Trevor
I think the point I was trying to make is not coming across: version one
portrays a world in which both A and RS are praised, version two is one in
which they are condemned. As I hoped, version three contains the reflection
that neither of its predecessors are accurate, because not just of the
inadequacies of self but those of language. Inadequacies of self are always
present in our words, for instance, as writing this I am conscious of a) M-
who lives five floors above me hasn't been seen by anyone since last
Tuesday - I bumped into A- in the foyer, who also lives here, he expressed
concern, I agreed and said someone ought to call on M- to make sure he's
alright, A- didn't know M-'s address which I gladly supplied but afterwards
wondered why I hadn't called round on M- myself; b) just going over the road
to the local shop a gentleman approached me asking for a cigarette - I lied
and said I hadn't any NOT because of meanness but because I was too
preoccupied with shivering from the cold to stop for a moment and pull out a
fag from my pocket and went away feeling +ambivalently+ guilty.. That is
what is flustering, fleetingly, at the forefront of my consciousness as I
write. In an hour's time it will be something different. And that is my
point about the inadequacy of language. In the post you refer to NONE of the
versions coincides with reality, if, as I presume, you feel that version two
is the substance of an 'ad hominem' attack on A & RS please understand that
I wasn't presenting it as a truth, but rather as a fiction that could be
made up, just as the praise of version one was or the fudgery of version
three, which last is meant as an inconclusive gurgling of where something
akin to reality might be found. Which shambles of a philosophy is about
where I am: even a second's reflection tells me that the psychological
'where' I am speaking or writing from at any given moment is more complex
than any coincident utterance of mine and, by inference, the same must apply
to statements of others. I do not, nor cannot, truly know where you or
others are 'coming from' anymore than I can myself, perhaps such a condition
is one the reasons for the existence of the language-habit we call poetry,
in that it +possibly+ allows us 'by indirections to find directions out'.
To make one thing clear, if either or both Alison and Rebecca feel they were
subject to a personalised attack then apologies are here and ready, I would
try to assure though that when I say fiction I mean such, if version two had
been presented solely as a straight response it would certainly be liable to
questioning of motive, I cannot see how on examination in the context it is
placed it can be seen so. It might not have passed notice that I made a
point of praising A's poem when first lodged here, surely that gives a
reasonable indication that my concluding words, after PS, where exactly what
I meant?
Vendettas, I hate them, no desire for such here.
David Bircumshaw
Spectare's Web, A Chide's Alphabet
& Painting Without Numbers
http://www.chidesalphabet.org.uk
----- Original Message -----
From: "Trevor Joyce" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, December 29, 2003 11:59 PM
Subject: Re: Millions of strange shadows (was Re: after a longish silence)
David,
You have been told before, on several occasions, not to pursue these
personal issues on BritPo. You are also well aware, or should be,
that the importation of quarrels from other lists is not welcome
here. This is not an arena for you to pursue your personal vendettas.
I hope you will have the grace to apologize, promptly, to both Alison
and Rebecca for these ad hominem attacks.
Trevor
>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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