Tony wrote:
>Yes yes yes to Muriel R. In fact I mentioned her backchannel to Doug Oliver
>yesterday, wondering why no-one had brought her name up on the list.
My fave book of hers is 'The Traces of Thomas Hariot' (Victor Gollancz, 1972).
I have no idea if it's still in print? In it she 'digs' out a life that was
in close contact with Roger Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, Walter Ralegh,
Francis Drake, Kepler, and many others, whilst asking why we do not know
his name.
I'll quote the very first para in full:
'To stand in this moment, in a city in history, thinking of a lost man who
was great. And if he is great, what is his greatness? If he is great, why
is he lost? Thinking, rather, of his traces among us who hardly know his
name. You will find reminders among the stories of early America : Thomas
Hariot, the friends of Sir Walter Ralegh who as a young man came to the New
World to live his year; scientist, mathematician, experimental observer,
who voyaged with the 1595 expedition to "Virginia," exploring and recording
in that unknown wilderness. Friend of Christopher Marlowe, accused with him
of heresy. Linked with poets and pioneer scientists, gone down, almost
forgotten among great waves of crushing powers. Caught indeed in all the
heresies of his time, scientific, political, theosophical, sexual.'
Reading through recent posts on poets who become too easily the
'forgotten', reading of the mechinations of the 'canon' suggests that
Rukeyser's project renders scant judgements as dust (albeit those dusts
that need dusting). That a person who makes the connections, embodies a
network, can be considered to be as 'important' as the nodes between which
connections are realised and released. The movers and shakers in a web of
lives. It's a salutary lesson that Rukeyser presents to us. Absences,
revealed by presences as worthy of attention. The intimacy of close detail
lost in grand gestures of hasty opinion and reinforced by the receptions of
the ill or uninformed.
love and love
cris
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