Behind Howe, of course, is Olson, who didn't treaqt the subject much but
established a methadology, followed, among others, by Paul Metcalf. But the
darkness of genocide, perhaps more than its complexities, makes it very
difficult to approach. In all the cases named the method largely involves
borrowings, with little commentary, from contemporary sources. How better
to portray the end of Tenochtitlan than by quoting Bernal del Castillo and
the surviving Aztec accounts?
Mark
At 08:58 AM 10/14/2003 -0700, you wrote:
>At 11:09 PM -0400 13/10/03, Trevor Joyce wrote:
>>So, a question I've been working at these last couple of years: what
>>poetic forms and modes of approach have been developed to cope with
>>these complexities? A question genuinely asked.
>
>Ha, you ask all the easy questions Trevor - and I'm not at all sure
>that I can give any kind of satisfactory answer. Frankly, whenever I
>think about this I find myself turning to prose. It's a question
>that preoccupies me, out the contradictions of my own upbringing and
>ancestry; and I find (I think this a purely personal limitation) that
>for me its expression requires a kind of encyclopaedic comprehension,
>a kind of shimmering inclusiveness which permits both specificity and
>ambiguity, fact and fiction, that I find difficult to achieve in
>poetry. I think of models like Sebald or Richard Flanagan's Gould's
>Book of Fish.
>
>At 11:09 PM -0400 13/10/03, Trevor Joyce wrote:
>>Has this been tackled in Australian
>>poetry with equivalent imagination?
>
>Not much, to my knowledge (pause for loud protests). There's a fine
>long poem of John Kinsella's, Benefaction (dedicated in fact to Susan
>Howe) which works on multiple narratives between now and a expedition
>into the centre, and which addresses some of those complexities -
>difficult to quote from, but here's a short passage -
>
>Brilliant, this mock sun
>of the eastern horizon
>
>to disappear and yet reappear
>less visible, while West
>
>the sun follows
> its double image,
>
>children of a sullen country
>sacrificed below.
>
> Slaves speak
>intoning pagan Portuguese
>
>and the stars brightening,
>the luxuriant foliage expanding
>
>magnificently,
> with variety
>
>and trade burgeoning
>in Bahai. A plague of flies
>
>luminous over the uniform
>procession of waves,
>
>the slaves future in specimens
>as collation and hypothesis
>
>as the strom wracks the rigging,
>the albatrosse's circumpsection.
>
>Lyner - rhizomic schooner -
>bloated with 31 sheep 19 goats 6 dogs
>
>sails munificently on
>as water snakes
>
>work the tools
> and instruments.
>
>Best
>
>A
>
>--
>
>
>Alison Croggon
>
>Blog
>http://alisoncroggon.blogspot.com
>
>Editor, Masthead
>http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
>
>Home page
>http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
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