Thanks so much, Sean, for the response! More from me, Jess
-----Original Message-----
From: BRITISH-IRISH-POETS automatic digest system
Sent: Sunday, July 23, 2017 8:00 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: BRITISH-IRISH-POETS Digest - 18 Jul 2017 to 22 Jul 2017 (#2017-102)
There are 2 messages totaling 400 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. The Original Version of My Poem I.M. Tom Raworth that appeared in
Decals
of Desire as prose to save space. Jesse (2)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2017 17:03:59 +0900
From: jesse <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: The Original Version of My Poem I.M. Tom Raworth that appeared in
Decals of Desire as prose to save space. Jesse
Was he angry to be reading in Milwaukee
To less than a packed house?
He seemed on edge,
As if he found something slightly off
Among these well-meaning faces
Some of which had appeared
To witness Hilda Morley in the midst
Of her
Glorious rediscovery
Earlier that year
And he read too fast, I thought,
Almost non-stop
Like Da Ramones
At CBGBY’s
They were linear breaths, I thought
Blown into space
Like a sad jazz saxman’s-
Rushing into termination
Then rushing again into wryness
Like absurd little toy trains of writing
Wound up and passing through tunnels of tin,
Little angled feints at something stupid he’d
Caught in his peripheral vision
Taking place in the angles of the gallery that night
Then a sneer at something very much worth
Sneering about, when he closed his eyes
As if he were doing everyone the favor of taking time
For private sneering. Or maybe a headache?
Or missing someone?
But he was not giving anything
Of himself at all to the well-meaning
Faces, all with the same appreciative look
Some had given to Amy Clampitt earlier that year
When she’d read at the gallery
He wasn’t giving anything to them but was
Very much up and away as if in his own blue lunette
That he’d stipulated to the gallery owners to be made expressly for him
(Broken right through the gallery wall
& sealed up again after he was finished reading)
Before he’d agree to read in Milwaukee.
But he was glad to give away his signature
On a book someone bought
I think, while still stareing out
Poker-faced
From his blue lunette
Up there near the ceiling of the gallery.
I solicited his work
& He scribbled
The address of a farm where he
Was living with his family at the time.
I couldn’t imagine Tom Raworth as a farmer
But I imagined his wife & kids
Feeding the U.K. chickens, alright.
Five years later, in a London Waterstones
En route to Edinburgh
I found his Tottering State next to
Conductors of Chaos, &
Both books now remain on the shelf
Next to the easy chair
I sleep in
Five floors above a Tokyo suburb
Within easy reach of my
Crippled arm & hand., because
I understood
The revelation of
What it was
He
Was
Doing
&
I be
Came a
Devoted
Reader
& learned that his name was pronounced ‘Tom Ray-worth’ from Peter Riley
instead of
My American misprision of ‘Raw-Worth’, as in raw onions. By god he was an
eye-opener for me and the tears
I shed that
We mustn’t
Speak of
Won’t be spoken of
Upon news
Of his passing
And I so like
Tottering State
But I think that the Carcanet Complete
Doesn’t do Tom’s work justice besides making a door stopper of it,
Or a tomb stone decorated with cerements of cement
To lose the best parts in.
When wet
As it has often gotten
When I carry it with me
In my bag here in Japan.
And I recently returned to Milwaukee to give a speech and a reading at that
same
Milwaukee gallery/bookstore where Tom had read all of those years before & I
Purchased his Carcanet Windmills in Flames with the wild cover by Tom there,
& I’m
Thrilled to find that this volume augments the Collected, and my collection
of Tom’s work is complete. R.I.P. Tom from Jess
-----Original Message-----
From: BRITISH-IRISH-POETS automatic digest system
Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2017 8:06 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: BRITISH-IRISH-POETS Digest - 17 Jul 2017 to 18 Jul 2017 (#2017-101)
There is 1 message totaling 43 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Review of Say Something Back
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2017 20:32:01 +0100
From: hardPressed poetry <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Review of Say Something Back
Apologies for cross posting. My review of Denise Riley's book, originally
published in the University of York student journal Eborakon, is now online
on my blog:
https://ellipticalmovements.wordpress.com/2017/07/18/say-
something-back-by-denise-riley-a-review/
Best
Billy
--
Visit our blog <http://hardpressedpoetry.blogspot.com/>.
