In The Fog

Four Friends Fog-Fishing,
Hope and a Hook,
or Existential Crisis #4?

Heaney: "Like Heroes in a Barrow"

IN GALLARUS ORATORY

You can still feel the community pack
This place: it’s like going into a turfstack,
A core of old dark walled up with stone
A yard thick. When you’re in it alone,
You might have dropped, a reduced creature,
To the heart of the globe. No worshipper
Would leap up to his God off this floor.

Founded there like heroes in a barrow,
They sought themselves in the eye of their King
Under the black weight of their own breathing.
And how he smiled on them as out they came,
The sea a censer and the grass a flame.

--Seamus Heaney

(Thank you, RA, for the reminder this first day of the year.)

Brendan Kennelly: "Remember What Marina Said?"

REMEMBER WHAT MARINA SAID?

You'll never do it.

You know you'll never do it.

Admit you know you'll never do it.

The teacher said so.

The doctor and the priest agreed.

They know you were born to fail.

So did everyone at the Cake Sale

And the Book Sale.

Xavier Mulligan TD, not famous for his candour,

Told you to forget it

As did everyone at the Annual General Meeting

Of the Ballyspanner Football Club.

Wise Tynan swears it's totally beyond you.

Wise Tynan knows the story inside out,

He's got the whole thing sussed.

And when you say that you can do it

You fill wise Tynan with disgust.

And now, for the first time,

After long thought, and then some more,

Let me tell you what I've never told you before.

I who supported you

From the day that Clifford beat you

Up against the classroom door

For your stammering and your left-hand writing,

I tell you now, my friend of a lifetime,

You'll never do it.

Remember what Marina said?

Failure is your daily bread.

What's this?

I told you to lie down,

Cover your face with your hands,

Keep your mouth shut.

Be seen, I said, not heard.

What's this?

God in heaven, you're up,

You're opening your heart, your mouth,

Wild flower, you're doing it,

I can't believe it, it's impossible,

You're the most impossible man I've ever known,

You won't lie down,

You live as if you don't believe in right and wrong,

You're out of your mind,

Your mind feels good, being rid of you,

No right, no wrong,

Just you,

The most impossible man in the world,

Song.

--BRENDAN KENNELLY

P.S.  Consider Kennelly's skillful use of end-stops vs. enjambment to make the poem itself act out the move from being bound to being free.

Remembering Rudi: A Gallery

Rest in peace, dear me-orange-boy-o:
You fought the good fight against cancer for many years.

April 1, 1995 - September 16, 2008.

Pictures of pictures.

Thunder, Free, Curse: Three Poems from Brendan Kennelly

SPECIAL THUNDER

He had to reach the island in the winter gale.
From Saleen Quay he pushed the little boat
Over the rough stones till she came afloat;
You'd swear he could see nothing when he hoisted sail
And cut the dark.  Once a grey shape blurred
Above his head while pitchblack water slapped
And tried to climb over the side but dropped
Into the sea, thwarted.  In time, he heard

The special thunder of the island shore,
He hauled the boat in, sheltered near a rock
And smiled to hear the sea's defeated roar;
Breathing as though the air were infinitely sweet,
He watched the mainland where the hard wind struck.
The island clay felt good beneath his feet.


FREE

Once ever a boat capsized on Red
So simply he couldn't tell why.
One moment the sun caressed his head,
The next, his world was water.  His eyes
Opened, closed, hurt by the urgent green
That pressed him down, down into the mud
Until his face touched the obscene
Slime.  Strange, though, how foul touch calmed his blood.

His grey head about to split in pieces,
He kicked free, free till he broke into the air.
Breathing hugely, he righted his craft in time,
Clambered aboard.  Ghoulish faces
Of water haunted him, seemed to stare
At his repose.  The sun tasted of green slime.


CURSE

They said a curse was on the boat.
It would never put to sea again
Because two men were lost from it.
Red bought it from a fisherman
For thirty pounds and four tides later
Headed it out into the Shannon.
'There's no such thing as luck,' we heard him mutter
'There's but the skill and strength of a man

With sure hands and sense in his head.
And one thing more.  Luck was never known
To drown the living or raise the dead
But many a cocksure man went down
Because his trust was not where it should be.
Out there, forget your brothers.  Trust the sea.'


--BRENDAN KENNELLY,
from his Love Cry sequence,
collected in Breathing Spaces: Early Poems,
Bloodaxe Books, 1992.

"On Faith From Some Artist's Image": Broumas and Begley

On faith from some artist's image
a sheet of paper saying you are possible
I thank the artist for that
island continent its small aborigines
values I stand on I invent
and in the very middle of that gap
the givers


-- Olga Broumas and T Begley

from Sappho's Gymnasium,

Copper Canyon Press,

Port Townsend, WA: 1994

Fount Of Wisdom, Well Of Compassion

I've always imagined the Grail to be made of clay.

