Monday, June 30, 2008

Wendy Howe

Presence

A string of dust drops
from the corner of the ceiling
in to the small room below ---

first still, then stirred softly
into motion
by a woman's breath.

Her respiration is warm
thickening with sorrow
while the white thread glistens.

Floss untwisted from the fine tatting
of a spider's craft,
it swings back and forth
widening the square pocket of air...

Wendy Howe

~

I began this as an extemporised riff as a result of responding to *how did the Susan Howe day go?* inquiry by Geraldine Monk on the British Irish poets list, and got

"the day began with an address by s/he to the many gender neutral minds,constructed with thought alone, there to direct their celebratory and affirmational force, toward the work of this wonderfully well known guild member, who lets face it, when the sheep and goats get sorted in latter times by the children of our childrens childrens children in the next century..."

and it struck me to speak of a far less known, yet equally worthy poet who also shares Susan Howe's surname:

Wendy Howe.

Wendy Howe is a NY state english teacher and computer teacher who i first came across around the time i discovered GM's work, and impressed me equally. There was a site with about 60 or so poems of hers there (though i think she has since removed it) and i spent two days reading them, feeling i had found a true trove of classy verbal gear, and what struck me was the simple lyric Horacean construction.


I wrote to her she told me she had been writing since she was 15, so -- 30 yrs at it -- and far ahead of my eye in experience.

What clinched it critically, that this was poetry of a proof in the top 10 percent of contemporary practitioners, was that the site of these poems, wasa bit like the old BBC Get Writing one, and as each poem was added, timed and dated (the sixty were posted over three or four yrs i think) it drew what were cleartly sincere comments from ppl who were not poets and just simple appreciators of this deft evocative lyric voice.

We had a brief exchange of e mails over a few weeks and she sent me her six point Poetic outlining how she approaches the art of writing verse..

~

Though Elizabeth's Bishop and Dickenson, are seperated by two or three poetgenerations (D dying 25 yrs before B was born in 1911), these are the two the mind yokes into an Image underlining a metaphor of two career trajectories: one (Bishop) conducted at the time with lots of chatter, interest, awards and wide recognition, such as Howe, Susan has...whilst Wendy Howe, is the emily dickinson parallel, and below is her six point composition poetic..


~


*Thank you so much for the time and consideration you
have invested in reading and contemplating my poetry.

I was very touched by the beautiful poem you write
about my verse on your Blog site. What lovely words
and imagery.

And I am most grateful for you bringing
my work to the attention of others, especially other
blog sites and some editors. I am a very modest person
who feels that my poetry has substantial, artistic
merit; Yet, I am always striving to perfect and hone
my skills. It's an on-going process and my poetry
(writing styles, voice, technique) evolves as I evolve
intellectually and spiritually.

....your courage in journeying to Ireland to become a full time poet: I
think takes a lot of determination and love of the craft, itself.

Ireland is a place that inspires and fosters poets and their work. I think
it draws people to its artistic and scenic climate because of the
myth, the song, and the struggle that has defined the history of Ireland.
Perhaps, that's why poets may be able to thrive in Dublin and receive the
audience, respect and recognition they deserve.*

(obviously wendy doesn't practice in the warm pool of crocodiles, as JP Dunleavy
terms it here)

*You asked me about technique or a method of sanity to
my writing. I have been composing poetry for over 27
years. Presently, I am 42. I started writing verse in
my early adolescence. At that point, it was all about
me and my struggle to understand life and my place in
the universe. However, as I aged and became a
teacher and mature poet, I developed some values that
have always guided my work and defined its thematic
essence.

(1) I always write with the reader or the observer in
mind. I try to make my images, my allusions and my
messages accessible to people's sense of familiarity.
In other words, I strive to employ words, metaphors
and ideas that people have experienced or encountered
in everyday life. For example, I would not use
references to tv shows, personalities, brand names
that are typically American and only understood by an
American audience. I want to be understood by all readers.

(2) I try never to weigh down my sentences with
multisyllabic words. I simplify my verse and use the
smaller words. Also, I avoid placing too many modifiers
in front of my nouns. Too many adjectives clutter the idea,
take away from the clean lines of the poetic symmetry.

