ability
as a poet, also taken up a career as a writer of second-hand Tolkien with a
dash of lukewarm feminism for the middlebrow market, which, it is ironically
noted, has resulted in her having complaints from people who don't
understand why they can't trace her fictional footnotes ( a la
Tolkien-style). To which one must say, in all good spirit, Alison, if you
write for idiots you will get them, or 'every writer gets the readers they
deserve'.
version 3:
neither of the above is true, though possibly both contain elements of
truth. If I ask myself about such a simple question as 'did this make me
angry?' then in most cases the answer is 'only for a moment'. There are
exceptions but they are not to do with literature usually. It is more often
no more than a flick of irritation. The problem is a matter of language, by
which I mean that phrasal sets of what we use to convey feelings,
impressions, thoughts etc are like badly-drawn maps and inadequate as such
to their purpose. I caught, just fleetingly, a snatch of a radio-talk this
morning, where they seemed to be claimed that some of the indigenous
languages of South Africa, such as Xhosa, are more capable, because of their
'older' linguistic evolution, to convey ranges of perception than 'simpler'
languages like English, which, as a result of its globalisation, is probably
in the likelihood of turning into Crapglish, i.e. a homogenised code for
spouting nothing or next-to-nothing in accord with corporate-speak of
non-personhood. It would be interesting to hear from those writers, like
Alison or Rebecca, their observations on the aboriginal languages of their
continents and how they are like/not like internatglish.
Just three, or are their millions?, of the strange shadows.
PS
I like Alison's poem.
Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Spectare's Web, A Chide's Alphabet
& Painting Without Numbers
http://www.chidesalphabet.org.uk
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rebecca Seiferle" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, December 29, 2003 9:29 AM
Subject: Re: after a longish silence
Well, given the "jocking" and other erroneous (to me)
comparisons, I wanted to chime in about your poem, Alison.
I like very much its musing upon being , have kept thinking
of it since I read it, and am glad for your posting it.
One of the things I like about this is that it manages to
suggest both a genuine questioning which could wander
off in any direction and a sensibility always drawing the question
back to the preoccupations of the self, so that the wondering
"what does it matter" if one is dreaming or waking which
seems an open question is also directed, most subtlely
back to that sensibility in which the element in both dreaming
and waking is "pain, " rather than the so many other elements
possible in either state.
So the poem unravels as a questioning
that works in several directions, whether it is "my own
damage" or a "wound torn in others" and yet each veering
off into an apparently other direction doubles back upon
itself, so then the "wound torn in others" comes back to
the self "that they must diagnose/ through my skin," and
as a musings of a particular, if somewhat oblique and subtle,
sensibility. Evoking not only the play between one and others,
but upon the others in oneself, the fictional selves, all of
whom reveal and veil the particular sensibility who sees
them all in a sense through the I/eyeglass of suffering. The
'pain' in dreaming and waking, the wound torn in others or
the damage in oneself, the painted actress who "blinks" "blackening
tears of no response." The poem so questions the fictions of
the self but not the sense of suffering which is mysterious and
compelling, to that sensibility as if it were "behind" the word.
It's at times very sharp,
in its "speaking like a bad novel" and "endless museums
of self-regard," and I like that sense of consciousness as
a "a finger on this pulse," that so bodily sense, that is
sensuous and full of sense, in that last image, including
the "snail absorbing rain." It's quite compelling, so much
so that I was almost persuaded that it doesn't matter
if one is awake or not, almost not noticing that the sensibility
had so framed 'her' argument that the hinge that makes
it not matter is pain, since if one suffers in any world, what
world does it matter that one inhabits?
Best,
Rebecca
Rebecca Seiferle
www.thedrunkenboat.com
from Alison Croggon:
behind the baroque
mask a blankness
inflicting itself in concentric circles
she asks:
is this really my own damage
or a wound torn in others
that they must diagnose
through my skin
predictable as a tragedy
leached of all colours
in which the painted actress
pouts and blinks
such blackening tears that all response chokes
on the absurd
ancient seductions
smudging the heart
and again: finally
in the yellow dusk I understand
how a book opened prematurely
might be a fatality
dazzling the mind's innocence
so it forms a mirage
populous and exact in every detail
while the desert breathes
livingly beneath it
cheated of the eye
she asks again: what is more real
the life formed
out of our delusions
in all its tender
quickness of flesh or the vast
desiring cell
that mindless replication
swarming itself
out of its decay: or is this
not a question
the torment is always as the woman said
to find oneself speaking
like a bad novel though fiction is seldom
so misleading
as these selves we claim
to live by squatting
by middens of bones the sand
scours to whiteness
damasks of civilisation
woven by ill-used hands
rotting in those endless museums
of self regard
et cetera she asks:
if I have been asleep
how do the pains of dream
differ from waking
and how much does it matter?
this finger on this pulse
conscious as a snail
absorbing rain
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