You read strangely wound letters in the
noble
dead silence of a deep dumb worth we
wrote
in pulsations of faith and flash'd doubts
dwelling
where each of the letters had scriven well
those
leaves that kept an alphabet mess defiantly
a tree
of unbroken branches the hidden tongue
spoke
strange in words silently: the chroi - love
vapour
defying the cry and defining our changed
bark
the cow bard whirring in a thought snare
otherworldly
words keenly sought along the track to a
source
of suggestive force you made words with
enobling
letters wound in the line all seek as one
and you read strangely
~
The day one often remembers, when from sleep
we first awoke and found ourselves reposed
under a shade of flowers, wondering if here
a distant murmuring sound of water composed
our soul-touched star reflecting on a moonlit
sea: nothing hard or rough but sweet beneath
the tranquil sky; Manannán mac Lír, foaming
horse-water deity riding his plain,
the ancient mist of mythical man, four square
his white wave hoof shod wet in sodden feet
of sand and sea grain counting many
the snow flake lit upon a shore line during
winter storms our voyage sets out to overcome,
galloping free from that we doze out through,
to the star reflecting on a moonlit sea.
~
Wet deity in a drop of meadow dew in May
our inner spring of time the grass-stone
hail-blade tramples under horses' hoof:
Manannán mac Lír, son of the seas' reflection
in tranquil lunar moonlight, the reversing
words that roar clear, rowing to a stone
the Land of Women crying for love sight,
you wash in a hundred sounds of music sung
- Manannán - beneath a foaming sky water,
horse of four hooves wave-shod, trodden
white sea of grain count and sand flake,
lined in the hoof-light: Manannán mac Lír
stir the sea like it is your blood.
~
Bring a silver apple branch from Emhain's
far island, in an ocean to the west of us
Manannán horses circle, fair Son of Lír;
delight of a plain eye host of chariot racing
on the white silver steed South beyond
Imagination, blossoming bird in tree lore
of common delight: gently spell a shining
voice, colour the cloud-music sung in tir
na og and work where we got drunk and stayed
that way: the night waking soundless
at four
soundless
at three
two
soundless
at
one
and
aquamairne orb of lunar-lit will; be Manannán mac Lír
stir
time's curtain winding left round a land
of purple leaf-lit myth
edge connecting tree light lovers unloved and empty
in te grass of heaven
laid smooth below a green bank,
look
into the clear smooth lake that seems
soul-bent sky within a shape
passing among us
and them
sometimes
wanting to speak and not speak of sidhe dreams
vanished
into their nut-reality resting in our demense
now;
speak the unspeakable
impase.
~
No keening or treachery here, eternity
the familiar tilled land of music striking
all ear without death grief sickness: sorrow
or weakness, but faith that is a sign
of Emhain's uncommon wonder, in silver wet
rain drops caressing the turtle shell,
pure ocean cliff in a warm sunrise hosting
weather-sport racing over eternal eastern
plains where the game of death and ebbing
tide do not come coloured in an overcoming
wave to crush the stór and grá in our still
well, silver blood, sometimes lighting
an army of three times fifty far off islands
beyond imagination
we sometimes
it happens
impose impossible odds on
the siege-bound hung in a carving behind
the mask of relief returning goodness
raked from hell tower hall razed counter
when walking as the well sprite your water
lacquers gold, our daemon Boann decorated
sympathetically: head obverse and swollen
strain of Neith's tale and the heads Dementer
demand we deliver in an acorn brooch
measured in patterned wetness, sometimes
blossoming under our window,
wood and hidden hill of letters all decaying
spelling
as it happens, good friend,
sometimes
when it happens
you
the friend in a friendship passed and gone
in the day spent lost among them at a holy well.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Monday, January 28, 2008
. in the nemetons of cyberville, where various Mystery rites of the very many Mysteries celebrating life, are practiced by lovers of wisdom too numerous to fully list here, the sage Pythagoras of Samos, occupies a unique position.
His intellect was exercised throughout his life and is credited for bringing ancient practical solar knowledge to greece; not only from Egypt, where he studied for 22 years, initially gaining admittance to the nemeton at Diospolis after a forty day fast; but Persia, after the king of Persia, Cambyses II, invaded Egypt in 525BC and Pythagoras, relocated to Babylon and became his prisoner.