(3) I always wait for inspiration to come to me
randomly. A poem (for me) must happen spontaneously
or it sounds too contrived. I go through periods of writer's
block because of this concept but it's worth waiting
for a good idea to come in the end.

(4) Sometimes, a glimpse of nature, a scrap of conversation
with a friend, a headline in the newspaper or reading
another line from a poem, sparks an idea, an image.

I always write these quick flashes of inspiration down
in a notebook. They can be developed into poems sometime
in the future.

(5) I am not afraid to leave a poem unfinished.
Sometimes I will start a poem and struggle with it for
days. At this point, I leave it and come back when I
feel I am equipped to complete it. And by length of
abandonment, I mean anywhere from a week to even a
year. There are three poems I have left up in the air
for a year each and then returned in another year to
complete them. Some people say how can this be done
when the writer loses her continuity of thought or
original intent over a prolonged absence from the text.
I feel the poet can bring new perspective and insight
especially if he or she has been away from the
troublesome verse for awhile. A break always gives
the mind a chance to rest and re-invests its frame of
reference with new energy and stimuli. Those traits
can help to re-shape a half-finished poem and perhaps,
lead it in a stronger direction.

(6) Always trust your gut instincts and imagination. I
have learned to be myself and trust what sounds right
to me. After all who knows my own self or thought
process better than I do.

I am sorry if this sounds too didactic but I tend to
define my methods in list form. And yet, I must say
have no perfect or set formula for writing a poem. I
mostly follow an idea and develop it into a storyline
or an observation.

I always try to keep my details and images unified. If I start with sea
imagery, I stay within that context. If I use a bird, fire or water as my
main source of meaning, my images and actions feed of that idea. I also
love history and often find creative inspiration in the situations and
challenges of people who faced great adversity or achieved something of
worth in the past. It's hard to define how I write but I work at it with
perseverance and imaginative diversity.

Below are two links that describe my poetic working habits better. The first
is an in...

----

Well, for now I have rambled on far too long. Again,
Kevin, thank you so much for all your enthusiasm and
kindness. I deeply appreciate it. I hope I have
answered your question about my writing habits to a
satisfactory degree. You know it's difficult for
writers, artists or even musicians I think to define
their own work and the impact it has. At least, it's
difficult for me and I probably should not speak for
anyone else.

I do have to run but hope this has helped you
understand my technique as a writer and my approach to
poetry. And I agree, Baraka is stunning. His work is
intense and powerful. I came across him in graduate
school and found his work riveting and unique. I
enjoyed reading that link to the interview. Thanks for
sharing it.

Best regards

Wendy

~

this is a link to two of her poems

a mice slate ard ri: literary dogging and BB

Hacks being appalled at the Taste their rivals display, was de rigeur online last week, and guardian books bloke editor...brave chief literary dogger Claire Armistead, a deluded mother of two, gave a heartfelt plea and plammy dressing down to all the anonymous ppl who say appalling things, trying to convince this misty fictional bunch paranoia creates, to change their ways, and stop saying stuff they

...know in their heart of hearts they shouldn't"


her neo communist convictions and brave handling of a persecution complex, affiliating in plastic tenors with -- what used to be called -- the working Class: and this is the dizzy moo'er and intellectual demonstrating her tragically genuine proofs of not being the brightest; not like yah..like if

"you're a number on a Home Office deportation list it isn't. Not if you're waiting to be allocated a council house." like me yah, or rather, my cleaner who i am basing my next volume of poems around, speaking, if not her voice, using the experience of being privileged enough to have Magztanyah working for me...and when i say working, that makes it sound as if i am a typical lower to mid middle Class, status, pecking order, rep, slot and Honour, award, prize, Judge obsessed grader of others not *we* Royal wannabes more than creative writer, and mother expectant of bauble, cbe, and oh, not having any real exciting mental activity going on in my own head, go for the second hand approach, of speaking up on behalf of the oppressed people, for you my Public audience.


