Well, I like to make variations in my style, you know
Ten years ago, I published a poem in a festschrift for Eric Mottram called LETTER TO ERIC - the poem used to be at Poets Corner, but last time I looked it was a little pixilated - and one came to me saying something like he hadnt known I could write like that (stylistically)... why didnt I do more
I said I had several lorryyloads and would love him to publish me; but I had to go sadly away!
There had been an assumption that because I was writing sound poetry etc etc etc, that's all I did. Not that you're saying *that; but it seems relevant
The LETTER TO ERIC came out of a longer exercise called MESSAGES TO SILENCE... in which in part I took on my relationship to WW and sent it up
When I was 20, ill-absorbed WW was in me like an infection.
Yes, "I knew / a tree" was consciously wwian though the claim is real enough - tooting graveney common, south london; and i took some time phrasing that bit. The line I was taking really had to bring him in. I think it was furthest mainland west he has ever been, though he has bent my ear on Scilly, but there he was, as soon as I started writing that poem - I wrote one which is still in the notebook, felt it suffered from camera shake and started again afresh (I may have 2 poems) - and he popped up, joining in the making in between cussing the quantity of traffic and the ugliness of what we both believe to be an old arsenic works. And then he vanished to get his breakfast
I could never, once, have taken happily that (for me) risk of listening; but I have learned to face my wordsworth dependence. I can handle it
Thanks for your kind comments. I shall look up the other poem
If Randolph is listening in, I think I'd like to call the poem CAMERAS to bring in the image of discrete rooms etc I'll pick it up otherwise when he invites us to check
.
L
-----Original Message-----
From: MJ Walker <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wednesday, July 20, 2005 10:18 AM
Subject: Re: Snapshots [20 July 2005]
When I first read some of your pieces here years ago (here in this
virtual space) I would never have guessed you would write a Snapshot
invoking Wordsworth ("I knew/a tree"), Lawrence! I find this moving in
both senses ("discrete animation" ). I was listening to Kyle Gann's "So
many little dyings" (based on Patchen's reading of his poem, it can be
downloaded for free from Gann's website) this morning and the two works
complemented each other, resonated from different fields.
mj
Lawrence Upton wrote:
>Cameras don't get the smell of place.
>
> I knew
>
>a tree, which, at a time of year, opened
>
>with a key of scent long passages of memory,
>
>another side of Lethe, where the backward
>
>immortality of thought's origin became
>
>tangible in its roots' narrowing recesses
>
>
>
>smiles and skin aroma
>
>
>
> its warmth
>
>
>
> passed on
>
>
>
>Somewhere in April light, my mother cooks,
>
>a saucepan of hot water bubbling round
>
>vegetables, she in this room, sustained here
>
>by recollection of the tang of
>
>liquid she puts on her hair to make it shine;
>
>though now of course others move and live there,
>
>layered, apart from her, discrete animation.
>
>
>
>Now he who makes this recalls, in low fields,
>
>mountain roads he flows along on intermittent
>
>rills of lavender flooding his life
>
>
>
>
>
>[early morning, Leswidden, West Penwith]
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>"Ozymandias I may be but I shall not build my statue of blancmange. " Peter Riley
>
>
>
--
Flow My Tears is a novel of nonstop intrigue set sometime in the future of an alternate reality. It has a great ending and really makes you think about life and similar things. - Online review by Keith.
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