Tuning Fork, Compass Needle

Here's a slightly apologetic line from Rebecca Solnit's excellent A Book of Migrations: Some Passages in Ireland that matters to me, that provides a focus, a model, an admonition, and some solace:

"I tried to use the subjective and personal not to glorify my mundane autobiography but as a case study in how one can explore the remoter reaches of the psyche by wandering across literal terrain."

My tuning fork, my compass needle. I use personal anecdotes in class--yes, a lot--but for the same reason that Solnit uses her own subjective journeys, her own experiences and reflections. I adhere to the principle behind that "case study" approach, for my heart declares even the "mundane" matters, if your "aim is true" (to borrow from Elvis Costello) and if you tell it right.

As a reader, a teacher, and a maker in particular, I add a second continent to her phrase, much as Solnit herself does in actual practice, joining such "wanderings across literal terrain" to explorations of the literary terrain. Both matter so much to me, but reading richly is a crucial key to the lock of life's treasure chest I've found. Picture the scholar as a Robin Hood, stalking the forest of words, as a pirate, navigating the shoals of the soul: silly, true images. (Even Bilbo Baggins was a burglar, remember.)

The Commonwealth of Letters, to use an old phrase, is a vast expanse, often quite civilized, often still savage. The pathways are not all paved, and the way isn't always clear, despite all those who have gone exploring before you. On such a journey, there will be pubs and palaces as well as pitfalls: famine, drought, lacerations of the soul. Persevere. If you are lucky, you'll find treasure; luckier, dragons.

No passport necessary beyond literacy; no invitation needed beyond your own curiosity.

Start wandering. When you get back, start talking.

Passages: "Dance Like A Wave Of The Sea"

William Butler Yeats has penned so many poems, but this isn't one of the famous ones. "The Fiddler of Dooney" is an early work, artfully simple, and easily overlooked.

THE FIDDLER OF DOONEY

When I play on my fiddle in Dooney,

Folk dance like a wave of the sea,

My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet,

My brother in Moharabuiee.

I passed my brother and cousin:

They read in their books of prayers;

I read in my book of songs

I bought at the Sligo Fair.

When we come at the end of time,

To Peter sitting in state,

He will smile on the three old spirits,

But call me first through the gate:

For the good are always the merry,

Save by an evil chance,

And the merry love the fiddle

And the merry love to dance:

And when the folk there spy me,

The will all come up to me,

With "Here is the fiddler of Dooney!"

And dance like a wave of the sea.

--W.B. Yeats

"And dance like a wave of the sea": On my best days teaching, I feel a bit like the fiddler. That's heady inspiration for working harder, for doing better. I typed up this simple poem to share, yes, but mostly to remind myself today, this hour. And so.

Mermaid with a Broken Tail

Here is another mermaid from years back. I keep her as a prototype, given that I broke her tail fin at some point. I may have broken it before the first firing, or perhaps I used too much glaze and her fin broke when taking her out of the kiln. I've just examined her again, and I can't tell what went wrong.

Flawed, and yet still a favorite piece. I made her, brought her out of those images in my mind, out of mytho-erotic preoccupations. Those images that, frankly, seem apart from myself, greater or lesser but apart. Much like the dreams that rival any feature film, but don't seem to derive from any obvious idiosyncratic psychodrama, any obvious soup-pot/maelstrom of extensive viewing or deep reading. Lately, my dreams have made me second-guess the concept of culture mind, given the wild disparity between my apparently feeble conscious imaginings and what's been playing on that widescreen set in the hollow of my skull. (Marlow should be narrating; Euripides, Mundy, and Perez-Reverte could be plotting the next installment. Who's directing? I want subtitles, yet I'm the producer of the show or, at least, the landlord.) Not that I'm making great claims for this mermaid; she stepped from my skull, but she's not quite Athena (and I'm not quite Zeus). Not Athena, but then that's not the goddess I dream of, and what I dream is still richer than anything I've yet brought to fruition. I need to work on that.

The mermaid: I failed her, failed to bring her to fruition. I like the hair, though not exactly, like her hands and small breasts, the patterned bluing of her belly. Her face is still too stark, too static, though that keel of a nose was intended; I wanted strong features, an otherworldly seeming. I'd like the scales of her tail to stand out more sharply; I'd formed them with an old Celtic ring, but over-glazed and lost the detail. She's a sentinel, a creature of the deep, and an admonition for further efforts.

She's nameless, but not unknown.