time to write

I see the last time I posted was March - the reason for this was that I was finishing my Honours OU - handed in my last paper on Tuesday and now have space in my head to think about other literary avenues! This last paper was to evaluate and judge two books for a literary prize   - ie what are the criteria by which we judge literature? I came down in favour of a philosphically instumental approach;  an aesthetic value to style; flirting with the boundaries of both popular and elite ( my pet criteria combining Virginia Woolf's attitude with my own!); a desire for escapism and for the author to show that he drew on the weight of literary tradition. That is how I would judge literature! So let us see what the experts think when I get my result! My plan for this month is now to enter a competition on Keats, Shelley, Mary Shelley and Lord Byron - an essay of 3000 words. So I am currently off researching the interesting and innovative Mary Shelley who is known principally for her novel Frankinstein,  arguably the first in the science fiction genre, but who suffered sadness and insecurity in her relationship with P Shelley . It seems to me this group  resemble the Bloomsbury set in their open realtionships but also in their commitment to literature, study, philosophy and dedication to learning. More anon.......

march! and my poem "Cold Nourishment"

Somehow my real job got in the way recently! It takes a clear space to find time to write and with doing the open uni degree, which I love, and working at my business I have not had a moment. I don't really have one now either but I thought I would mention another small obsession that I have at the moment - I have discovered the "beat " poets of 1960's USA particularly Allen Ginsberg and his poem "Howl". It is an extremely reactionary poem and one that falls between the genre of popular and high literature. I am in the process of writing a TMA argueing that it is indeed much higher than at first one would think. It is built on an inherent scaffolding of high literature for all that it appeals to the "mass culture" (Dwight Macdonald's classification of popular literature) Urban art at its most interesting so to keep apace I am now posting one of my earlier darker urban poems called:

Cold Nourishment.

Stuttering down in life’s grimy gutters,

drug ridden, punch drunk, grey;

no escape from the darkest depths

of this treacherous river of life.

The underbellies of our glass cities

masticate on the poor -

throw them a rope of intestines

to close the cavernous gap

between them and the privileged populations,

who discard them like wasted food.

On the plate of life, hunger and sated stomachs

lie side by side, succulent sweets beside cold savouries,

undesirable, congealed;

How can the rich lay this on their tastebuds

while children’s tongues swell with thirst?

fragmentation

I said a while ago that I had been thinking about fragmentation ala Picasso and indeed the Nigerian poet Christopher Okigbo who carred a picture of the Guernica with him as inspiration. The fact that a Nigerian poet could be so inspired by someone from a completely different race and culture high lights the multi national face of Modernism.Modernism pushed these boundaries so that they eventually blurred. Just in passing, traditional African poetry by the likes of Okigbo speaks a public language,even though they reference national cults and religion that can be obscure.But the initiates were the public for such poetry.
I am now reading Alan Ginsberg and O'Hara's American poetry - and this is public poetry in fragmented form. The poem "Howl" is meant to literally be howled out,  as a customer in my shop who knew Alan Ginsberg personally told me. How exciting to touch history through her  - it is these connections that add vital links in life.O'Hara talks about his everyday life in New York, non poetic subjects such as picking up a hamburger on the day that Billie Holiday died. But the atmosphere he creates through his own personal day to day collage is unique.I still struggle, being a traditiional "high" poetry reader to deal with the everyday non poetic subjcet matter and align myself with the New Critics of that time.
Collage comes from the French "collier"  - to glue and to this end I have been thinking about creating a collage of my own snipets of wordage and blending them together into a whole. This is what I will be working on next.
A comment for today
"Word of mouth and information passed
somehow no questions asked
today's egotism, manners forgotten
something in Denmark is still rotten!"

the house

Houses have been personalised throughout literary history and the poem below is to deflect my own emotions onto the family house that is now empty.