-----------------------------
End of BRITISH-IRISH-POETS Digest - 17 Jul 2017 to 18 Jul 2017 (#2017-101)
**************************************************************************
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2017 14:57:27 -0400
From: Sean Carey <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: The Original Version of My Poem I.M. Tom Raworth that appeared
in Decals of Desire as prose to save space. Jesse
Well done Jesse and this captures Tom Raworth in a very evocative way from
the heart. Many words will be written on Tom from all angles but this poem
is sincere as well as sharp on the Raworth reading experience.
The travels and readings put Tom into a global milieu to a unique degree for
an avant garde poet. In your poem you present your perceptions based on
observations at that reading. In the aftermath of Tom's passing the standard
of the memories plus tributes so far have been a letdown. In no way are
people like Drew Milne or Martin Stannard to blame for this as they can only
edit what is available to them. Also of course many who were close to Tom
Raworth passed away before him leaving us mainly with writings by younger
writers.
On the Carcanet Collected it did plug a gap but it fell short of doing Tom
Raworth justice in a way that press often can do. Geoff Young at The Figures
Press came closest to presenting Raworth in its fine 1980s "Tottering
State". That book took us to "West Wind" prior to O Press's "Visable
Shivers" on to Sun and Moon's "Eternal Sections". And of course The Figures
also gave us "Writing" which for me is the core of the Raworth output. These
publications and "Catacoustics" from Wendy Mulford's press show Raworth at
the peak of his literary career. Reality Street Editions did as good a job
on "Catacoustics" as Geoff Young did with "Tottering State".
Who was Tom Raworth and also how did he really feel at the reading in
Milwaukee is the theme of your poem? Clearly his health issues must have
made reading tours a burden with a lot of air miles clocked up. America took
him to its heart with packed venues but anywhere Tom went he was a major
league poet. He read in his own unique way entering a venue with gusto and
dressed in a cape when i saw him in 1987 in Dublin. On that evening i
assumed Peter Riley was Tom Raworth when both men appeared in The Winding
Stair. Soon after Peter gave a check of the shop's shelves i noticed him
near a book by or about Cosmo Lang a former Archbishop of Canterbury. Tom
read first with Peter in the second half reading from "Lines On The Liver"
with Raworth indeed reading at speed. Most of the Raworth poems read were
from "Tottering State" the Figures edition. If the readings were meant to
introduce Dublin to experimental writing the Raworth mode of presentation
failed and Dublin was not Milwaukee or a packed lecture hall in Chicago.
Peter Riley went down well with the audience and mixed far more freely than
Tom Raworth. A friend there that evening saw a macho streak in Raworth
having been lent "A Serial Biography". Overall the Raworth of 1987 and the
Raworth i met in Cork in 1999 were two different men. The older Raworth wes
a more mellow character but was not reading at the Cork event just having a
break. I was unable to stay overnight nor invited so i made the lonely walk
through the streets of my childhood. I did not meet one soul i knew in that
long walk to the railway station. Everyone was dead it seemed as if a nuke
had hit the Athens of the north of Europe. The mood at the Sound Eye event
was dire with that what are you doing here you pleb vibe? The venue was
behind my old schoolyard now an office space and all records thrown to the
skips. Across the road the new school build on the fabled sporting fields of
dreams or ghosts. Sour grapes rot in time leaving no trace.
The poem is the subject and Raworth was a true literary professional who had
a gliittering career. His website was superb and state of the art - his
books are beautiful productions. But did anyone ever really get to know Tom
in comparision say to Peter Riley? The anger is there in Tom's poems and in
"Windmills In Flames" the anger emerges and did not surprise me.
I expect no poet to be Franciscan but what we knock in more conventional
poets we must not flinch from knocking in an icon like Tom Raworth. As with
Ed Dorn being a cool dude does not excuse sneers nor a teddy boy attitude.
