-. She (Maggie O Sullivan) has herself planted a forest -
Planted a forest! Maggie? On her ownsome? Where? When? Can we go see it?
But my real question is another question:
Is the desiring 'I' related to the desiring 'eye'?
What is the answer?
What was the question?
My problem with questions of this ilk (not the Maggie's Forest questions -
sorry, in our 30 year friendship I've never actually seen Maggie in anything
other than 3 inch stilettos and pencil skirts!! Hence my curiosity about
her planting a forest.) - I mean the desiring 'I' thingnybob. No poet, guy
or gal, sits down and thinks 'Righty ho, think I'll write a Desiring 'I'
poem today'.
But when someone decides this will make a meaty paper to give at a
conference (and I don't mean that in a derogatory way rather a cautionary
way) it becomes a 'reality'. That 'reality' is then dropped onto the work of
unsuspecting poets who were in all innocence just writing a poem in the way
they write their poems.
So the poet's work (and I'm talking ALL poetry now - it matters not what
denomination you belong to) ceases to be something to enjoy (or not) to
excite (or not) to identify with (or not) to ad infinitum (or not) - it
becomes something third removed from the poet and poem. It leaves the heart
of the poet/poem floundering and at the mercy of a concept. And because it
become third removed it becomes so open to interpretation that it almost
becomes meaningless.
When Elizabeth posted the convincing (and beautiful) excerpt from Denise
Riley I thought I was 'getting it' as a valid concept: there is something
fearsomely and ferociously domestic in Denise's writing which always
transcends the domestic. But when cris expands it into Maggie's work it
falls away into an amorphous concept of ''We all have an 'I' and we all have
'Desire' and we do it with varying degrees of passion - in other words we
all did it myyyywaaayyyy.
So I suppose my last question has to be - does it really matter?
G.
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