the house lies quietly, waiting,
the polished wooden floor, cold,
missing the warmth of her footsteps;
the airy space of the hallway
empty, no welcoming arms
 to embrace

the house lies alone, listening to
voiceless clocks , silent  piano keys,
bare walls in cavernous rooms
catching only echoes
of forgotten family laughter

the house lies displaced , crying
tears on  rain washed windows;
autumn leaves lie stripped of colour,
grey mist muffles the call of rooks
and the silence remains unbroken

on the shoulders of others

"For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of people , so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice”  - this quote from Woolf is incorpoarated in  the essay I am currently writing on tradition and how the 20th Century authors viewed tradition. By the turn of the 20th Century there was minimal  literary heritage for women writers causing Woolf to champion the rise in feminist issues. But what I have been thinking about further to this discussion is the progression of literature built upon its own shoulders. Taking Jane Eyre and Rebecca, we see Du Maurier rewriting the storyline and the deeper intellectual prepectives of Jane Eyre, creating what is generally seen as a popular fiction novel, as opposed to the "high" fiction of Bronte's novel. Many intertexts have subsequently circled around Rebecca, such as Susan Mills " Mrs de Winter" and Beauman's " Rebecca's Tale" and of course the films, of which the most famous would be Hitchcocks in 1940. I have joined the Du Maurier society - it is free and keeps the members up to date with current events and news  - http://www.dumaurier.org/ . Within these two parallel texts above, the houses themselves become personalised and raise many symbolic issues - the influence of the Gothic; the element of class politics; the psychoanalytical aspect of the third floor being equated to the mind (Bertha) and the fire at the end of each novel symbolising death, either of the guilt that Maxim and the unnamed second Mrs de Winter carry, or Rochester's secret first wife and his hopes of happiness.  It can also symbolise the death of English society as it was then and in fact, in the discussions broadcast on Radio 4 in 2003, this point of view is substantiated. Most of the women interestingly enough start to admire Rebecca's fight and independence, regardless of her sexual infidelities and disregard for marriage. Perhaps this is indicative of how marriage is viewed now. Women got the vote and the patriarchal stronghold on society was gradually dissolved. But returning to the topic of tradition for a final comment. Woolf broke all the boundaries  of gender, genre and time constrictions in her writings; it begs the question of whether there are any more literary traditions left for those of us in the 21st Century to break or do we build on the shoulders of the writers gone before us and re create traditions for our own followers? This is our challenge.

self analysis of cameo

I think it always helps to put a piece in context and I was surprisingly pleased with this short vignette on Virginia Woolf which concludes my obsession with her as I move onto other thoughts.
The fact that she had to choose not between life and death but between life and madness, finally  choosing death is crucial. Filling her pockets to weigh herself down she walked into the river Ouse and drowned herself. The reference to Shakespeare might seem contrived but in actual fact her works were influenced greatly by the playwright  - her famous fictional Judith Shakespeare in "A Room of One's Own" and the reference to seeing him in "Orlando". The line, "I fell in love" refers to the question of heterosexual love that Woolf felt particularly for Vita Sackville West and the fascination of the Bloomsbury group with sexuality, dual gender etc. The actual word bisexual was not in common use until 1960's but the subject matter was being widely discussed.
I have referred to her timeless voice, which transcends the years - another very important theme to Woolf in the period in which she was writing. The subject of Time was being philosphically discussed and she entered the debate with her analogy of the time of the mind and the time of the clock. "The Lighthouse "crosses 10 years in one space; "Mrs Dalloway" is set in one day; and "Orlando" spans 300 years so she was playing about with the concept. In "The Lighthouse " time passes while the characters sleep - hence my mention of  sleep and the fact that Woolf 's ideas have  subliminally changed my own perceptions even as I sleep. Questions were being asked in every area of the Arts and the Impressionists, such as Picasso, were a huge influence on Woolf. Hence the idea of splashes of colour, introducing my next train of thought which will be on fragmentation. It afforded Woolf the chance to equate literary aesthetics to art.
Finally, the aloe, native to New Zealand and referenced in Katherine Mansfields famous short story, only blooms once in a hundred years - almost the time span between the time of Woolf's prolific writings and today.

cameo for VW

stones in her pockets

river of life, river of death,

parted waters now closing

Ophelia – like

i fell in love a little

for a while,

her voice, a timeless whisper

disturbing my sleep

splashes of thoughts

coloured my thinking;

and the aloe bloomed once

between then and now.