'I've been cordially invited to join the visceral realists. I accepted, of course. There was no initiation ceremony. It was better that way.'
So opens Roberto Bolano's novel, The Savage Detectives, which is the story of a twenty year search for a lost poet, possibly a bad one; it is never made clear. Our Ventenac capers repeatedly put me in mind of Bolano. Here's another bit chosen at random:
'Have you written me my poem yet?' she said, sitting down beside me. Rosario has dark eyes, black, I'd say, and broad hips.
'More or less,' I said, with an ever-so-slight feeling of triumph.
'All right, then, read it to me.'
'My poems are meant to be read, not spoken,' I said...
'Exactly, so read it to me,' said Rosario.
'What I mean is, it's better if you read it yourself.'
'No, you'd better do it. If I read it myself, I probably won't understand it.'
I chose one of my latest poems at random and read it to her.
'I don't understand it,' said Rosario, 'but thank you anyway.'
*
I have to admit I have never contributed to one of these blogs before so if there are conventions or codes of behaviour then I apologise in advance if I do the wrong thing and I welcome advice.
The following are books and links that I mentioned to different people, Andrew, James, Michael I can remember asking about some of them, during the week. I am also curious about other sources mentioned so if anyone would like to post their reading list I'd really appreciate it. Here's mine:
GET THE FUCK BACK INTO THAT BURNING PLANE is by Lawrence Giffin (not Griffin as I said). Its a chapbook published by Ugly Duckling Presse, available on Amazon. There is an interesting recording of Giffin reading another of his pieces which links, I think, to Andrew's inventory poem. http://poetrytimearchive.org/archives/145 It takes a while for him to come onto the recording though - you can move the cursor forward about 10 quarks (or whatever they're called).
Interesting too is that on that poem Giffin mentions a work that links to James' Bubble bath poem. Giorgio Agamben's Infancy and History is by Verso 1993. It is a highfalutin' essay on language and the destruction of experience which looks carefully at the connections between play and time. Looking for the soul in toys, he asks, 'But what, then, is the essence of the toy?' It also has a brilliant riff on the meaning of football - 'in ball games we can discern the relics of the ritual representation of a myth in which the gods fought for possession of the sun.' He develops this idea into a metaphysics on time itself, showing in the etymology of Greek terms aion and chronos a split between two different, opposed notions of time - eternity and diachronic time. Lawrence Giffin's list poem sends him up rotten for this kind of stuff but it all seems spookily connected to our time in Ventenacland.
Another book dealing with phantasies about time is Jean Baudrillard's The System of Objects, Verso 1996, 'A cultural critique of the commodity in consumer society...a theoretical letter-in-a-bottle tossed into the ocean in 1968, which brilliantly communicates to us all the live ideas of the day. Basically, it's a semiotics of furniture.
Finally, my favourite book at the moment, Anne Carson's Eros The Bittersweet, 1998, Dalkey Archive Press. A book about romantic love and the invention of our alphabet, it starts with Sappho and is a beautiful meditation on the imagination.
Finally, finally, the best commentary on the credit crunch to come out of poor old Ireland: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljPFZrRD3J8
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