On someone's rec, I just finished Natalie Goldbergs new book,
The Great Failure : A Bartender, A Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth
From a Zen Buddhist practice perspective, she confronts the abuse of her
father and her Roshi. I think it's very balanced and - in both the actual
life and the autobiographical writing - she is able to come to terms with
both of them - a tale of honesty and openness in coming to terms and
reconciliation with each person rather a vanquishing revenge on both of
them.
Though the writing is not consistently good, I found her experience and
resolve brave and refreshing.
Stephen V
Blog: http://stephenvincent.durationpress.com
> Hi Edmund
>
> On 31/1/05 3:22 AM, "Edmund Hardy" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> And for those at a remove by accident of birth or time, what can they write,
>> in what language? Geoffrey Hill's Triumph of Love is restricted to a kind of
>> moral landscape of rhetoric, and I find it powerful because of it. Maybe
>> this too is "indirection" but it seems like poetry directed at that which
>> can be examined at this remove, the specific use of language.
>
> The Triumph of Love is a poem I like very much; I thought it emotionally
> powerful, in how it seemed to dramatise a kind of aesthetic breakdown, the
> neurotic repetitions of memory (which is one definition of trauma). Hill is
> one of those writers who merits the term "powerful", but, much as I admire
> it, the sheer polish of his earlier work, its control and recondite
> aesthetic, create a distancing that can be a problem, I think, when he is
> speaking of atrocity. No matter how beautifully done, it's a bit difficult
> to escape the feeling that atrocity is no more than the occasion for
> beautiful writing. TOL seemed to be a full-on confrontation with this
> problem, among other things.
>
>> Sometimes I want to ("go AT") the events my own family - Anglo-Japanese and
>> caught up in devastation, defeat, victory during the second world war -
>> lived through but when I try to do this it always veers away in my hands
>> from anything personal. How terrible to trespass. But is it always trespass?
>
> It probably is trespass. That doesn't mean one shouldn't do it, but it's a
> question that has to be acknowledged honestly somehow. Have you tried
> reading Peter Handke's book about his mother, Sorrow Beyond Dreams? An
> extraordinarily painful book, which by some intense effort of will goes
> beyond the merely "personal" by being, um, intensely personal. There's a
> knife edge balance in the writing which gave me a clue about
> autobiographical writing.
>
> Best
>
> A
>
> Alison Croggon
>
> Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
> Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
> Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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