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
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