dublinka

Mark Amerika's Avant pop manifesto is by now well known. Less so, some of his work from Grammatron, most likely because he originally choose to distribute it via the syphilitic inducing real media. Still you can now listen to the soundtrack on mp3 from the site, and below you'll find a sample from some of Gramatron's other wiring. It's not as clever as it likes to think it is, but still, it has a certain charm.

you don't have to be there for me: poem

asynchronous communication

answering machine

voice mail system

e-mail

bulletin board systems

<>interactive web site

snailmail

fax

virtual performance

telefictional soundtrack

hypertextual consciousness

cyborg-narrator

astrological bandwidth

sim-city

unreal estate

moment #21 ( a footnote with no end)

I have to say I love this film. The cinematography by Christopher Doyle, is stunning and despite my doubts over Caine, the man's performance struck me as pure genius. The poem cited by Fowler is "Dipsychus" by the lesser known British poet Arthur Clough (1819-61).

I drive through the street, and I care not a damn,
The people they stare, and they ask who I am
And if I should chance to run over a cad
I can pay for the damage, if ever so bad.

You can find a more complete discussion of the verse here.

A quick reminder: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (Edmund Burke).

Find some inspiration here at the starving poets.

Iggy Mc Goven's The King of Suburbia came my way recently and I'm having mixed feeling towards it. Some work like, Necking at the reading, comes across as purile frat-boyesque titillation - and elsewhere in First lessons Mc Govern recalls the strategic dropping of pencils " by Miss's desk to peep at her underwear". Such work all adds up in this readers mind, to a sad middle age store of banal erotica, a closet of sticky midlife poems. The Glove in particular, while claiming to be the act of a kind father cleaning his son's car, comes across as a creepy act of surveillance, and violation of privacy "keeping a wary eye for E and the cold comfort of condom wrapper". Ironically this is perhaps a strength of the collection. It's a light bo-home-ian rather than bohemian romp through suburbia. With joggers, skips, venetian blinds, and Luas bridges, accompanying it, we seen unveiled before us, the less than alluring lifestyle of a middleclass denizen of Dublin. In general though, the light, humorous, and nonchalant nature of many of the poems, will get a chuckle. In doing so, Mc Govern leaves no banality unturned in search of pun (For "Armagh" read "Armani") or quip:

Quick brown urban fox
jumps over the lazy dog
barking all damn night

But time should be allowed before a second reading. In From the Greek for example, the smile raising "no man steps twice into the same flea-pit twice" ironically turns on itself, and like much light comedy, seems jaded if you look at it again too soon. Moreover, not all the jokes work. In View from Dundrum, Mc Govern makes a bizarre comment, which left me puzzling. A "Chinese takeout place" declares Mc Govern is "inscrutably named the Great Wall". Quite why exactly such a name is deemed inscrutable escapes all analysis, and Mc Govern's example of an imagined pub "inscrutably named" The Great Hunger in Tiananmen Square, does not really save the poem - even if you get what he was driving at. The joke falls flat on it's face. Tumbleweed blows through it.

Sir William Rowan Hamilton's Bout-Rimes shows Mc Govern at his most artful. It's a homage to the mathematician William Rowan Hamilton who immortalised himself and along the Royal Canal Dublin, by carving his famous equation into Bougham Bridge. Using Kavanagh's Lines written on a Seat on the Grand Canal, Mc Govern, melts the end words of each line of the Monaghan man's verse into the end of each line of his own, He even manages to work Athy into the verse by dressing it in 'empathy'. A classic Bout-Rime if ever there was one, because it's working on multiple levels.

Hamilton's work of course makes ideal subject matter for an Associate professor of Physics like Mc Govern, but more so because Hamilton did 'versify' himself. But despite this display of cleverness, there is a sense of missed opportunity. The relationship between mathematics and poetry in the work of the two men, remains disappointingly unexplored here. But given the goal of the poem was most likely the creation of a bout-rime rather than the exploration of such an idea, then we can not hold the poet to task. But still, it seems a shame. Finally Mc Govern's charge of "graffiti wasted on the passer by", seems nothing other than intellectual snobbery, and perhaps is disproved by the picture here of a one Tevian Gray adding his own algebraic structure 'the octonions' to Bougham bridge. You'll find a poem of Hamilton's own, on the same page.

