A pretty conceit, but nothing more. I'm neither British nor Irish. Are pretty conceits what you guys like?
Best,
Mark
-----Original Message-----
>From: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Oct 10, 2011 10:31 AM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Forward for RFL
>
>I'll go on interesting myself, anyhow, and indeed I'm even extending my new career of damnation, moving on from Langley's lovely and intricate poem to Giles Goodland's poem "The Bees", which won the 2010 Cardiff International Poetry Competition. (http://www.literaturewales.org/home/i/136826/)
>
>
>The Bees
>
>We sleep in our pinholed shells, then
>are speed or seed cameras,
>pursuing a faint ascent over
>the programmed grass where
>are those age-old golds
>the mountains whethering
>and music fragmenting ahead
>
>the songs in us sweep down loud
>canyons and stack in flower-
>heads of willow-herb leaning
>hard on the untwined song
>chief among us is one who dances
>a name around corners,
>
>run of the million the plant-planets
>explode language, each one a new
>
>understanding of the rain to
>make a rope and make a fist,
>
>we tangle into thirstless thistles,
>its mud-bronze weaponry
>flow coldswarms, warmscolds
>
>each of us a furlined pilot in helicopters
>the naked eye makes invisible
>
>on the flower's ironwork landing-platform
>we extend our feeding nozzles and get
>a free paint job thrown in
>then knock down the sky, one word at a time.
>
>
>If it comes to evaluation, I think that's a lovely poem too, and I hope people will believe I have some enthusiasm for Goodland's writing - if you don't, read this:
>
>http://www.intercapillaryspace.org/2011/06/shearsman-samplers.html
>
>So, why don't I do as John says, and simply welcome the fact of a poem having wide appeal across different audiences? I admit my reactions are more complicated than that. Why the undeniably wry smile, the verging-on-freudenschade?
>
>I suppose in a way it's disappointed idealism: to find that a poet I have long considered transformative has been recognized by some larger audience, and to suppose for a moment that the conditions of Britain themselves have changed, that a transformation has occurred in the audience itself, that the mainstream is no longer where I thought it was... and then to find, reading the poem, that after all nothing much has changed, that the reasons why it won a prize are readily apparent and do not imply any such radical change of general taste as I had momentarily fantasised. That "The Bees", in short, is not “Self eludes me like a word...”
>
>And yet there is IS a strong and interesting connection. (Oh yes, "interesting".) It certainly focussed for me something about Goodland's other writing, it gave me an insight, to discover that he could also write "The Bees". That's one thing. And the second is that the nature of the mainstream - constantly changing, though of course not in quite the transformative way I imagined, is relevant to anyone who tries to think outside it. You can make it out best by its borders, so anything that tells me about what it will just accept, or won't quite accept, is of interest to me.
>
>I want to say a line or two more about Langley later, when I'm back near my shelves.
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