Before i started working on the blokes bog, in sacred pooh HQ, for the GU lagtic federation of untalented fabstazi broods of foaming vixens, who speak up on behalf of they who need humanitarian and civilising verbal assistance in order to make me feel good about myself -- in the absence of real Intellectual fireworks and any long term Poetic critical construction, framework on, from and within which a writer can pontificate, appalled at the Taste of others...


...recently Armistead revealed she targeted an anonymous writer who contributed to an in house (failed) publication on the hell of being a mum to teenagers, by checking what info she had against maps of and narrowing down the mother of nightmare teens the Guardian love to fpcus on so the leader writers can strike the fuax marxist pose in print, detach for a day of ranting the world to rights...and the literary editor armistead, set about trying to physically locate her, wanting only to speak to this total stranger (who it turned out had made up her diary, sensationalised her account) face to face...which in another context, fellow doggers at the lamp post, can contextualise, as stalking -- appallingly tacky and seemingly ignorant of all irony her Taste displays --- and with no fundamental grasp of reality, this trash lit bore's never gonna staple on...i fear.


Read yah, her type of finkin, their commentator's truth, adepts in a Higher intellectual Artistic stazi of disgruntled rich idlers,

"..you know, it is all very well and good ranting, on what one perceives as injustices -- in the case of this lightweight thinker's immensely convoluted metaphors reliant on ephemeral knowledge of fleeting pointless fellow colleague-ranters' names, pointless fellow shoe ins on the bb, from common room to idle dogging on the blogg, as part of a brave new deluded class of pretend Intellectuals, who are only truly interesting, when not competing in the good aul jolly dogging.



Shirley Dent, Toynbee, Fiona Looney, Carol Malone, Anne Robinson, Hell Clinton, all Woman i do not need to read to know, are overpaid gobs spouting negative bollix, and after yrs of daily practice telling their silent void what is good for it, the polly Public which exists in one hack head alone, and prior to the net, not a voice of reason, but a singular human being, with an opinion on everything, often vicious, like the two H's younger and elder, both horrid, whingey gits, what do they do? are they fortune tellers, what's their track record as a prophet?



Public, thats Us ppl, each Unique and the gift of the net, one can learn in a way unique and in which one need not sacrifice the s/he principle, that We are all single Minds, alone and it is Hope which leads to optimism, which leads to confidence, which leads to belief, freedom democracy, all the Good civilisation...


...but ranting away as this, is a self fulfilling prophecy. If a writer only ever moans in print, after a few yrs, well, peter hitch, any number of vicious vixens, the Malones, the horrid totally bad natured cackler in the irish (yah) daily Mail whose mugshot alone tells us she revels in being a vicious, trully disgruntled professional Mum, dogging trash lit Opinion, bunches of ppl who all have good jobs that pay very well and take expensive jaunts, travel around the place in nice motors, and moan about everything in their life..


i live in a bedsit and am very very happy, on state bens, and i do not moan with the bile and bitterness these broomstick users hagging in print do...it's dead easy, write unhappy, stay unhappy, write happy, get happier until you are so far above the whiner/s one can but dance in comedic light and Human warmth, the quality s/he can aim for, as equal as s/he can go for the absence of it, fifty fifty, our Will controls what appears in print and if it is always about how Bad the world is coz some middle aged looks obsessed dreary Woman as professional construct


s/he trapped in female flesh, rants how some millionaire younger rival in the physical appearance dept, should be gassed and tortured for setting the wrong example to the bitter old bags parish of *young* ppl, as if s/he the Looney, Fiona doing all but showing her nickers and stripping off in rage, is the worlds foremost expert on everything from celebrity shopping and regular first class travel and holidaying advice, to going totally green in that particular kind of hack way, which says, do as i say, not as i do, as i am more humanly Important than ooh yah you, graded intellectually by an overpaid droning blokey pro career Woman in psychic drag...

utter trolls,

gra agus Pax dans siochainn

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Hell Joan DNA

Blood and the Moon

---

Blessed be this place,
More blessed still this tower;
A bloody, arrogant power

Rose out of the race
Uttering, mastering it,
Rose like these walls from these

Storm-beaten cottages --

In mockery I have set
A powerful emblem up,
And sing it rhyme upon rhyme

In mockery of a time
Half dead at the top.