Our ancient sage, already schooled to Ard Ollamh level in the Egyptian Mysteries, from which the theorem commonly bearing his name was first committed to print, 12-1500 years before in 2000–1786 BC, outfaced reality by effortlessly adapting into taking full advantage of his new situation and spent his 12 years in Babylon becoming adept in the Chaldean Mysteries, initiated by Magi who taught this already very learned man to refine his practice of ancient solar knowledge and become first among principles in the ancient greek canon, on which our globally-european centric culture under-thrumbs its otherworldly flame, and the axiomatic elevation of Pythagoras to a primary serious spirit of the real multi-knowledge-template disciplining the full of his mind in purring prayer to self via mathmatical route, rote and root to the most ancient of mysteries i am unable to speak of due to contractual obligations with macmillan, ian macmillan, Don Patterson's Fiona Sampson and shadow-mask for Aristotle of course.
Ay oop, its ian, the po-mo tome maestro of long winded dot to dot address and cat sat on the mat of light settled in an argument between the Pythagoras that got turned away from the Egyptian Schools for presenting his credentials of a wise vessel of flesh and blood, as an unfasted geek with a gift for being clever in the head alone and the Pythagoras after his forty day fast entry exam who had learned the first principle of poetry Amergin articulates in the Cauldron of Poesy piece:
"Where is the root of poetry in a person; in the body or in the soul?"
Prior to his entry into the ancient wisdom grove where knowledge and religion were indivisibly bound, Pythagoras thought at 20, when he first set forth to Egypt after spending his earliest intellectual awakening and training years on Samos, studying under the philosopher Pherekydes and later, immmediately prior to his arrival in the earliest home of solar knowledge which built pyramids, two years studying math and astronomy in Miletus with Thales, and his pupil Anaximander, Pythagoras was not allowed in because all neophytes into the mystery rites had to undergo a 40 day fast, which our protagonist could not see the logic of, dismissing the basis of the druidic code with a contemptuous:
"I have come for knowledge, not any sort of discipline."
At that age, that talent, he was like Milton, a clever young man, but one who had not learned the most fundamental physical lesson philosophy offers the prospective bore: and which Amergin poses and answers in such a way as to suggest he too was the keeper of an ancient mathematically based musical code, of which Pythagoras is the most well known example of in the European tradition. And Amergin responds to the rhetorical question posed by an omnipotent narrator who does not intrude and remaining outside of the piece, our anonymous authorial voice speaking for the 7C caste of filidh which had displaced, after an executive cull, the swollen druidic bunch of the 5C, when Ionian culdean Columcille from Derry, expertly handled the, then very sensitive issue which affected the whole of Fodhla.
A surfeit of pre-literate pagan holy men practicing rites we know next to nothing of, but which were based on a practical solar knowledge which gaelic culture had from it's earliest dawn. We need only look at the Palace of the Boyne, home of Dagda and later his son Ogma, who won it in a quibble, a form of words cutely concocted which weight in favour of the magician doing the diddling out of; to apprehend Newgrange passage mound in it's thoroughly bewitching majestic stone self understated grace; this artifice of rock living as it did when first built 5000 year back, before the theorem of Pythagoras had first been written on the codex by the first pyramid builders, is a sight worthy of dream proven before one's eyes.
In a bend of the Boyne a native code and ancient template for initiate adepts to concot their poetic with, raise the roof still weather proof 5000 years later with this knowledge of migrating souls in the tetra dimensional stance of morality, four square and all the combinations squared, circled light in the whole question:
What is Poetry?
And so when we ask where the seat over the root of the ancient knowledge lies, Amergin's flawless poem cryptically addresses this, by logically surmising the options and returning what is in effect, silence, as it does not answer in an either or state, but one in which a sense of the multi-communicational, the wisdom of axiomatic principles, the inner knowing sense of what befits and the well of segais really, the home within we all have and, to the inheritors of the mystic mumbo jumbo mobs we spectacularly fail to drone on like, communicating adept via a logical mathematical rail and rule whose system is but the one motif spiraling shadows above and behind the mask Pythagoras spoke of in riddles for the initiated and so after his fast, spake thus:
"You were right and I was wrong, because then my whole standpoint was intellectual. Through this purification, my center of being has changed. Before this training I could only understand through the intellect, through the head. Now I can feel. Now truth is not a concept to me, but a life.
Through Vibration comes Motion" -
Pythagoras
"They say it is in the soul, for the body does nothing without the soul." -
Amergin
"Through Motion comes Color" -
Pythagoras
Others say it is in the body where the arts are learned, passed through the bodies of our ancestors."
Through Color comes Tone" -
It is said by practicing artists, that the "seat of what remains over the root of poetry; and the good knowledge in every person's ancestry comes not into everyone, but comes into every other person."
This means only every other person will inherit the poetry gene, which is 50%. work it out..riddle me this:
is poetry work@home in verbal placements Pythagoras asked us to consider in the riddle:
"step not over a balance" - do not be greedy
A
"What then is the root of poetry and every other wisdom?"
