Archive for the ‘William Blake’ Tag
“Hell’s Printing House”—Budapest Suites (1994)
Filed under: Hell's Printing House | Tags: Canadian poetry, Hungary in poetry, Kemenes Géfin László, Pneuma Poetry Series, poetry, poetry chapbooks, poetry publishing, poetry recordings, William Blake
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Aside from the pages of little magazines and those of certain, indulgent anthologies, by poems really first made their way in the world in the form of chapbooks. I hadn’t yet published a full-length trade edition, when I went on a “European tour” in 1996, reading in Munich (twice), Heidelberg, and Amsterdam, two self-published chapbooks, Gloze (1995) and On the Phantom Air Ship Mystery (1995), my calling cards.
Joachim Utz, the sponsor of my reading at Heidelberg University’s Anglistiches Seminar, observed that my chapbooks reminded him of William Blake’s. This new category of post takes its inspiration from his remark. “Hell’s Printing House” will showcase my chapbooks, describing them, detailing their contents, linking poems that have already been published at Poeta Doctus, and presenting a new recording of one of their poems.
It is hoped these posts fill the lacunae between full-length collections, assuring those (apparently) few (and valued) readers who follow my production with interest that I am hard at work, going my own direction, at my own pace, trusting those intrigued might be charmed enough to tarry along….
Budapest Suites is the first published version of the titular poetic suite that later appeared, slightly revised, in my first, full-length trade edition, Grand Gnostic Central and other poems (1998). It, along with all books issued in the Pneuma Poetry Series, was designed and printed by my friend Richard Weintrager.
Contents
- “Apply what you know to what you feel that’s more than enough”
- “Mount Ság”
- “That he might…”
- “The chest-high white-haired Swiss woman asked…”
- “I went down to Bibliomanie”
- “Dan and I waltzed hopfrog…”
- “You don’t just follow an impulse do you?”
Budapest Suites collects poems written during and after a 1991 trip to Europe (my first!), whose highpoint was a visit to Budapest and Celldömölk, the hometown of scholar poet friend Kemenes Géfin László, there to be honoured for his literary work and to launch his avant garde epic work Fehérlófia (the son of the white horse). On that occasion, we visited the extinct volcano on the outskirts of town Mount Ság (Sághegy) where Géfin had hidden out during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 before escaping over the border to Austria. Géfin was struck by the lushness of the locale, so much he was moved to remark, “There is a god here!”, the opening line of the second suite.
In Budapest, I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of some American ex-pats, among them, writer Dan Philip Brack (DPB), “Dan” in the opening line of the penultimate suite. Let’s attribute the epigraphs of the first and last suites to him. The fourth suite commemorates a visit to the National Museum. The third suite, as well, was written in situ. The fourth suite was composed after returning to Montreal; its being slightly confusing might be attributable to its being “a mystical poem,” as Hungarian poet Tibor Zalán called it.
The poem recorded below is the third suite. Darius Snieckus, author of the inaugural chapbook in the Pneuma Poetry Series, The Brueghel Desk, was so impressed when he read it, he insisted I not “change a thing!”. His anxieties were not unfounded, as up to and into the writing of the Suites, I had been an obsessive reviser: I still have the notebook with the seventeen (at least) versions of “Mount Ság” worked over that one afternoon, including the Hungarian translation by Zalán and András Sándor, which was read to Géfin on site in honour of the visit.
It was in revising the fourth suite that the most recent, nth version turned out to be identical to the very first. It was then I learned the truth of William Blake’s dictum “First thought best in Art…” From that revelation on, my compositional practice was to write, then carefully study what had been written to understand its spontaneous rightness before cautiously making slight alterations, only in order to bring out the energy of that original impulse all the better. It was Joachim Utz, one my most careful German readers, who noted that the Budapest Suites marked a “breakthrough” in my poetry.
Next month, Gloze (1995)…
Synchronicitious Critique
Filed under: The Brouillon | Tags: Bookninja, Insta-poets, Instagram poetry, literariness, poetry criticism, Seth Perlow, social network, William Blake
Comments (1) Bookninja‘s back, and worth keeping an eye on.
Yesterday, George Murray posted an article on Instagram poetry, with the commentary, “I work hard to be progressive. I work hard to be forward-thinking. I work hard to find joy and worth in as much of life’s silliness as possible.” As much as I share Murray’s estimation of the literary-media (media-literary?) phenomenon, the article, by scholar Seth Perlow, teaches an important lesson by example.
In the article’s introduction, Perlow sets out his purpose:
In what follows, I’ll nonetheless try to learn something from the Insta-poets, something about the technological scene of contemporary poetry, without advancing a judgment about their work. The complex intersections of Insta-poetry’s political, commercial, and literary significance have frustrated literary critics’ efforts to evaluate it. So for now, I want to suspend questions of value in order to ask how Instagram structures poetic forms and participatory reading practices.
By suspending “questions of value” what comes into view are not only otherwise overlooked aspects of the verbal art of poetry in general, but no less pressing questions concerning media, composition, reception, and various blindnesses that inevitably accompany whatever insights poets and critics might otherwise have. Canonical figures, such as Emily Dickinson and Charles Olson, come into play; the no less urgent and perspicacious studies of Byung-Chul Han on digital media and society might as well have been included. The point is that the critical (judgemental) sensibility all-too-often obscures the reality of what it judges. And however much I agree with Murray’s and Perlow’s low estimation of Insta-poetry, Perlow’s example is instructive as to what resolute, clear-eyed, and informed study can reveal, revelations of no little pertinence or consequence to “serious” poetry.
By lucky happenstance, just this morning, a review of the William Blake show at the Tate Gallery came up in the newsfeed. What struck me about this chance juxtaposition is what Blake, weirdly, shares with the Insta-poetry Perlow investigates. Both are, in a sense, cottage industries; in both, text and image are inseparable (regardless of Blake’s stripping the text from some paintings and engravings to sell them independently), and both present themselves via the handwritten as opposed to schematized typography. And who, reading the Songs of Innocence for the first time, has not been initially perplexed by the high critical regard they now receive?
The theme, as Whitman (that other great self-published self-promoter) wrote, has vista, even when what is scrutinized is silly.
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