Dear Trevor,
Thank you for reading and appreciating my TRADITIONAL IRISH POEM.
You're in it now. I wanted to make it a good poem--maybe some day that
will be possible. I'm very happy to be compared to David Lloyd I can
tell you, I loved his essay on Kant's Examples in Alexander Gelley's
great and glorious collection Unruly Examples: On the Rhetoric of
Exemplarity.
My God, Erminia has really plunged me back into the startling YMCA pool
of ideas that once burgeoned under this pate. Yes, I've taken to
writing poems with others. One of the first I did is called AN EDUCATED
HEART and it's reproduced imperfectly on my blog. A lot of fun.
Mairead



www.maireadbyrne.blogspot.com
>>> Trevor Joyce <[log in to unmask]> 01/03/04 10:13 AM >>>
Seeing Mairead crop up here last night, I went
off and checked her blog to see if she'd anything
recent up there. Sure enough, there's a bundle of
new stuff, and all of it in her quirky, open
forms. Reminds me of a paper I heard David Lloyd
give, comparing a poem by Heaney with one by a
H-Block prisoner. The point was how closed-off,
how bounded and complete, the Heaney was, while
the other piece was open, strongly paratactic,
susceptible to intervention by others. (Since
I've committed 'poems' of both sorts, the fight
wasn't rigged from my perspective.) That's the
way I read Mairead's poems: they seem fully aware
formally, but never hung up on 'finish', carrying
the force and unexpectedness of a good
conversation, provoking interjection. I hope
she'll forgive me posting one here, since it
seems she's too modest to do so herself. It
certainly lives up to its title.

(http://www.maireadbyrne.blogspot.com/)

TRADITIONAL IRISH POEM
The next poem is a poem I got from a great
fiddle-player James Kelly of Capel Street one
night in Inis Oirr when he was out there playing
with John Blake, a wonderful musician too. You
might hear hints of a poet who has influenced us
all Willie Yeats who had a castle there in Thoor
Ballylee many's a grand night we had there with
George and Anne and Michael a great family--that
was before the summer school. And I'm indebted of
course to Paddy Kavanagh from Iniskeen and Baggot
Street, the sweetest melodeon player you ever
heard, he played many a night in McDaid's and
Nesbitt's I was there hanging on every note. And
all the great sessions around Dublin and Dundalk
that are recorded on the old 78s I remember the
excitement when a new batch of them would be
brought home and fair play to all the men and
women who collected them. It's through them I
heard the music of Allen Ginsberg of Newark New
Jersey and Alan Dugan from Brooklyn and Allen
Grossman in Baltimore there and Alan Sondheim of
New York City and all the Allens, a magnificent
family. And Charles Reznikoff a great walker also
of New York, and Harry Crane from Chagrin Falls
and Susan Howe, one of the Howes and Fanny her
sister, felicitous poets both of them, and May
Swenson whom we all loved and Muriel too, and
Langston Hughes up there in Harlem, I tried to
get him to come to *ras *anna many a time but no
dice and Gus Young in London and Marcel Duchamp
and Pierre Reverdy and young Arthur Rimbaud and
Paul Muldoon his Incantata was only massive and
Paul Celan with his Todesfuge and Paulie Durcan
from Leinster Square a very prolific poet and all
the Pauls, another great family. And Tom Raworth
God bless him and Hugo Ball and Randolph Healy
from outside Bray and Micheal O hAirtneid from
Newcastlewest no longer with us unfortunately but
a wonderful poet and player we remember fondly
and Ger Hopkins that used to work up there in
Newman House on his sprung rhythm and Eavan out
in Dundrum many's the cup of coffee I had at her
kitchen counter and Crystal Williams I played
with her in the Big Red Barn one time at Cornell
it was powerful and Rachel Loden in San Francisco
and Gabriel Gudding with whom I wrote The Clio
Reel some of you may know it we're still dancing
to that one. So for all the men and women of
poetry and John Donne here goes:
mairead 12/14/2003 12:54:24 AM