P
PA - reversing the math, geometry axiom, the dimension we do not see now we are fully hypnotised and at mercy of the face on TV telling us what to believe, we confused asking, what is it, making form, this thing called verse - turning - in latin, referring to the turnings of a neatly ploughed field. poetry wrought in quantities of a sound poetic of four measures..Ogma, the celtic god of poetry, has its etymological root in ogmius, a farming deity whose name also lent itself to the turning of Gaulish fields, in that invisible empire, whose silence is at the heart of what Pyhthagoras tried to get across as being the one which only the studious application of one's mind to the existing templates of morality we engineer to assist in the cause of our enobling, seeking one's potential in the most directly mathmatical metrical route of measuring what it is we create with body, soul and intellect, a tripartite dimension and really, beware of going down to the woods in barnsley tonight, for your in for a big surprise, if you go dogging in s yorkshire tonight, you may encounter a bespectacled bard making crazee guy progs man, of ian dogging for the verb..
His intellect was exercised throughout his life and is credited for bringing ancient practical solar knowledge to greece; not only from Egypt, where he studied for 22 years, initially gaining admittance to the nemeton at Diospolis after a forty day fast; but Persia, after the king of Persia, Cambyses II, invaded Egypt in 525BC and Pythagoras, relocated to Babylon and became his prisoner.
Our ancient sage, already schooled to Ard Ollamh level in the Egyptian Mysteries, from which the theorem commonly bearing his name was first committed to print, 12-1500 years before in 2000–1786 BC, outfaced reality by effortlessly adapting into taking full advantage of his new situation and spent his 12 years in Babylon becoming adept in the Chaldean Mysteries, initiated by Magi who taught this already very learned man to refine his practice of ancient solar knowledge and become first among principles in the ancient greek canon, on which our globally-european centric culture under-thrumbs its otherworldly flame, and the axiomatic elevation of Pythagoras to a primary serious spirit of the real multi-knowledge-template disciplining the full of his mind in purring prayer to self via mathmatical route, rote and root to the most ancient of mysteries i am unable to speak of due to contractual obligations with macmillan, ian macmillan, Don Patterson's Fiona Sampson and shadow-mask for Aristotle of course.
Ay oop, its ian, the po-mo tome maestro of long winded dot to dot address and cat sat on the mat of light settled in an argument between the Pythagoras that got turned away from the Egyptian Schools for presenting his credentials of a wise vessel of flesh and blood, as an unfasted geek with a gift for being clever in the head alone and the Pythagoras after his forty day fast entry exam who had learned the first principle of poetry Amergin articulates in the Cauldron of Poesy piece:
"Where is the root of poetry in a person; in the body or in the soul?"
Prior to his entry into the ancient wisdom grove where knowledge and religion were indivisibly bound, Pythagoras thought at 20, when he first set forth to Egypt after spending his earliest intellectual awakening and training years on Samos, studying under the philosopher Pherekydes and later, immmediately prior to his arrival in the earliest home of solar knowledge which built pyramids, two years studying math and astronomy in Miletus with Thales, and his pupil Anaximander, Pythagoras was not allowed in because all neophytes into the mystery rites had to undergo a 40 day fast, which our protagonist could not see the logic of, dismissing the basis of the druidic code with a contemptuous:
"I have come for knowledge, not any sort of discipline."
At that age, that talent, he was like Milton, a clever young man, but one who had not learned the most fundamental physical lesson philosophy offers the prospective bore: and which Amergin poses and answers in such a way as to suggest he too was the keeper of an ancient mathematically based musical code, of which Pythagoras is the most well known example of in the European tradition. And Amergin responds to the rhetorical question posed by an omnipotent narrator who does not intrude and remaining outside of the piece, our anonymous authorial voice speaking for the 7C caste of filidh which had displaced, after an executive cull, the swollen druidic bunch of the 5C, when Ionian culdean Columcille from Derry, expertly handled the, then very sensitive issue which affected the whole of Fodhla.
A surfeit of pre-literate pagan holy men practicing rites we know next to nothing of, but which were based on a practical solar knowledge which gaelic culture had from it's earliest dawn. We need only look at the Palace of the Boyne, home of Dagda and later his son Ogma, who won it in a quibble, a form of words cutely concocted which weight in favour of the magician doing the diddling out of; to apprehend Newgrange passage mound in it's thoroughly bewitching majestic stone self understated grace; this artifice of rock living as it did when first built 5000 year back, before the theorem of Pythagoras had first been written on the codex by the first pyramid builders, is a sight worthy of dream proven before one's eyes.
