Notes Toward an Appreciation (to advertise another poet from John
Wilkinson's short-list of Spring Hits).
Wrong Life can be read as a midrash on the last line of the first poem,
Home World, in her collection Imagination Verses (one idly wonders
versus what?), Tender Buttons '96: "...but I awoke to no words and
wonder left." Those words, apparently written while she lived in
Providence, seem passport enough to the Old World: Paris is presently
her home. IV's preface declares an intent to explore the universal
lyric "I". HW opens, "I will say..." (cf Mincemeat Seesaw, Fit A for
the declaration, "I, Keston Sutherland, am from the royal dale...").
Written before IV, two chapbooks, The First Division of Labour and
Enlightenment Evidence, explore aspects of the history of revolution:
the former abstractly, the latter through the life & death of Rosa
Luxemburg. The epigraph to FDL is from Karl Marx: "...there develops
the division of labour, which was originally nothing but the division of
labour in the sex act..." These two chapbooks, Parts 1 & 2 of a
currently abandoned project Often Capital, lay thematic & some stylistic
groundwork for the two later works.
One delight I take in JM's work is its leaping across classifications.
She draws, in IV, in different ways on various practitioners of lyric
poetry - Pound, Stevens, Mayakovsky, Wordsworth, Keats, Frank Stanford,
Susan Howe, Prynne. In Wrong Life there are long, Homeric lines,
reference to Greek legends, a nod at Dunbar's Lament for the Makars.
Pastiche is avoided, however, and what comes through is density,
morality, gravity & play under the government of a sharp intelligence.
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He said. Well, that might all be an intro to a longer piece, just
cutting in now to say JM is, I believe, a seriously talented writer.
Those with ears etc may make their own minds up: here are extracts from
all four works.
"I know and therefore am ceaseless not imaginary,
ready for demanding
the annotated vanishing
as the production
preach finesse in all things
until failure becomes sacred." FDL 14,15.
"come down creation and that ladder up will stay
unfinished, embattled enough to give up futures
alas regard the saint to whom no one may point
and betray the errors of effort, unceasingly you
and I are pulled concentrically in in quest we hold
abreast monotony that attractive rag forever
laundered, Rosa I cannot reach you as none other
than a product of" EE (np)
"....................If I could hide this day forever
from the pleasure of renewal and banish all contingency
from happening I would, but I have never seen planet X
or the wooden ships on the Eastern horizon.
Up until now my life has faced West, sequestered
reason reaching for an injudicious kiss." IV p69
"Atavism in a dress
she is strolling to meet
your criminal past, armed
with just the history to see it
you've a bigger problem than first we thought, buster,
they haven't made that part in years,
on the bus she dreams of filmic meetings with big scores
and they'll all come out to meet her
when she comes, killing limelight and beautiful men,
and you were so unprepared IV p88
from Wrong Life
".......................Choking pink ribbon of thought
fails the ferry crossing. Who cannot push life-sustaining
[rationalization
away without remembering, as though an error of judgment,
the callow power of preservation turned to resentment of the race."
Fear of an Empty Life p10
"............Proud metaphysical thrift,
time so extravagant as to condone the unspeakable
inquest of silence. It begins with indecent youthful-
ness which dies by the hand of the shorter life-span
and ends when the reticence of a half-dead bird shows
in my shameless freedom a light of breathtaking cruelty."
Fixed Idea p19
"....
My hands are shivering, I miss the writing, I know what it has and has
Not given me, here where drawn out lives grow longer in false desires
Disturbing envy and multifarious revelations of bright, recycled hope."
A Transom Over Death's Door p6
Excuse the wrenching from contexts.
Best wishes,
Pete.
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