Available from Dedalus.

You can find a selection of Apollinaire in translation, along with the woodcut illustrations from Raoul Dufy for Le Bestiaire ou Cortège d’Orphée at this site. I'm not that keen however on Kline's set of translations. So if you agree, or prefer then, some of the originals - without the woodcuts - are available at toutelapoesie.





La mouche
Nos mouches savent des chansons
Que leur apprirent en Norvège
Les mouches ganiques qui sont
Les divinités de la neige.

Some of the 700,000 plus denizens of Second Life have been hosting poetry readings. Here's a flyer from one of the SL community notice boards:

Come share your works and hears the works of others. Poets of all levels are encouraged to attend, from the novice to the experienced, as we continue on our trek Around the World in 80 Clicks (more or less :D). For that reason, do not use the teleport below, but IM Hensonian for a TP to tonight's secret location :D

This is the beautiful cover of The Song of the Jade Bowl, a poem by the Emperor Qianlong from AD 1745. The entire stone book, which you can see at the Chester Beaty library Dublin, is worked in Chinese jade/nephrite and gold. At that time Jade was considered pretty indestructible, so any thoughts that an Emperor wanted to preserve, were carved into such books. I had a look at it today, and the pages are really quite amazing. An English translation of the poem has been done but I haven't been able to track it down. Yet!

The fantastic London poetry buzz of 2005. Not quite the merry pranksters, but looked like fun.

All hail the Routemaster.
We are all on the lower deck
but some of us are spitting on the ceiling.


[Chris Goode/Buzz Driver]

Leland Bardwell’s The noise of masonry settling is the latest offering from an author whose patience in releasing her work has rewarded her well. There are poems which resonate here. The collection itself mind you, is not easy to sum up. There are a multitude of themes interweaved within. Death, mental illness, life on the street, and class prejudice appear from time to time. War, nature, and love at others. Possibly one of my favourites is The old peoples outing: Ageism. It’s a short but harrowing account of an old man’s denigration for the purpose of TV entertainment. When read with the wonderful That day, a meditation on the line “I employed Gary Cooper the day he got old” sore, unpalatable truths, linger within us, even though with these particular poems individual lines don’t. This I think, makes for great poetry; because the artfulness is hidden; the message remains vivid. Elsewhere in the collection however, for those of you who like to memorise, individual segments really do linger. I’ve selected a few to give you a sample:


Dear Mr. Psychiatrist

Dear Mr. Psychiatrist
I don’t like your pills,
(I prefer my ills)

Song.

I gave a poem to my friend.
He spat upon the burning ground.
I said My friend, it’s not the end,
My song is better than it sounds.
But he said lately he had found
That matter divulged and matter penned
Created enemies all round.

We sell you buy: Gulf War 1.

I once read a book about some old Jap,
Who saw the shadow of his daughter on a wall.
By the corkscrew of fate, he survived to tell the tale
Went far away and cultivated carp.

Thought many of the themes are serious, there is a tender sense of humour running through the work. Love poem really raises a smile (“Do we always have to live like Bonnie and Clyde”) as does the heroic Drum up a poem (probably worth memorising if you are a poet) and These Aspirins seem to be no use, (the last words of Ernest Shackleton) is a light but interesting meditation on the hunger of the human spirit. Bardwell’s brightest fire however burns for the dispossessed. In poems like Prison Poem III, We don’t serve travelling people here and Mrs. Katherine Dunne Street Trader, she saves and embraces worlds which others seem blind to. As a collection then, though diverse, there’s a lot here which I found I liked. And there are some even (like Song), which I really loved. I suspect I will return to it often. There is poetry here which will flower in all seasons of a mind.

Kerry on my mind. Of Poets Pedagogues and Place.(1999) Gabriel Fitzmaurice.