In a bend of the Boyne a native code and ancient template for initiate adepts to concot their poetic with, raise the roof still weather proof 5000 years later with this knowledge of migrating souls in the tetra dimensional stance of morality, four square and all the combinations squared, circled light in the whole question:
What is Poetry?
And so when we ask where the seat over the root of the ancient knowledge lies, Amergin's flawless poem cryptically addresses this, by logically surmising the options and returning what is in effect, silence, as it does not answer in an either or state, but one in which a sense of the multi-communicational, the wisdom of axiomatic principles, the inner knowing sense of what befits and the well of segais really, the home within we all have and, to the inheritors of the mystic mumbo jumbo mobs we spectacularly fail to drone on like, communicating adept via a logical mathematical rail and rule whose system is but the one motif spiraling shadows above and behind the mask Pythagoras spoke of in riddles for the initiated and so after his fast, spake thus:
"You were right and I was wrong, because then my whole standpoint was intellectual. Through this purification, my center of being has changed. Before this training I could only understand through the intellect, through the head. Now I can feel. Now truth is not a concept to me, but a life.
Through Vibration comes Motion" -
Pythagoras
"They say it is in the soul, for the body does nothing without the soul." -
Amergin
"Through Motion comes Color" -
Pythagoras
Others say it is in the body where the arts are learned, passed through the bodies of our ancestors."
Through Color comes Tone" -
It is said by practicing artists, that the "seat of what remains over the root of poetry; and the good knowledge in every person's ancestry comes not into everyone, but comes into every other person."
This means only every other person will inherit the poetry gene, which is 50%. work it out..riddle me this:
is poetry work@home in verbal placements Pythagoras asked us to consider in the riddle:
"step not over a balance" - do not be greedy
A
"What then is the root of poetry and every other wisdom?"
P
PA - reversing the math, geometry axiom, the dimension we do not see now we are fully hypnotised and at mercy of the face on TV telling us what to believe, we confused asking, what is it, making form, this thing called verse - turning - in latin, referring to the turnings of a neatly ploughed field. poetry wrought in quantities of a sound poetic of four measures..Ogma, the celtic god of poetry, has its etymological root in ogmius, a farming deity whose name also lent itself to the turning of Gaulish fields, in that invisible empire, whose silence is at the heart of what Pyhthagoras tried to get across as being the one which only the studious application of one's mind to the existing templates of morality we engineer to assist in the cause of our enobling, seeking one's potential in the most directly mathmatical metrical route of measuring what it is we create with body, soul and intellect, a tripartite dimension and really, beware of going down to the woods in barnsley tonight, for your in for a big surprise, if you go dogging in s yorkshire tonight, you may encounter a bespectacled bard making crazee guy progs man, of ian dogging for the verb..
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
A O U E I
The original alphabet, which Graves concocts his ultimately highly flawed sprawling White Goddess tome with; is called Ogam.
It is named after the Tuatha De Dannan (people of the goddess Danu) god Ogma, son of Dagda, the chief deity of this mythological race, who were the sixth and penultimate race of supernatural beings to "take" the island as documented in the Lebor Gabála Érenn - The Book of the Takings of Ireland.
These were only in possession of the island for 300 years or so, before the final takers, the Milesians, who the founding bardic poet, Amergin, was the druid of, came and took it from them and banished the Tuatha De Dannan to beneath the hills and into the Sidhe mounds (phonetic 'shee'), where they became the sidhe or faeries of folklore.
This is an alphabet of originally 20 and later, post 8C twenty five letters, unique to Brythonic (now welsh) and Gaelic culture.
The alphabet was divided into four families or aicmes, of five letters, and each aicme took the name of it's first letter, and all the letters related to various trees. This is why it is called the tree alphabet. Ireland at the time of its invention was covered in trees. The sequence of this alphabet is:
B L F S N - H D T C Q - M G Ng Z R - A O U E I
You will notice that this is not in the roman order, and by analysing the arrangement we can discover the mathmatical formula the druids came up with to create ogam.
If we lay out the letters in their roman order we get 18 and the sounds V, pronounced as an F and Ng, were then tacked onto the end, so:
A B C D E G H I L M N O Q R S T U Z F Ng
What they did was separate out the vowels and group them into broad and slender, in the order:
A O U E I - this is the fourth and final sequence in the ogam alphabet and is called Aicme Ailme (original meaning of ailme unknown).