Thanks Jesse for your fine poem which triggered my first real response to
Tom Raworth's career in poetry. May Tom sleep softly and republishing
"Writing" would be the perfect tribute. For me that is his masterpiece.
sc
remembering the Kennedy Brothers of George Dobbs Ltd ,Cork, Ireland. Gordon,
Percy, and Haydn. " only a day before us all"
On Saturday, 22 July 2017, jesse <[log in to unmask]> wrote:ck
Was he angry to be reading in Milwaukee
To less than a packed house?
He seemed on edge,
As if he found something slightly off
Among these well-meaning faces
Some of which had appeared
To witness Hilda Morley in the midst
Of her
Glorious rediscovery
Earlier that year
And he read too fast, I thought,
Almost non-stop
Like Da Ramones
At CBGBY’s
They were linear breaths, I thought
Blown into space
Like a sad jazz saxman’s-
Rushing into termination
Then rushing again into wryness
Like absurd little toy trains of writing
Wound up and passing through tunnels of tin,
Little angled feints at something stupid he’d
Caught in his peripheral vision
Taking place in the angles of the gallery that night
Then a sneer at something very much worth
Sneering about, when he closed his eyes
As if he were doing everyone the favor of taking time
For private sneering. Or maybe a headache?
Or missing someone?
But he was not giving anything
Of himself at all to the well-meaning
Faces, all with the same appreciative look
Some had given to Amy Clampitt earlier that year
When she’d read at the gallery
He wasn’t giving anything to them but was
Very much up and away as if in his own blue lunette
That he’d stipulated to the gallery owners to be made expressly for him
(Broken right through the gallery wall
& sealed up again after he was finished reading)
Before he’d agree to read in Milwaukee.
But he was glad to give away his signature
On a book someone bought
I think, while still stareing out
Poker-faced
From his blue lunette
Up there near the ceiling of the gallery.
I solicited his work
& He scribbled
The address of a farm where he
Was living with his family at the time.
I couldn’t imagine Tom Raworth as a farmer
But I imagined his wife & kids
Feeding the U.K. chickens, alright.
Five years later, in a London Waterstones
En route to Edinburgh
I found his Tottering State next to
Conductors of Chaos, &
Both books now remain on the shelf
Next to the easy chair
I sleep in
Five floors above a Tokyo suburb
Within easy reach of my
Crippled arm & hand., because
I understood
The revelation of
What it was
He
Was
Doing
&
I be
Came a
Devoted
Reader
& learned that his name was pronounced ‘Tom Ray-worth’ from Peter Riley
instead of
My American misprision of ‘Raw-Worth’, as in raw onions. By god he was an
eye-opener for me and the tears
I shed that
We mustn’t
Speak of
Won’t be spoken of
Upon news
Of his passing
And I so like
Tottering State
But I think that the Carcanet Complete
Doesn’t do Tom’s work justice besides making a door stopper of it,
Or a tomb stone decorated with cerements of cement
To lose the best parts in.
When wet
As it has often gotten
When I carry it with me
In my bag here in Japan.
And I recently returned to Milwaukee to give a speech and a reading at that
same
Milwaukee gallery/bookstore where Tom had read all of those years before & I
Purchased his Carcanet Windmills in Flames with the wild cover by Tom there,
& I’m
Thrilled to find that this volume augments the Collected, and my collection
of Tom’s work is complete. R.I.P. Tom from Jess
-----Original Message-----
From: BRITISH-IRISH-POETS automatic digest system
Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2017 8:06 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: BRITISH-IRISH-POETS Digest - 17 Jul 2017 to 18 Jul 2017 (#2017-101)
There is 1 message totaling 43 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Review of Say Something Back
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2017 20:32:01 +0100
From: hardPressed poetry <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Review of Say Something Back
Apologies for cross posting. My review of Denise Riley's book, originally
published in the University of York student journal Eborakon, is now online
on my blog:
https://ellipticalmovements.wordpress.com/2017/07/18/say-
something-back-by-denise-riley-a-review/
Best
Billy
--
Visit our blog <http://hardpressedpoetry.blogspot.com/>.
-----------------------------
End of BRITISH-IRISH-POETS Digest - 17 Jul 2017 to 18 Jul 2017 (#2017-101)
**************************************************************************
------------------------------
End of BRITISH-IRISH-POETS Digest - 18 Jul 2017 to 22 Jul 2017 (#2017-102)
**************************************************************************
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