 |
 |
Thanks Andrew I first wrote the poem, not at one pace but, in one go; and what is at the end now was not at first at the end. It took me some time to get the various elements in the right sequence - while I was rewriting anyway, of course. I'm quite gratified that you all seem to find its ordering _correct_. Best I can do anyway. It's as if I knew to some extent all I wanted to say but needed time to put it in the best receivable order -- and to find what I *really wanted to say. The exegesis flowed easily enough. I used never to comment much, not in any detail, but the fellowship has cured me of that - completed a process of many years of being precious, as I could now see it - though I am still cautious of over explicating the process (A while back, deliberately not dating it, I attended a talk by a composer, deliberately not naming or gendering them, who explained that they have developed a way of combining the creative and the research whereby the two activities mutually support. I did actually nod off, though whether due to a stodgy late lunch or an overheated building I am not sure; so I missed some of the argument's development. However, the concert of their recent work depressed me; and I concluded that they have somehow stifled their inventiveness -- and they had real inventiveness once. Now they have gigs and reputation. I like space for that wonderful response in O'Hara's why I am not a painter where the painter says _it needed something there_ and no more So one must go cautiously trying to open the poem for others without doing a school litcrit job -- how does the versification support the theme? or whatever they want; and maybe even sometimes making it easier for others to write I was reading a paper this morning and became absorbed in the debate over whether a pterodactyl is a bird or a dinosaur! and went past my stop - to Surrey Quays, a strange place. I didn't even stay to plant a flag. I looked up expecting to see the approach to my target station and saw it - the landscape after - as for the first time. I have it classed as boring and so never look now. I saw it again but for the first time - a devastation of low rise pre-formed industrial building, fences to baffle train sound which do nothing for the sense of vision... a new setting for Dr Who or perhaps a remake of Quatermass and the Pit. How could I have not SEEN it? I think I am looking at it properly now and shall be intrigued to see if the journey west - wiltshire somerset levels devon etc has been relit Toodlepip L On Thu, July 28, 2011 05:34, andrew burke wrote: > Well, Lawrence, I like both the poem - said it aloud - and the exegesis! > I > am glad others pointed to the switch in pace with the last verse cos I > first read it all at a pace, damaging the gear change near the end (just > to mix my metaphors). Thanks for both. > > Andrew > > > On 28 July 2011 00:41, Lawrence Upton <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > >> Thanks, Doug and Barry >> >> >> I've been trying to do something with that brief narrow landscape for a >> long time. I go through it in a wheeled glass and metal box many days >> of the year. >> >> At first there are illusions of the rural; but closer / more intensely >> seen it's always unexpected and counter intuitive; and I've gone back >> and found it unexpected and counter intuitive again -- >> >> I've long enjoyed that moment in Peacock's Headlong Hall where a garden >> is said to be designed to surprise the visitor and someone asks what >> happens if one visits twice. That's never answered. >> >> I have come recently to the idea that some urban scenes DO surprise a >> second time round but without any designer's intention. It's not seeing >> more in a made thing; but just emotionally banging each time into >> oddity. >> >> I can hardly remember the Peacock novel but I suspect that the aim was >> to surprise and delight; and I don't get much innate delight in this >> context. It's more the worried surprise of a cat of my acquaintance >> EVERY time the >> computer boots and goes bong. >> >> Trying to make a poem is one way to cope. >> >> >> and it's only making this poem - or maybe the poems leading up to it >> which no one will see - that I have fully absorbed how different this >> landscape is in its different stretches. >> >> That's ridiculous because it's obvious, once I have said it; but I am >> still trying to absorb how this works. It's not geological. That sense >> of hills of flowering bushes becoming valleys as the train moves only >> comes when lines branch; and the stretch between Croydon and Norwood is >> a tangle of joining and crossing lines. >> >> This may be the most visually interesting stretch; but perhaps it >> behoves me to make a set of poems for the different stretches >> >> Sometimes I take a _pretty route_ via Crystal Palace, not only a 19th >> century folly of a station (complete with shuttered off platform and >> stairs brightly lit all the time) but a slight rise which makes for >> variations on the illusions of the rural. I've been studying how the >> railway manages it to get up and down, branching off from the main >> north south multiple lines and then, where necessary, crossing over >> above those lines -- and it came to me last night that it's quite like >> the problem for 2 dimensional creatures in Dewdney's Planiverse, the >> rails abolishing the free movement in three dimensions. >> >> A comment which won't help those who don't know that book! >> >> >> & I have thought of something Rory Stewart wrote about coming back to >> London after walking across Afghanistan -- it was to do with the >> completeness of cover by asphalt and concrete and the outside of this >> city being like one room. >> >> I haven't quite got it yet -- or rather it was a perception of such >> oddity and penetration that I am still exploring it. I think my >> experience is slightly different to Stewart's -- and my ability to walk >> great distance possibly not so good -- and I see it -- the urban out >> there -- as a kind of rhetorical product >> >> I think. >> >> >> Er. >> >> >> It wasn't that easy to write but I am quite pleased with it and *very >> happy that you got something out of it. >> >> May the vacuum bless you both >> >> >> L >> >> > > > > -- > Andrew > http://hispirits.blogspot.com/ > 'Mother Waits for Father Late' republished available at > http://www.picaropress.com/ > http://www.qlrs.com/poem.asp?id=766 > http://frankshome.org/AndrewBurke.html > > ----- solo poems http://www.landscapeandlanguagecentre.au.com/current_journal.html http://www.landscapeandlanguagecentre.au.com/Peripatetica/Peripatetica_Upton_Try%20Valley.pdf http://www.landscapeandlanguagecentre.au.com/Peripatetica/Peripatetica_Upton_Walking.pdf ----- collaborative visual work:- http://www.poetrybeyondtext.org/upton-begbie.html http://www.poetrybeyondtext.org/begbie-upton.html ---- Lawrence Upton AHRC Creative Research Fellow Dept of Music Goldsmiths, University of London