We then take out the early Irish names for the numerals one to five: H (huath) D (da) T (tri) C (cethair) Q (quic)
H D T C Q - this is the second family called: Aicme hÚatha (original meaning unknown)
This leaves us ten letters:
B G L M N R S Z F Ng
From this group we take every second letter, beginning with the B, giving us:
B L N S F - the first family: aicme beith/birch
The five letters left: G M R Z Ng, are then re-ordered, beginning with M, the letter in the middle at position 10 in the original group of twenty, and create the sequence working backwards.
This gives us the third family, aicme Muin (neck):
M G NG Z R
~
The three consonantal aicme/sets of letters, are then arranged in alphabetical order, the first letter in each group dictating where the aicme is placed, so aicme beith B goes first, then aicme hÚatha H, second, aicme muin M third and the vowels to end it. Thus giving the final order
B L N S F - H D T C Q - M G NG Z R - A O U E I
This cryptographic process seems perfectly in keeping with the Bardic love of mystery and concealment.
~
Each letter in the four aicme, has three kennings associated with them, preserved in three Bríatharogaim (word-ogam) lists, dating to the Old Irish period 5-7C, which can be viewed here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Br%C3%ADatharogam
It is named after the Tuatha De Dannan (people of the goddess Danu) god Ogma, son of Dagda, the chief deity of this mythological race, who were the sixth and penultimate race of supernatural beings to "take" the island as documented in the Lebor Gabála Érenn - The Book of the Takings of Ireland.
These were only in possession of the island for 300 years or so, before the final takers, the Milesians, who the founding bardic poet, Amergin, was the druid of, came and took it from them and banished the Tuatha De Dannan to beneath the hills and into the Sidhe mounds (phonetic 'shee'), where they became the sidhe or faeries of folklore.
This is an alphabet of originally 20 and later, post 8C twenty five letters, unique to Brythonic (now welsh) and Gaelic culture.
The alphabet was divided into four families or aicmes, of five letters, and each aicme took the name of it's first letter, and all the letters related to various trees. This is why it is called the tree alphabet. Ireland at the time of its invention was covered in trees. The sequence of this alphabet is:
B L F S N - H D T C Q - M G Ng Z R - A O U E I
You will notice that this is not in the roman order, and by analysing the arrangement we can discover the mathmatical formula the druids came up with to create ogam.
If we lay out the letters in their roman order we get 18 and the sounds V, pronounced as an F and Ng, were then tacked onto the end, so:
A B C D E G H I L M N O Q R S T U Z F Ng
What they did was separate out the vowels and group them into broad and slender, in the order:
A O U E I - this is the fourth and final sequence in the ogam alphabet and is called Aicme Ailme (original meaning of ailme unknown).
We then take out the early Irish names for the numerals one to five: H (huath) D (da) T (tri) C (cethair) Q (quic)
H D T C Q - this is the second family called: Aicme hÚatha (original meaning unknown)
This leaves us ten letters:
B G L M N R S Z F Ng
From this group we take every second letter, beginning with the B, giving us:
B L N S F - the first family: aicme beith/birch
The five letters left: G M R Z Ng, are then re-ordered, beginning with M, the letter in the middle at position 10 in the original group of twenty, and create the sequence working backwards.
This gives us the third family, aicme Muin (neck):
M G NG Z R
~
The three consonantal aicme/sets of letters, are then arranged in alphabetical order, the first letter in each group dictating where the aicme is placed, so aicme beith B goes first, then aicme hÚatha H, second, aicme muin M third and the vowels to end it. Thus giving the final order
B L N S F - H D T C Q - M G NG Z R - A O U E I
This cryptographic process seems perfectly in keeping with the Bardic love of mystery and concealment.
~
Each letter in the four aicme, has three kennings associated with them, preserved in three Bríatharogaim (word-ogam) lists, dating to the Old Irish period 5-7C, which can be viewed here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Br%C3%ADatharogam
Friday, January 04, 2008
goD
Parisa is a blog buddy whose enthusiasm for the Mossbawn magus, seamus Heaney, i share as he is simply the best around, in person and print. At any time there is usually one about the place setting the tempo, and he who needs no introduction or naming - nameless sidhe of Kavanagh and yeats - one who lives it as, i think is fair to suggest, the one most likely to garner the appellation of contemporary Bard from across the board away from his Home here.
However on home turf, many will not concur with what others elsewhere accept unquestioningly; that this man alone is bog-touched by Ogma and Erc, Amergin and the unknown homeric work, the Eternal:
"unity of being"
an anonymous concept yeats dreamed up in the socio-psychic blueprint he wrote for himself as point and guider, universal coda invoking craic with noght but his Imagination. Like Hopkins did with the "inscape" system; much less well known, though just as relevant a Poetic, to him as in an audience the size of Yeats; heaney a class act who broke the mould, and in my opinion, set it straighter than ever it was before. For the first time we had an educated "native" irish voice in the collective bog-sense yeats could never share as heaney does, nor elucidate; because it is that of a class yeats went on about in his own personal mumbo-jumbo to self, the "peasant".
