Facebook is a terrible place to try to discuss anything worthwhile--the
whole concept of gaining 'friends' without knowing who they are strikes me
as being a bit backwards and, well,...strange-- but a recent thread on
Facebook regarding a mean-spirited review in the Irish Times of Trevor
Joyce's 'Fastness'--a translation of Spenser's Mutabilitie Cantos from early
modern English into contemporary English--points in exactly the same
direction as the Metronome thread here, and perhaps illustrates the rift
between those drawn by the old toolbox of rhyme, alliteration, etc., vs.
those in the know about modern and post-modern poetry where concept counts
as much if not more than what results from its application. Here's what
John McAuliffe has to say, in part, in his review of 9/23/2017:
Trevor Joyce is...historically relativist in his approach to the landscape,
and to language. His latest is the punningly titled Fastness (Miami
University Press, $17) and “translates” the closing pages of Edmund
Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. In his introduction, Joyce tenuously outlines
his family connections to Spenser, and also discusses vocabulary he has used
as “beyond the precincts of the Queen’s English […]an artificial
dialect.”
...Beautifully produced, with Spenser’s original stanzas on the facing page
to Joyce’s “translations”, the reader can’t help glancing across from,
say, Joyce’s “Startled, Diana rushed / out of the treacherous/ waters, and
by the echoing / bellowing, found him / in his illicit hide, and trapped /
him like a dazzled lark there” to Spenser’s “The Goddess, all abashed
with that noise, / In haste forth started from the guilty Brook; / And
running straight whereas she heard his voice, / Enclosed the bush about, and
there him took, / Like darred Lark.”
McAuliffe goes on to offer other flash reviews which seek to encapsulate a
book of poetry in a paragraph or so, with the laurels being handed to
traditionalists and award-winners: a perfect way to achieve a deadline and
yet still appear to be in the game. Anything other than that--and Joyce's
re-visionings of Spencer are certainly 'other' to McAuliffe-- takes a
certain charity and sense of fairness, not to mention time. Where does the
hurried reviewer go, then?--to the tried and true master of the old tricks
of the trade--and Spenser certainly was a master of those very effects that
Pound helped us free ourselves from. They are, unfortunately, bewitchingly
unfolded in the Faerie Queen, as McAuliffe suggests. In the end, Trevor
appears to be fighting the same fight that Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and
so many others fought and incrementally won--but not everywhere,
apparently--and not to one hurried, and unfair, reviewer.
I like what Trevor's done. It's ballsy to take on someone like Spenser, for
whatever reason. Tom Phillips (among others) did something similar with
Dante's Inferno back in the 1980's. I agree with Pierre Joris that new
explorations of prosody are in order and thank him for the title of Doug
Oliver's book, which I'll certainly look up. And now, in perfect Facebook
fashion, I'll take the time to purchase and read Trevor's book.
Jesse
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