~

This is the opening part I of VI in the fifth poem of a 1933 volume: The Winding Stair and Other Poems, by the daddy of the lot, mister BY liam of the ancient race of mask made oath bound guild citizens of a sacred and profane that comes from our s/he of the me and U2, the Mind -- all of us, bono fawns gamboling through Time: *rhyming and timing* -- as founding godfather slam poet from the unique Mulligan school of Marty: marty muligan from Mullingar, puts the biz of being Live at work.

The three other parts, are an eloquent rant about how the then contemporary poets of the Yeat's generation, were -- half dead at the top -- and pine for a totally fictitious state from this noted sidhe seeker, mister BY doing the faeries' work.

~

When he wrote it, he was in his last decade of life, and a lifetime of mystical exploration and self-making on the supernatural plane/s where he sought for evidence of God, had been distilled into his book, *The Vision*, in which the learning of 50 yrs had been decanted.

Liam Yeats was the son of a man whose own father was a priest, and who trained as a barrister before opting to go with his heart, Painting.

He rebelled against his own father (wby's grandad), rejecting the absolutism Men of the cloth often preach, and though he was not commercially successful, he was happier painting than prosecuting and defending for far more cash than his creative Self could compete with.

So mister Yeats's himself was reared by a man who'd rebelled against his own upbringing by a priest; and thus - if John Yeats's, the father of by far our most bardic trained of all 20C poet's - if his own father couldn't persuade him the god of the church of ireland was all around us, this indicates ...what?

~

Liam Y: was just a mad head who wasn't messing about his faery lover/s -- the sidhe of s/he in you, me, everybody, the Mind, intelligence, we all have one, and no one is better than any other, we are all human first, the rest is just speculation, conjecture and conversation positing theories whose Truth cannot be ascertained, as the truth is, s/he is all around us in the airs of John B and a keen goodness in the faeries of Yeats contemplation,


..golden dawn initiate who made their own masque and knew what manque scop plastic tank tops, went abba fabtastic in the wholly here and yah...yah, R culture, Concrete poetry, it is according to Liam slotting in triskle and triad --- The wisdom of Trinities and tuatha de danann ghosts, sidhe troop hosts and shadows in caves drawing fear from the natives loving Fodhla within their spiritual culture bestowed by the s/he of a unique pool of ppl, expressing the individuals right to believe in whatever God/s spiritual exploration leads a faith to found itself


upon... oh yah..never will the ship of Majesty steer to mister Stearns like boors, plastic English ppl's devoid of Life idea of hell, the s/he of a tic toc mocking veneer at high alters of the faith unworked, natural not, no sidhe in the you of me Us and at you 2, yah --- again..


the highest lingo bearla filidh singing, s/he and We the poet ppl sing in, our Mind the goddess queen of memory, two state/s of you, us, we and them a minority in the geo-physical theatre/s of State and Mind/s, suffrage and masons, worn leathered tan light weathered in orange glow, their capo drawn shades an eye, balding gentlemen, large bloke/s bashing for cash: comment is free in the Union of one another, our dream of unity, of being top con, only the poetical space between each moment to moment sequentially passing from the here to then: tells of what oath bound sworn Lovers of the sidhe there know of Abraham, Amergin and Don's triad, Eber and Eremon, four of twenty four bro's: took it from Pythagorean druids of the Tuatha De Danann..

...all unreal, unknown human connection to God states of mind man makes to justify penal rhetoric: for the punishing of native/s being themself...God around all on the planet differs from place to place, the Earth itself one stone holding all the waves of time and occurence that ever broke, washed lightly in Brython or bullying tudor english, the era of english linguistic Genius, and periods of bloodletting -- shelter, and One light after the last collaps of a European empire stacked with expensively educated and well payed leaders of a two speed trough. The Irish saints and scholars untouched by imperial cons not Connacta, Uliad nor An Mhuman.