Heaney is the rarest and first of breeds, the real thing, poet teacher sourced in the one incontrovertible source of a pure strain in the native appearance. Heaney's face itself the contributing guarantee of his poetic pass to a singular celtic world yeats was never part of; being the fruit of planter stock who only had a few generations to invent himself with. Heaney, you can tell by the look of him, his people have been on this island far longer than the souls who contributed to silly willy's mob of aristocracy counterpointing the Dream ireland Heaney's immesne gift equals and, imho, surpasses, certainly in the critical prose i found/find practical help with, as colleague of he who needs no naming. Mr famous points out in his essay on Yeats, first "native" english writing bard who reconnected in the modern era and wrote, for the first time, an English language poetry which set out a stall so exotic and strange to, what until then had been the native English speaking palette; back then, in the crossover of centuries of era, time whose tableaux of spirits sing, included Ez Pound, who sought Bill out with a pathological fervor bordering on the tedius, perfectly poetic and True to ez in 1912 when he and Will fenced in Stone Cottage oxford, and ez was amanuensis after acknowledging WB the real Butler being not quite the God some think as know not Silly willy as well as maude gonne did, and who all the rest of the craking gang back then when everyone was at it, being mystic.
As one career sazzy carol rumens sagely informs us, our classical learning worlds of poetic outcome are a billion zillion light years distant from what the kids jangle on in pm and text today and attemot not to pass as the contemporary Poetic; particularly in the potential future star of all things Prophetic in words maybe, i dunno, but i do suppose what it is, is that he who shall remain nameless, is the first native poet who beat the Bloomsbury bores at their own game on his terms and proves himself right as he writes earning a rhyme tu-whitt tu-wooing in the woods searching for clues to who he is armed only with a pen and scholarly scrupulousness practiced since he began as the eldest of nine from Mossbawn farm, Castledawson, Anahorish and borders in tongues of order and governance so finely nuanced only the full erudition an innate poet transliterates in Form, style and all sorts of important self-made rules of engagement with this mystic Art some purport to practice, with varying degrees of success and I imagine at first when he who shall remain nameless in the Group kicked it all off with Longley, Mahon and co up the North, first shairng their Dream in an expert metricist mob of young academic Irishmen, aided by perhaps one of the finest technical critters, Philip Hobsbaum; whose prose proves he knows his feet i think; and his protege's prose, when i first read it, is unsurpassed by any other critical voice his peers have practiced writing in.
He is at number one in prose, poetry and person. There can be only one and it is him, on top with the full four cycles memorised i bet, washing through the troubles he found his way of speaking through in tounges of order governing his notion of selfhood as that younger man, the first "native" one whose Unity of Being yeats banged on about but failed to articulate in print in the way heaney so effortlessly achieves. Heaney's Dream has risen as far and lit as bright Yeats, and with much less shiny song and dance of "moi" than Yeats goes in for.
Yeats always wanted and got it all and heaney too perhaps, but in connection to a Dream they shared as the two poets - one born only months after the other left in bleakest winter on the cusp of war he predicted perhaps as the crawling beast of diabolical abode - with Kavanagh in the trinity just on his way into a Palace Bar and the few disastrously short sojourns, not only to his second home of Fleet Street in Dublin where the Palace Bar still dominates for all writers in Dublin practicing today who are serious about Poetry; but also as contender in one across the water in London, whose mystic spirit yeats will was bark and bole with AE; back in the day they were doing 24 hour a day visionary things; AE - Yeats's personal mystic, Kavanagh a long lean middle path, had to wait for the bay sweater, till the Bell recognition of his greatness came close to a posthumous conferral of a shadowy laurel appellation Kanavanagh at least crowned himself with, and many others i suspect - if not all or most at least perhaps, have in their mind's eye as the sheer live act of pure poetic class barrier one erects, be it bardic or not, sufi or less cerebral.
Heaney tells an interesting tale in his immediate post Nobel period, on a TV show in America; to an efficient male honoring yer man as the undisputed king of Poetry almost, certainly he was riding at the highest point and effectively got the Bay Crown, and in reply to a question asked of him, about when did he start thinking of himself as a poet; he said this event happened as he enrolled his son at primary school in wicklow, when he was knocking forty, and where he had gone to write verse that was having a go at doing its own bog-won thing away from his county omphalos, Derry forst and last, in a republic, as the woodkern thinking of what term to instruct a headmaster filling his sons details in register.
