An Interview with Harold Bloom

Vincent Woods interviewing Harold Bloom for RTE's Arts Tonight. Absorbing listening; Bloom's encyclopedic knowledge of literature is jaw-dropping.

http://www.rte.ie/radio/utils/radioplayer/rteradioweb.html#!rii=9%3A10161915%3A0%3A%3A

Flesh and Stone

This painting by Andrea Mantegna was reproduced in our family Bible. As a boy, I used to look at it and marvel. I still marvel.

    It is monumental yet intimate, sculpted stone yet flesh, cold and warm simultaneously. The Lamentation of Christ dates from  about 1480. I imagine Mantegna must have been satisfied with the painting.

    It reminds me of an argument I had, in which I maintained the mental process for artist and poet is very similar. Both are striving for a striking composition, new angle, a different perspective; something that make the whole greater than its parts. 

    This image achieves it from the torn holes in Christ’s feet to the expression on His face, dignity and torture.

Life is short

The River Took Me was first published in the Prairie Schooner, Irish Number, December 2011.

 

The River Took Me 

Once, in a sodden flaggered field

beside the river,

the current took me;

not a canoe but a trout,

a water’s flint smoothed by its flow,

a ripple’s almond. 

All sleekness and fluidity,

all instinct;

a lidless eye running,

seeing and discarding,

gorged on movement,

passing all argument.

Pub Yap

First published in THE SHOp Poetry Magazine:

Mrs Clancy

Mrs Clancy pulling a pint,
asking John Quinn about Kate Nealon’s
accident the other evening outside Lawlor’s
when Tadhg Foley comes in,
says, “How’s Tadhg. A pint Tadhg?”
“Hello Mrs Clancy”

“Here y’are John.” She takes the silver.
“She had to leave the bike in Mulhall’s,”
“William Featherstone’s gone over, Missus.”
“Not the first time, Tadhg” she says.
“No, nor the last either” says Tadhg
 with a bit of a chuckle.

“Mike Deegan has the rest of it in anyway”
says John. “And how’s Breege?” she asks;
“A lot better than yesterday, but she’ll hardly be right.”
“I suppose not.” says Mrs Clancy
climbing up on her stool at the end of the bar,
“I suppose Maeve will have to do.”

“Wasn’t Maggie Deegan related to the Nealon’s?”
quizs Tadhg. “ She was, and Brennans in Clooncraff.”
Terry Watchorne comes in. “How’s Terry.
A pint Terry?” Climbing off the stool,
over to the tap, lifting her arm, she says
“Wasn’t that awful about Kate Nealon.”

Billy Collins Makes You Want to Write a Poem

This TED talk by Billy Collins is essential viewing for poets who are drying up, school-goers who need to be convinced that poetry means anything and anyone who has ever said they don't like poetry. A very entertaining 15 mins.

Jesus The Aviator

Jesus the fighter pilot

has served in Iraq and Afghanistan:

6,000 flight hours; 1,800 combat hours. 

Described as cool-headed, aggressive;

when asked for his opinion, he says

he backs America all the way. 

The much decorated F-18 pilot claims

he’s come a long way, his teachings are smarter;

“follow the dollar gospel” he says,

  “In God We Trust”.

A Visual Jolt

Sometimes an unexpected glimpse trips a mental switch that triggers  understanding. It maybe the shock that jolts clarity, or maybe the novel view of something familiar.

  

Seeing, through

this patterned pane,

 

your face: 

whole but distorted

like our love.

My Úna Bhán

One of the great Irish love songs love songs was written by Tomás Láidir Mac Coisdealbha (fl.1660s) from Moylurg, Boyle. It will feature in the forthcoming Roscommon anthology.

Tomás was in love with Úna Ní Dhiarmada, but her father considered him less than suitable and forbade her having any contact with him. She, grief-stricken, became very sick and eventually her father relented and permitted Tomás to visit her. On leaving, he vowed that if a messenger sent by Mac Diarmada did not reach him before he crossed the river, he would never return nor speak to her again.

He rode slowly and delayed at the river, even in the middle of the river till eventually, goaded by his servant, he crossed. The messenger arrived but too late. He killed his servant with a single blow.