Notwithstanding the interesting title, and elegant cover, this collection of essays by the poet and schoolteacher Gabriel Fitzmaurice is chiefly a hagiography of the Kerry writers the author adores: Bryan Mac Mahon, John B. Keane, Brendan Kenelly, Maurice Walsh, Thomas Mac Greevy, George Fitzmaurice and so forth. So despite being the author of over 20 books, we find only sporadic criticism and analysis. Indeed with lines like, "we should be grateful for Brendan Kenelly" some of the essays in this collection are not so much a dance of ideas, as a sublime licking of arse. It's best summed up by the following passage: "“It'’s a matter of awe that the Listowel area has, for well over a hundred years now, regularly produced worthwhile writers, some of them writers of genius. It remains a mystery, and, like all mysteries, defies explanation. All we can do is wonder about it. In wonder writing begins...". Sigh Gabriel. But sure, aren't we all just fantastic…I'’ll just open my mind and you can shovel the platitudes right on in. Later the essay Creating the Conscience of the Race carries the subtitle "‘Portrait of an artist as a national school teacher"’, and as such Gabriel Fitzmaurice throws his paper aeroplane into that irresistible wastebasket of facetiousness titles, which dog Joyce's masterpiece. Yet unfolding it, we find a small gem in his poem At the ball game, which chalks a quintessential Irish mantra nothing is but is revealed /and tested on the football field. The cultural resonance from such lines on any reading is striking and worthy of applause. And indeed wherever Fitzmaurice focuses on poetry, or the subject of poetry, his thinking is slightly more interesting and appears noticeably sharper -although it must be stressed never quite dazzling. For example, noting the unwise segregation of Irish and English language poetry, Fitzmaurice banally suggests moving beyond the set texts, letting children write for themselves, and bringing writers into the classroom. This is sensible, but hardly the stuff of revolutions. Though I hesitate to give it a thumbs up, this collection of essays, will nevertheless strike a chord with any poet or writer who dabbles in the thankless art of pedagogy. With for example, his use of George Fitzgeralds observation, that youth seldom learns from others experience, there are enough day to day observations on the dual role of artist and teacher scattered over the various essays, and some additional nice pointers to the works of other poets, which might console, enlighten, or even dispel the mystery of how such a life can be balanced.

Available from Salmon publishing.

If you like irony and regardless of whether you can define it, you might like this t-shirt. Available from concept t-shirts and all good stores.

This photograph is from 1920's Californian psychiatric records. The poet in question is thought to have been paranoid, unfit to have children and therefore sterilised.

The first Rendezvous: Los Angeles 1944, is one poem in particular, which caught my eye from Anne Kennedy’s 1995 release, The Dog Kubla Dreams my life. It's a beautiful but tragic portrait of lives too afraid to come into being. Before it begins, it is prefaced by a portentous Robert Lowell quote: “all the forgiving couples, hurry on to dinner and their nights.”

With easy notes, the poem tells the simple story of the first day of a love affair. A woman, emerges from a Moorish doorway in a building complete with minaret and:

sniffs slyly
for tell-tales scent of lover
looks right, looks left
hurries off
her heels tick tocking
down the empty street.

With ‘sniffs slyly’ the poem captures the air of success and liberation that any affair brings. But after studying all her excitement and triumph, it peals below this surface, to uncover and proceeds to illustrate a common social arrangement: the fraudulent lives of weary married couples. As such, Kennedy rushes her protagonist home to the backwaters of domesticity. Here she cooks for her husband, whose flaws are being tired, accepting chintz and casseroles, and worse: being bored.

Later behind chintz crossovers,
she serves a casserole
Assuring her tired husband
her day’s been boring too
while beneath the dinette light
her ankle bracelet gleams

She assures him, that she too is bored. Presumably this was at his 'off poem' prompting. And crucially it is by seeking this reassurance and by thereby attempt to drag her into his own oblivion, that finally seals his fate to her and the reader. We cannot pity him. We realise that he cannot miss, but does not comment on her gleaming ankle bracelet. We suspect this is most likely because he is too afraid, too weak. He has already forgiven her. Perhaps in a similar way, she may even have forgiven him in the past. And so they will continue, in mutual deceit and fraud, like all the other forgiving couples, and hurry on to dinner and their nights. And so in this brief poem, with out any fuss, Kennedy has shown us this terrible norm. Twilight lives: half dead, maybe over.