What appellation his own Self used in relation to his person as both thinker and flesh, and mr heaney was thinking along the lines of stating he was a writer or college professor, but the man recording the event put fili (which in English translates as "poet") without asking him what he did for a do; and from that moment on Heaney decided he'd been bestowed an appellation only colleagues have the power to collectively confer on one, and thus is a reason Heaney is the name most non pro's know and agree on as the constant one real thing; poet, because he is the real thing, Sweeney astray inhabiting a myth of his own mind first and last, proving it in the decades spent being himself as a reputation of number one; in at the top and good grew up around him as he worked in verse here and there, when insanity surrounded his peers of the Imagination, he held firm and spoke fair in a body and collection of verse which brought the Dream and unity of being closer to the silence and stay apart one killer barb from mandy motion delivers - not - in a green passport and non-toast to M's chimera of Queen fictional others used in their effort to co-opt him in to the status quo of Great british nomenclature back then, topic of chat in deepest seventies UK lore, as he toiled here feeling the ace none ask to see, as the truth just is, that he is ace itself, his person and Mind in physical event, life written by none but the eldest of nine children two ordinary country people from Derry birthed, who got by on learning as the first of a wave or generation who were afforded the prize of education.
I myself understand this need to be the first with a real chance, where others do not deny one's basic right to belong to an Irish state of mind and not some cod con neo stazi attempt of the non thinking britz who say we cannot be ourselves, You are the mirage alive in Britain, ireland mate..you wha? do as we the State alone instructs one to tell or one will not be included in our mob of headhunting magi looking for the real Irish poets and the gang. So what of it? Yes, certainly there are many excellent poets here who work well when left alone to: "transform into sow, mare, bitch, vixen, she-ass, weasel, serpent, owl, she-wolf, tigress, mermaid, or loathsome hag" as we are told by david the Phoenician expert who is a phonetic mist itself to be fair to another blog pal, , here on the rock of C theories and connections made, thank you very much..
However on home turf, many will not concur with what others elsewhere accept unquestioningly; that this man alone is bog-touched by Ogma and Erc, Amergin and the unknown homeric work, the Eternal:
"unity of being"
an anonymous concept yeats dreamed up in the socio-psychic blueprint he wrote for himself as point and guider, universal coda invoking craic with noght but his Imagination. Like Hopkins did with the "inscape" system; much less well known, though just as relevant a Poetic, to him as in an audience the size of Yeats; heaney a class act who broke the mould, and in my opinion, set it straighter than ever it was before. For the first time we had an educated "native" irish voice in the collective bog-sense yeats could never share as heaney does, nor elucidate; because it is that of a class yeats went on about in his own personal mumbo-jumbo to self, the "peasant".
Heaney is the rarest and first of breeds, the real thing, poet teacher sourced in the one incontrovertible source of a pure strain in the native appearance. Heaney's face itself the contributing guarantee of his poetic pass to a singular celtic world yeats was never part of; being the fruit of planter stock who only had a few generations to invent himself with. Heaney, you can tell by the look of him, his people have been on this island far longer than the souls who contributed to silly willy's mob of aristocracy counterpointing the Dream ireland Heaney's immesne gift equals and, imho, surpasses, certainly in the critical prose i found/find practical help with, as colleague of he who needs no naming. Mr famous points out in his essay on Yeats, first "native" english writing bard who reconnected in the modern era and wrote, for the first time, an English language poetry which set out a stall so exotic and strange to, what until then had been the native English speaking palette; back then, in the crossover of centuries of era, time whose tableaux of spirits sing, included Ez Pound, who sought Bill out with a pathological fervor bordering on the tedius, perfectly poetic and True to ez in 1912 when he and Will fenced in Stone Cottage oxford, and ez was amanuensis after acknowledging WB the real Butler being not quite the God some think as know not Silly willy as well as maude gonne did, and who all the rest of the craking gang back then when everyone was at it, being mystic.
