A chara Desmond,
I am fascinated by, and truly enjoy, your open ended blathers!
Do you know the work of Lanny Quarles? one of the Wryting-L "poets."
He also blathers with amazing dexterity, like an electrified sculptor
of language.
Bestwishes to you in your own literary work!
On 6/11/08, Desmond Swords <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I don't think there's any right or wrong here, just unique individuals with
> singular paths, career-arcs and personal trajectories.
>
> I can understand Maireads position, and how she felt the need to get out of
> Dublin to get on as it was so tight to get into unless yr in the right mob.
> And i can understand gerladines stance, which is more one of principle, that
> women only has served the main purpose.
>
> When i first came across geraldines work, around three yrs ago, i thought it
> she was the most original female voice i'd come across, but then i am a
> fellow lancastrian and reading her gave me beleif that my own lancashire
> voice was as poetically valid as any from the Flrio society in Magdalene
> college say, which until reading her, was that little bit less along the
> track of faith.
>
>
> Mairead, i didn't read first but witnessed reading and being a new knob in
> dublin a few months into the mad dream of doing what mairead did, feeling i
> had to leave my *home* country to stand a chance, and still in the stage of
> stupidly thinking that being published somehow meant they weren't as
> talented as me, just coz i wasn't (jealousy of course) and her being an
> invited giesty and me a bogger on the open mic; i wanted her to be rfubbish
> to cofirm my own prejudices.
>
> But she impressed me as much live as G had on the page and even though i did
> not speak with her, the short time i witnessed her was enough to become a
> convert.
>
>
> And the thing with MOB, is that i read the poem which impressed me most,
> after seeing her read it, and on the page, if i hadn't of heard mairead read
> it, would have started ranting it wasn't poetry, again because of arrogance
> and less poetic experience in the tank than mairead has.
>
> It was a poem so outrageously working, and through a very high level of
> poetic nous, one in which she takes a phrase and repeats it over and over,
> which on the page looked...hmmm...but when read, the nuance of inflection
> made the same phrase redolent with shifts of meaning every time.
>
> So in ten minutes watching her, i learnt a lot and became better for it,
> same as the Monk.
>
> I think the thing about poetry is, finding yr voice, and Kavanagh says we
> are all geniuses, as we are all unique individual human beings and the trick
> is to be ourself as true as poss.
>
> So, Dublin for mairead was somewhere she had to leave, and somewhere i had
> to come, in order to truly find myself. So you say no more woman only, and
> another is ambivalent, both being right, for them.
>
>
> And this may be contentious, but it does seem that women, much more than
> men, if they disagree, can do so civilly and without rancor (though with
> obvious blokey women Maggie T ER1 exceptions).
>
> And a friend of mine who gave me this idea, qualified her opinion that women
> in general have more empathy towards each other than men, -- part way --
> because most women get PMT, and it is lucky she doesn't read here as she
> expressly told me not to mention it, but i can't help myself.
>
> She says that most woman, will immediately understand if another woman makes
> reference to this physical state, and my friend, it is funny as we have had
> some right ding dongs of her getting weepy, and i will ask, is it the time
> of the month and it is. Some months are worse than others. Once she rang me
> in tears from the city centre of Dublin after she had left Eddie Rockets
> after forgetting to pay the bill and the security fella, who was totally
> understanding about it, came out and told her, but she felt the waitress had
> been trying to make her feel like a crook, and i couldn't understand why she
> was so upset until i asked her, and now it is great as even if she goes into
> one with me, as she always does to some degree once a month, we can laugh
> about it.
>
> Maybe this is all rot, i dunno, but men, rarely get to talk of this subject,
> even though women have traditionally since the New Labour age, been behaving
> as bad as men with alcohol and laddette behaviour.
>
> It's all just what Bob taught me, the part of his course which is the most
> important in some ways for the po-mo'er, the open ended *specualtive
> discourse*, like chuck B advocates, which means we do not have to have a
> specific purpose or point in our musings, just an open ended blather, just
> to find out and firm up what we think..
>
>
> gra agus siochainn
>
--
Séamas Cain
http://alazanto.org/seamascain
http://seamascain.writernetwork.com
http://www.mnartists.org/Seamas_Cain
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