A LA Ted Hughes: Im not at home, but heres some quick responses
and a close reading of a few lines of Hughes and why I think his poems
still work. The phrases Ive chosen are from Moortwon /Adam and the Sacred
Nine - the piece is called Adam. I mean I dont have the copy of the pome
here right now as I did when I began this letter. The poem is at least 10
years old and certainly grabs my imagination on all levels - narrative,
phrasing, meter, rhythm, allusion, mastery of material, technical
richness. By the way when I was reading Jeff Nuttall I noticed a similar
prowess and ability and that is why I like his work too. When theres more
time I can do the whole poem by Hughes and then with Heaney, well the page
simply sings and my computer screen might just blow up from beauty....
for now ...CD.
Well I thank you for those leads. I am aware of the diversity of
poetry being written everywhere. I live in the midst of acity that is
pot boiling over with various forms of the word. Much of it is called
"spoken word." Most of which is repetitive dull and uninteresting. I
suspect as usual that most of the interesting poetry of any generation is
not as visible (though there are great exceptions) or as read/heard as it
ought to be. And the world being as big as it is, we over here dont get a
sense of what is going on over there. We too have and have had our "ruling
cliques" at various times.
About Ted Hughes - you are bored you say well I suppose for a
personal response that is fair, indeed completely legitimate. For myself
reading Hughes and now 20 years of doing so off and on, I am exhilirated
and drawn into the vortex of energy his poems create and invent. In the
selected poems (which I made mention of in my first letter) there are
poems which I don't think anyone can equal for their excellence of
measure, the strength with which they carry their "story", the phrasing
and its sublte realiszation of idiom and metre into a muscular strength.
No one I know can write that way... He combines a very fine ear with a
a real grasp of English as it is spoken and thought. It reaches me here
all the way in Canada and we as you know dont speak the language quite
like you do over there. To the extent
that it does that it transcends
any local "colour or idiomatic"
limits and vibrtes on some chord that might be called Poetry, a universal
tongue of desire, pain, strength, weakness, beauty and glory, the glory of
speech. Pound has said that poetry is language chraged to its utmost
degree....
The poem about
the Telephone for instance... too bad the book is not in front of me or at
home right now, else I would begin to quote from it.... But I also believe
that Hughes work with children has to be considered when looking at his
"oeuvre." Then the essays which are also one aspect of his total
contribution. Poetry does exist in a tradion or various traditions to be
more accurate and I think Hughes is faithful to that. He also expands the
limits of the traditions he works with. The reason I am interested in
Nuttall for instance is that I think he does similar things with language.
Nuttall is (and I have read the two books on peformance put out
by Calder) a more diversified sort of artist. But I think both he and
Hughes are peferct examples of what Tzara describes as artists/poets who
have live poetry as a state of mind. I'm saying this about Nuttall based
on what I do know... the books on peformance, Bomb Culture, his music, his
visual work, and whatever else I dont know about... I have tremendous
respect and admiration for that ... I have worked with different mediums
over the years including bands, collage installations, books, tapes, radio
you name I done it... screaming poetry in front of punk bands in the 80's,
classical quartets in the 8os.... but back to Hughes. I can see perhaps
how boredome could get to a reader when reading Hughes, but that has not
been my expereince. I feel challenged by the limits he pushes his subject
to, almost as if they were about to fall off the page, or be pushed off
the page into outer space...the outer space of tension... the tension of
desire and pain as in the following
Adam
LAy defeated, low as water. (Closed tense line, trochees infirst phrase
and first phrase echoes title phrase
syllable iamb/or perhaps first
phrase is
spondee with second phrase being spondee
ear can play tricks..this is very quick...
the lowness of the water is Adam's defeat
and also alludes to P.L waters surroundin
Paradise afterA/E are booted out... Lay
& Low are monoyllables as as "short" as A.
now humble state of being... water is
either humbling or dangerous; in this case
the former. Open vowels in words lAy and
lOw are also mimetic of the water
itself..)
Too little lifted from mud / ver Beckett like/irish murmur allusion to
Molly? Malone allude to
Finnegans Wake??/ the primal mad of
He dreamed the tower of light./ he is dreaming forward to Babel? the break
of languages into multiplicity
In these little tiny instances the author chooses to place the reader in
the position of close reader. The reader is also "too little lifted from
mud" and like Beckett characters dragging their arses in mud, we are Adam
before the Sacred Nine in the mystery of failure and fall after the
paradisial moment. Who one might also ask is the "he " looking at tower,
what tower is it - Hughes plays afine chord with this phrase and knows it,
he alludes directly too he Tower of Babel as being light and while doing
so "deconstructs" it. That first Tower aimed for the light and brought
darkness even as it reached toward the light - Light is also Lucifer the
lighter bringer, So Adam now look to Lucifer's light. I say it is Adam
looking but I suppose if you cut this text up into reading sliding
signifiers a la reader response we could go somewhere else completely.
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