From Anne Kennedy The Dog Kubla Dreams my life. Salmon press. 1995.

It was with a slight feeling of apprehension that I picked up Jacques Dupin’s selected poems in translation. The portrait on the front of Dupin, by none other than Alberto Giacometti, promised sparseness, minimalism, and despair: a bleak anti-beauty; like moon dust for breakfast. And yet also on the cover, gleaming like polished teeth, stood the name Paul Auster - a writer who has appealed to me greatly, ever since his Calvinoesque New York Trilogy. I raised an eyebrow. Did Auster steal fire from here? What is this poetry he has taken the trouble to select?

Well for starters it’s hard to describe. It’s almost a mumbling kind of poetry. A poetry of impressions you can read and hear, but not always grasp. Beside obscure poems and dark poems, lie poems that flicker on and off; where meaning glitches and flashes in some kind of wounded aesthetic twilight. Some just sit there like a quite person whose company you like, saying nothing, and yet pleasing you nonetheless. Others have the awkward beauty and reticence of stones. And still others read just as well backwards. All this you suspect, the author intends: “he overwrites scribbled notes, crossings out, near effacements…inexplicably screened from the morning blaze…”. Yet something still bothers you. Something is not quite right. And then it hits you. To make friends with this poetry, you have to see through the eyes of the author. Jacques Dupin, art critic and specialist on Joan Miro, does not write poetry: he paints it.

“he writes the draft of what should have innocently written itself, and rewriting it he destroys, -destroys without effacing…a narrative?”

“why the throwback, the recoil, -with the clear prison of canvas that arouses and holds him captive…”

“Let them be written
let them reanimate, let them reactivate
a dislocating energy
and against the whiteness which challenges them, sharpens them,
against the grief on which they glut”

In lines like the above, where Dupin the critics still bites, we discover an echo of Miro: “I try to apply colours like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music”. In reversing this philosophy, we discover in some senses a mirror to Miro, an anti Miro, or perhaps even a kind of Miro. We discover something which is attempting to be:

Écrire comme si je n’étais pas né. Les mots antérieurs: écroulés, denudes, aspires par le gouffre. Écrire sans les mots, comme se je naissais.

If you like Miro, if you like Auster who also paints with words, or feel enthralled by the idea of Dupin’s project, then this will make interesting reading.

Jacques Dupin. Selected poems. Selected by Paul Auster. Wake Forest University Press.

Here's a nice poem from Máirtín Ó Direáin. You can find a translation here. Hope you enjoy it Derm ;)

Maith dhom

Im aonar dom aréir,
Im shuí cois mara,
An spéir ar ghann-chuid néall
Is muir is tír faoi chalm,
Do chumraíocht ríonda
A scáiligh ar scáileán m'aigne
Cé loinnir deiridh mo ghrá dhuit
Gur shíleas bheith in éag le fada.

Ghlaos t'ainm go ceanúil
Mar ba ghnáthach liomsa tamall,
Is tháing scread scáfar
Ó eán uaigneach cladaigh;
Maith dhom murarbh áil leat
Fiú do scáil dhíl im aice,
Ach bhí an spéir ar ghannchuid néall
Is muir is tír faoi chalm.

The representaion of poetry or the poet, by artists and non poets, is always interesting. It gives us insight into the public perception of the poet, and addresses questions like what is a poet?, and how does poetry come into being? This 1979 work by the artist Irving Amen, has a stained glass window like quality, and we expect it to light up, not via sunlight, but as the moment the poet finds her inspiration. Irving, who has previously made stained glass windows, has done this so well, that anyone who has ever spent mornings in old cathedrals will probably be able to imagine the painting illuminate. As such Irving seems to be saying that inspiration, exists both within and beyond the poet, and perhaps even in the poets reader.