And the scapegoaters wanting to blame us, for what? a Truth being happier, clever and eloquent rather than angry, ranting and really, moan in print and stay unhappy, outface the position of the protagonist opposite andenjoy distilling higher proofs of clear reason, poetry, what is it good for, absolutely nothing but to be remembered after the authors have signed off inhaling the air that powers verbal objects of eloquent beauty, a biographical score card of full honest innings, no bending to the faux cheps and gels, in our memory..


And it matters not if we are stephen Hawkings or GW deniers loving mister B's wars for all the nightly reasons of feeling safe with an Image, a mask and imagination, the wit to use it for the sidhe gods and Noh theatrical traditions, which never surrender to plassies without real bhard training..

gra agus siochainn..

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Yewah

At the core of this blog, is a very perplexing question, asked in a language that challenges any potential responder to the full.

If the person holding strong faith in God, wishing to share it here; how far could they articulate before their religious views were deemed too dangerous for the reader/s?

Is it possible to speak of God in all but the most superficial sense online?

~

I have donned the name of God, in order to assist in the search for greater coherency on this eternal psychological state.

Some say now, God is dead, that we are just a collection of flesh, blood and bone and consciousness a bio-technical electrical state, pointing to the metaphor of the computer.

The material state of our body itself, based on a binary system of directional logic that progresses forward, through either-or gates, and a brain itself, the Intelligence where woman is man and vice versa, fifty fifty: the Mind god edging toward artificial intelligence, programmed by our own natural, cosmic, God given one.

Thus, if a person from 1500, through some glitch in the fabric of time and eternity, through unknown reasons of how, ended up 508 years ahead in the future, wandering down the Strand in central London, or times square NY say: surely they would believe the very devils of magic were all around them, and throwing him or herself into a state of total mental disintegration perhaps, begging God to make it all stop.

How could one begin to explain that the moving pictures drenching them, surrounding the natives, unaware of how the tv and advertising Images control our behavior and all but living ghosts to the Tudor time traveler, whose mind would need more than a lifetime to make purchase on the realities behind these, are simple, plain truths of the physical IT world.

One in which IT defines us, a society reliant on information and quantum technologies and which would collapse as the time traveler's Mind, in their tentative first exploration into this, lets face it, almost as to be effectively, unanswerable conundrum on the reality of God.

And in the opposite direction, if we were to enter a lift in the Pentagon, and exiting find ourself in 1500, facing a placid Piscataway tribe citizen, 146 years behind the first imperial proprietor of the District of Columbia, Cecilius Calvert, --- private owner of a stretch of real estate inhabited for thousands of yrs the English king Charles one, decided to allow call be Maryland (as a colony for catholics, currently under the spiritual squeeze from puritans, quakers and trad prodestant faiths) --- and knowing the only chance of taking it single handedly is to whip out the gizmos and gadgets that are part and parcel of global existence today, the locals would consider them magical objects; not the simple logical things they are.

Faith.

i think this is the basis of the fabric of reality, and God is like the binary state/s, of being a singular duality, something which is alone and with its opposite, both at once. A time dependent state of continual choices, either or, at all levels of life. From molecular to global, from the emptiest of heads filled only with hate, mass murders on the hands, conscience, both or none, maybe i am over reaching, after all, this is only a simple blog piece and not the object for one's deepest musings in print, on the subject of God.

God, in the few religions i know very little of, it seems, is a state of being, an order of fate, which the believers know through the words of the men (it was 99% men) who God spoke directly to, telling them to write down whatever it was they did; just like God is talking to me (only joking) ....prophets or charlatans, it doesn't really matter now, as the exact texts the many religions are founded on, are more weapons in games of rhetoric between interested parties, concerned enough to bring us the words of whatever God they claim to speak for, the one true one, naturally.

~

We are told by the publically religious, what God wants us to do and why, with varying degrees in the sincerity of belief, depending on what impulses a preacher to talk, usually a lot and at length, in their vocational career of spreading a Word via spiritual tenets of the God they claim to speak for.

Love and peace

traditionally.