As one career sazzy carol rumens sagely informs us, our classical learning worlds of poetic outcome are a billion zillion light years distant from what the kids jangle on in pm and text today and attemot not to pass as the contemporary Poetic; particularly in the potential future star of all things Prophetic in words maybe, i dunno, but i do suppose what it is, is that he who shall remain nameless, is the first native poet who beat the Bloomsbury bores at their own game on his terms and proves himself right as he writes earning a rhyme tu-whitt tu-wooing in the woods searching for clues to who he is armed only with a pen and scholarly scrupulousness practiced since he began as the eldest of nine from Mossbawn farm, Castledawson, Anahorish and borders in tongues of order and governance so finely nuanced only the full erudition an innate poet transliterates in Form, style and all sorts of important self-made rules of engagement with this mystic Art some purport to practice, with varying degrees of success and I imagine at first when he who shall remain nameless in the Group kicked it all off with Longley, Mahon and co up the North, first shairng their Dream in an expert metricist mob of young academic Irishmen, aided by perhaps one of the finest technical critters, Philip Hobsbaum; whose prose proves he knows his feet i think; and his protege's prose, when i first read it, is unsurpassed by any other critical voice his peers have practiced writing in.
He is at number one in prose, poetry and person. There can be only one and it is him, on top with the full four cycles memorised i bet, washing through the troubles he found his way of speaking through in tounges of order governing his notion of selfhood as that younger man, the first "native" one whose Unity of Being yeats banged on about but failed to articulate in print in the way heaney so effortlessly achieves. Heaney's Dream has risen as far and lit as bright Yeats, and with much less shiny song and dance of "moi" than Yeats goes in for.
Yeats always wanted and got it all and heaney too perhaps, but in connection to a Dream they shared as the two poets - one born only months after the other left in bleakest winter on the cusp of war he predicted perhaps as the crawling beast of diabolical abode - with Kavanagh in the trinity just on his way into a Palace Bar and the few disastrously short sojourns, not only to his second home of Fleet Street in Dublin where the Palace Bar still dominates for all writers in Dublin practicing today who are serious about Poetry; but also as contender in one across the water in London, whose mystic spirit yeats will was bark and bole with AE; back in the day they were doing 24 hour a day visionary things; AE - Yeats's personal mystic, Kavanagh a long lean middle path, had to wait for the bay sweater, till the Bell recognition of his greatness came close to a posthumous conferral of a shadowy laurel appellation Kanavanagh at least crowned himself with, and many others i suspect - if not all or most at least perhaps, have in their mind's eye as the sheer live act of pure poetic class barrier one erects, be it bardic or not, sufi or less cerebral.
Heaney tells an interesting tale in his immediate post Nobel period, on a TV show in America; to an efficient male honoring yer man as the undisputed king of Poetry almost, certainly he was riding at the highest point and effectively got the Bay Crown, and in reply to a question asked of him, about when did he start thinking of himself as a poet; he said this event happened as he enrolled his son at primary school in wicklow, when he was knocking forty, and where he had gone to write verse that was having a go at doing its own bog-won thing away from his county omphalos, Derry forst and last, in a republic, as the woodkern thinking of what term to instruct a headmaster filling his sons details in register.
What appellation his own Self used in relation to his person as both thinker and flesh, and mr heaney was thinking along the lines of stating he was a writer or college professor, but the man recording the event put fili (which in English translates as "poet") without asking him what he did for a do; and from that moment on Heaney decided he'd been bestowed an appellation only colleagues have the power to collectively confer on one, and thus is a reason Heaney is the name most non pro's know and agree on as the constant one real thing; poet, because he is the real thing, Sweeney astray inhabiting a myth of his own mind first and last, proving it in the decades spent being himself as a reputation of number one; in at the top and good grew up around him as he worked in verse here and there, when insanity surrounded his peers of the Imagination, he held firm and spoke fair in a body and collection of verse which brought the Dream and unity of being closer to the silence and stay apart one killer barb from mandy motion delivers - not - in a green passport and non-toast to M's chimera of Queen fictional others used in their effort to co-opt him in to the status quo of Great british nomenclature back then, topic of chat in deepest seventies UK lore, as he toiled here feeling the ace none ask to see, as the truth just is, that he is ace itself, his person and Mind in physical event, life written by none but the eldest of nine children two ordinary country people from Derry birthed, who got by on learning as the first of a wave or generation who were afforded the prize of education.
I myself understand this need to be the first with a real chance, where others do not deny one's basic right to belong to an Irish state of mind and not some cod con neo stazi attempt of the non thinking britz who say we cannot be ourselves, You are the mirage alive in Britain, ireland mate..you wha? do as we the State alone instructs one to tell or one will not be included in our mob of headhunting magi looking for the real Irish poets and the gang. So what of it? Yes, certainly there are many excellent poets here who work well when left alone to: "transform into sow, mare, bitch, vixen, she-ass, weasel, serpent, owl, she-wolf, tigress, mermaid, or loathsome hag" as we are told by david the Phoenician expert who is a phonetic mist itself to be fair to another blog pal, , here on the rock of C theories and connections made, thank you very much..
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