Peter Riley, off to the Peaks "to learn to breathe again," and your
own self, Ric, wrote a few of the best poems Object Permanence had
the privilege of publishing, including one of yours "about" a
more-agitated-than-Wordsworth stalk into the hills whose impulse, by
the end, we are in no doubt is fury with no outlet at one of the
Conservative government`s gun-running debacles. If I had a copy
here, I would post it. I admit I admire it more strongly than
most things by Heaney, but surely the voice, the spirit, the setting,
the mode, the relative transparency is not a kick in the arse off
certain poems in the opening and closing sections of North. I
wouldn`t say that that poem was particularly unrepresentative of a
certain strain in your work, without wanting to reduce your range to
that one model. Unquestionably, you would have to admit that
sections of your own work and that of Peter Riley`s and others, is
closer to Heaney`s than you have previously wanted to admit (even
if you think, as I would guess most of us do, that you and Peter
are, on the whole, better). The Heaney poems about the ancient
Viking relics in Ireland, exhumation of ancient sacrificial victims
from bogs, (esp. a poem called, I think, "Viking Dublin: Trial
Pieces") even recall, if only as shrivelled and facile parallels,
real work like Prynne`s Aristeas. Like it or not, he is in the same
game, even if he is writing blind-folded, wearing boxing-gloves.
Having said that, I agree with Keston, that Heaney`s standing will
wane somewhat, shrink to several, or a few very effective anthology pieces
...I brought Heaney up because I was re-reading North last
weekend, first time since first-year undergraduate, waiting to see
what stands still and upright in light of looming referenda. Answer:
not much. Especially, the dated (literally and in every sense)
poems, on Bloody Sunday &c. As displacement activity and simple
distraction from writing up thesis, Tuesday morning after reading
Guardian reports of Loyalist groundswell against the Yes, threatening
to make serious sectarian split down Yes/No lines and therefore any
"agreement" unworkable, I wrote a
pastiche (pastiche being only mode in which me and William Burroughs
can be sincere - I unnerstand Bill Herbert was handing out copies of
my pisstake of Thomas A. Clark a few years ago in yr area, Ric, I
know Barry MacS and Sean O`Brien got to see it)
of earlyish Prynne (plum in gob,
centrifugal/centripetal microambiguities, italics (tho` you don`t get
to know that)), as follows:
THE EIGHTEENTH BRUMAIRE OF THE SINGER FROM ASH
>From what phantom annex: of a sudden,
the "people"`s negative, of terms in tone
and voice: what did they actually say. A
kind of gathering: it`s a frame,
or it`s made of frames: simulacra of
protection.
It is necessary to bear in
who come here, the nervous who want
to see, the maker become the bearer
and the body. Important as it is, no
thanks to me, I find that I am
matter, however expert (as soon
as someone parts, say, I im-
mediately part: in fact, nothing
has happened). Sincere or not, I am
it, the recalcitrant
affirmative that doesn`t exist,
thought to the order of sense. Let`s
say that occurs: then this doesn`t start
again - disallowed because we are cut-
lery, the sexual end of the computer.
It`s an advent, the rigid new dawn
to follow.
(how I could go on, if I could be arsed, to make it sound
and look more like Prynne; the italics help...)
Ungeschriebenes, zu
sprache verhartet
(Celan, A la point aceree, cited in "Shibboleth: for Paul Celan" by
Jacques Derrida, which I think, Keston, if you managed it down this far,
tries to think your Future Reader (of Prynne) while holding to the
certainty that no Future Reader will appear - without this being a
vague cop-out: your own Future Reader is a Present Reader making a
bet, it seems to me). Derrida`s poetry aspires to a Future Reader;
yours seems to think it`s a dead cert.)
Have a weekend, folks
robin
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