Reading Randall Jarrell

It never ceases to amaze me how little I know of and about poetry, but I love discovering new poems by poets that have been and gone, but left their mark.

It began a few weeks ago when I was reading Muldoon's latest book of essays, The End of the Poem. I came across Robert Lowell, who I'd heard mentioned in the same breath as Elizabeth Bishop in college but hadn't come across his work all that much before (yep, sheltered, dumb life). I read the extracts and got out my trusty Big Book of Poems, the Norton Anthology of Poems (4th ed), which I won't say makes comfortable bedtime reading, because it's a behemoth of a book to have open on your lap.

Anyhow, I've been sticking to 20thc poets, particularly looking at US poets, like Lowell, Bishop and came across Randall Jarell last night (as well as Charles Olsen but that's for another time). Again, I've heard his name mentioned before and wanted to look at his work. Born in 1914, he was old enough to serve during WWII, in the air corps and wrote some poems about this subject. I found the selection interesting because I've never read WWII poems before: it's usually Owens, Sasson, Graves and Brooks from WWI we reach for, when we think of war, or more correctly anti-war, poetry.

Anyhow, here's a link to 'The Death of the Ballturret Gunner' It's only five lines, give it a go.

And I think Jarrell has quite a mischievous twinkle in the photo on this page too. Some poets can be quite handsome, I think :)

And the last two!

I did it - I didn't think I would, but I found lines from both the last prompt lines!

Doing this as a competitive challenge seems to have brought out the best in the poets and the poetry I have read, from Colin Will, Rob MacKenzie and Ben Wilkinson. I bet that they were only the tip of the iceberg: this has to be one of the best workshops I've ever done!

Funnily enough you'd think there'd be some repetition of motifs, and there maybe was a little bit, but each poet had enough of a separate voice and vision to make them totally distinct.

I think it really pushed me out of what or how I'd usually start a poem and I'm really looking out for the unusual or catchy saying or turn of phrase in conversations,for starting lines. Older people are great for these; they pepper their conversations with expressions that are passed down through families. I've learned a great lesson in this workshop that I intend to carry on with for the next while: there's no excuses, just write! And so to revisions...

The Trouble with the Non-Smoking Ban

Meanwhile surely there must be something to say
as his words sink gently, a stone dropped from the arc
of a bridge into murky water: I know your face, followed
by the challenging stare; leering gimlet eyes wandering
over me like a pair of clammy hands. Yes, I smile
politely, that was twenty years ago. I turn back
to the company, lighting the offered cigarette, drawing
a pull and hopefully another strand to this strange conversation.

You were a great dancer and a great kisser, he adds.
I grit my fixed grin pointing out my husband.
The eyes still pierce trying to connect intervening
years, joining dots and colouring in. Get over
it, you sad fuck, is what my eyes are really saying
now and I invite my smoking friends to find
a table indoors, out of the mizzling rain.

Hangover

Just for the sake of recovering
the kettle is pressed into service.
Dark brown coffee grounds release
their nutty, sharp scent in the plastic nest
above the mug with a swirl of oxygen
and hot water. Cane sugar dissolves
and cream flourishes its rounding swags.
Two Nurofen complete this recipe
accompanied by tasteless tobacco;
inhaled, exhaled, in a blue plume.

Catherine Ann Cullen's 'A Bone in my Throat' launch

Senator David Norris

Well, another busy night mingling with the great and good of the Irish poetry world. This launch was introduced by Noel King the editor of Doghouse Books.Noel then made way for Senator David Norris to talk about Catherine Ann's book. His compliments ranged from the actual book production, to the contents inside and made all of us hungry to hear Catherine Ann reading from her work.

Catherine Ann read a selection of varied poems from the collection, but one that really appealed to me was based on her meeting her future partner at the Chester Beatty library in Dublin, one of the city's wonderful archives. I give you her opening lines:

We have only just met
Downstairs at the Chester Beatty Library
We have not touched each other yet


Upstairs Durer's Adam and Eve are contemplating
Each other and the apple
The serpent is already waiting


This gives a great flavour of the motifs that recur in this collection. Cullen uses myths, legends and biblical beginnings as a jumping off point to explore how humanity cannot resist being tempted - as indeed Oscar Wilde once wittily put it, 'I can resist anything except tempation.

This post is a little rushed, due to all hell breaking loose here, but I intend revisiting Catherine Ann's book at a later stage. In the meantime, I am off to Kerry for a week tomorrow, so have a blog party here if you like - comfy beanbags and lots of food left in the fridge!

Doghouse Poets and Publisher, left to right: Hugh O'Donnell, Catherine Ann Cullen, Noel King, yours truly, and Anatoly Kudryavitsky.

Here's a Novelty!

Blogging Poet Laureate of the Year

Not nearly enough poets nominated, but this is the second year - so who knows how it will develop? I'm off to do the dacent thing and vote for Rob! :)

Off again...

... this time to Galway (again!) to Cuirt. Named by some as the top literary festival in Ireland (but they all say that!) the names here would make you dizzy.

Specifically I'm going to hear/see a Slam in the Kings Head, Galway and to enter negotiations with my publisher, anything else will be a bonus!

Now - that's what I call poetry!

Busy Bee

Really busy this week, or at least I'm kidding myself that I will be. I've started wallpapering my bedroom, stripped as it has been for the last three months. Although I did like the blank canvas effect for a while, it seems a lot cosier with the new wallpaper one third up already. There already was a dado rail (don't really like them but what can you do, when the previous encumbent has left them?) splitting the wall almost in two. I put a pale gold paper slightly embossed with a feathery grass repeat pattern on the top and a creamy match on the bottom. I was going to do them the other way around but thought I'd see more of the warming gold colour if I put it on the top.

Funny thing was when I got the paper up to the quarter mark, I wryly remembered The Yellow Wallpaper short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, from our Level 2 Approaching Literature course, which features a female protagonist suffering from post-natal depression, in the days when the prescribed cure was to lock you away from everything. She ends up going a bit bonkers behind the wallpaper. Read the story, it's rather good.

I remember feeling like that a few times after popping a few of mine, but I put it down to having so much to do with all the others, besides whichever baby happened to be current. Maybe my wallpaper choice is an advance-reverse reaction to that idea of the madwoman in the attic. Oh dear.

I'd better finish the room early this week, as there are some great poetry events coming up over here. On Wednesday 17th there's the Revival Launch, which I mentioned I'm attending before, but the journal launch paled into insignificance, when I realised that the Belfast Poets would be performing at the White House Poetry Revival too! These guys are worth checking out, they're not long back, last year, from a tour around Australia (the lucky buggers!). Oh joy! Noel King told me that you can never have a bad night at the White House, (pardon me Dubya) but I think it's now been lifted into the category of legendary!

And next week on the 25th, I'm off to Galway city. I've never had a bad night there! The event is the Over the Edge series of readings organised by Kevin Higgins and Susan Millar DuMars, featuring Elaine Feeney, Mary Mullen & Todd Swift. Can't pass on that one!