Úna died heart-broken and was buried on Trinity island on Lough Key. On his death, his request to be buried beside her was granted; it is said that a tree above his grave inter-twined with a tree above hers.

WB Yeats, on visiting the island, searched for the inter-twined trees but failed to find them.   

It not generally known but I, myself, have endured as sad an experience in my own past - it is well known that you must not look back as a lover is leaving. On that dreadful day, I said goodbye to my love and very purposefully turned from her and walked away. However, I had just gone a short distance when it began to rain so I went to open my umbrella. A sudden gust of wind caught the opening umbrella and wheeled me round so that I found myself looking directly at her. To my horror, the clothes she was wearing  now hung on a block of stone that had her likeness. It was standing exactly where I had left her; the index finger of her right hand frozen in the act of removing a tear.

The eyes have it

 

 

These images by Lucas Cranach the Elder are very arresting. Despite being 600 years old there’s something very fresh and immediate about them. The eyes are compelling, the depth of emotion they convey; it looks as though they are seeing all the world’s sorrow to the end of time. The paintings give me an urge to write, and that is one of the reasons I am always interested in the work of painters and photographers.

 

 

Trees like..........................

Elaine Leigh's painting brought another painting to mind, and so this poem.

What The Artist Sees: 

 

these trees like the ladies of Avignon,

shamelessly flaunting  themselves,

streaming earth to heaven,

arms thrown upward, presenting  so fiercely. 

In their assemblage: formidable, fearsome,

the usual meaning is altered,

(a shared purpose outside today’s understanding),

their collective nakedness guarding some primeval dogma.

 

Those Marches

 

When  they play those marches

and the drums tip away, 

I think of Brendan

alone in his sitting room,

flicking channels,

news to news;

dinners collecting on the table. 

When they play those marches

and the drums tip away, 

I think of Peter

who hated cameras;

his reflection

in the mirror

between the bottles. 

 

When they play those marches

and the drums tip away, 

I think of Tom

who asked for a present

on his death bed;

I didn’t have one,

no one else came. 

When they play those marches

and the drums tip away, 

I think of John

who asked me to visit,

gentlest man

I’ve ever known;

I didn’t.  

When they play those marches,

play those marches;

when they play those marches,

the drums tip away.

What the camera saw

They often  tell lies, but sometimes the camera catches a moment of truth. This isn't a classic poem but it catches a poignant moment.

The Photograph.

 

You, longing for another

who wasn’t there. 

She was leaning against me

but I didn't care. 

That sunny day

I was looking at you, 

confident my feelings

were not on view. 

But now I see

as the camera saw, 

that moment’s disappointment,

a lifetime cannot thaw.

You Crying

 

Your crying:

The silver streams

Of your eyes,

The radiant red cheeks,

The choking on words,

The gullish.

 

Somehow

I think of a voice

Curling up

From inside a hollow oak.

A little goes a long way

I have over the years come across some examples of very little making the difference between life and death. In caring for the elderly, sometimes it is food for the spirit that makes the difference. This poem instances a particular case; the improvement was spectacular.

In the Home 

Sitting quietly by her bed,

among those sobbing, groaning women.

A room claustrophobic with impending death;

her spirit withered inside her,

her mind ran away to the fifties.  

But given a bed near the window,

her mind cranked up.

It was the birds on the lawn,

the grubbing thrushes and blackbirds:

they found perches for her brain.

Almost Summer

The lengthening days and the anticipation of sunny weather are part of what makes May special, but in rural parts there are more subtle triggers that stir a deeper-rooted happiness that is somehow extracted from the locked chest of childhood.

I’m talking about the cuckoo’s call coming from somewhere across the fields. That clear, spoken pair of syllables cuck koo that sounds prehistoric, beautiful, and somehow like a personal call to you. The smell of wild garlic from the woods outside Mount Charles and the coconut scent of the furze when at last the sun is warm enough to raise it.

Meanwhile the mountains are predominately brown right now with this late spring. But within two weeks the green explosion will have taken place and the passage of clouds will be as dramatic on their flanks as it is in the skies above Barnesmore. Vacillating, bottle green, gliding along the hectares of unfurling bracken, they will be the flowing current that is the Donegal hills in Summer-time.