Day: Jun 6, 2016
LITERARY OR POPULAR FICTION?
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Fiction and/ or truth?
![Nuneham_2016-3 [800x600]](https://words-cat.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/nuneham_2016-3-800x600.jpg?w=1100)
Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.
I also have just read this very exciting essay by Susan Sontag
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‘Combat Gnosticism’ by Ian Duhig
Poetry The Guardian
Poem of the Week: ‘Combat Gnosticism’ by Ian Duhig
This quiet, wry poem reflects on the unique, incommunicable knowledge that comes with service in conflict
into grey shades of afternoon light’ … British soldiers read a tourist guide about France on D-Day. Photograph: STF/AFP/Getty Images
‘Combat Gnosticism’
Campbell’s term for war writing born
of a gnosis only being there can earn:
I witnessed it once from old soldiers
in a poetry workshop at Age Concern.
They’d lost that battle with the word,
believing too much better left unsaid
to the likes of me and not those pals
now threescore and ten years dead.
How many old soldiers does it take
to change a lightbulb? asked one.
You can’t know if you weren’t there!
They all fell about. Now they’d won.
Relaxed, they began letting it out
into grey shades of afternoon light,
into words they feared betrayed it.
And I learned why they were right.
- Poem taken from The Blind Road-Maker by Ian Duhig, published by Picador at £9.99
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A poem by Fleur Adcock
Dragon Talk
How many years ago now
did we first walk hand in hand –
or hand in claw –
through Alice’s Wonderland,
your favourite training ground,
peopled with a crew
of phantasms – Mock Turtle, Gryphon –
as verbal as you?
Your microphone, kissing my lips,
inhaled my words; the machine
displayed them, printed out
in sentences on a screen.
My codependant,
my precious parasite,
my echo, my parrot,
my tolerant slave:
I do the talking;
you do the typing.
Just try a bit harder
to hear what I say!
I wait for you to lash your tail
each time I swear at you.
But no: you listen meekly,
and print ‘fucking moron’.
*
All the come-ons
you transcribed as commas –
how can we conduct a flirtation
in punctuation? –
Particularly when,
money-mad creature,
you spell doom to romance
by writing ‘flotation’.
*
I can’t blame you for homonyms,
but surely after a decade
you could manage the last word
of Cherry Tree ‘Would’?
Context, after all,
is supposed to be your engine.
Or are you being driven
by Humpty Dumpty?
*
I take it amiss
when you mis-hear the names
of my nearest and dearest;
in particular, Beth.
Safer, perhaps, if I say Bethany.
Keep your scary talons
off my great-granddaughter:
don’t call her ‘death’.
*
You know all the diseases
and the pharmaceuticals:
bronchopneumonia,
chloramphenicol
are no trouble to you,
compulsive speller,
hypochondriac,
virtual dealer.
You’re hopeless at birds:
can’t get wren into your head –
too tiny, you try to tell me:
it comes out as rain or ring.
Let’s try again: blackbird, osprey,
hen, (much better), kingfisher, hawk,
duckling. But I have to give up
and type Jemima Puddleduck.
*
What am I thinking of,
dragon bird?
How could I forget
that you too have wings?
Fly to me;
let me nuzzle your snout,
whisper orders, trust you
to carry them out.
*
Do I think of you as “he”? –
Beyond male or female;
utterly alien,
yet as close as my breath –
invisible, intangible,
you hover at my lips –
am I going too far?
Are we into theology?
*
Animal, vegetable or mineral?
Who’s playing these games? –
Abstract, with mineral connections
and a snazzy coat of scales.
Gentle dragon, stupid beast,
why do I tease you?
Laughter’s not in your vocabulary:
all you understand are words.
*
Today I saw you cresting the gable
of someone’s roof: a curly monster
smaller than me, but far too large
to hide yourself inside a computer.
They’d painted you red – was that your choice?
But this was only your graven image.
Your private self was at home, waiting
for reincarnation through my voice.
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Mary wants to throw out her bed
phon
Mary picked up her mobile phone to ring for a cab..On it,there was a message.You have missed a call from home.Mary shivered.
Has Stan come back?
Then she recalled she had rung her own mobile before coming out.Her mind sagged like sheet of rubber suspended between four tall trees in the jungle..
Hello,It’s Mrs Tan.Can you do a me cab from the dental surgery to my home? It’s right by the doctor’s surgery.
She stepped outside into the warm air which felt like a caress on her poor numb face
When she got home she found Annie in the kitchen looking at her collection of cookery books.
Do you want to get rid of any of these, her friend queried.
I am thinking of learning some new recipes so I can invite those awful therapists across the road for dinner.But I have to be sure that what I serve has no hidden meaning especially aggressive or sexual.
Well,Mary said,don’t you think that people differ in what they find sexual?
Beats me,said Annie meaningfully.I fancy doing beef in beer with French bread and mustard baked on the top.
I used to do that,Mary said.Why did we stop doing that cooking? Penguin brought a new book every month.I have most of them and ,at the weekend, I’d study them for ages looking for things like apple mousse and different stews.
When we first got married I used a kind of cheap women’s magazine approach and most often as a pudding I did tinned peaches with cinnamon sprinkled on grilled till hot and spicy.Eventually, Stan got fed up with it and so I got into cordon bleu and using real cream not Carnation milk
Her blue eyes gleamed in excitement and were rendered even more remarkable by the teal and turquoise eye shadow Annie had forced her to wear which matched the sea blue mascara she already had.Annie said.
it will be good for us both to meet new people especially educated ones
Mary disagreed.I like ordinary people because a certain amount of education makes some people very conceited and only real scholars or mystics realise that the more we know the more we realise our own ignorance.Will such folk like makeup?
Perhaps one of the psychoanalysts will be a mystic,Annie retorted loudly
But would such a person want to visit us? Mary bleated childishly.
Why not? They have to eat and they may need a new love interest or someone sympathetic who will know how hard their job is.Someone like me,beautiful funny and willing to look after a man when he needs it.
How about a man who might look after you,Mary said brightly
Well,it’s not quite the same.I like looking after men whereas you prefer reading about Fourier series and infinite integrals.And knitting patterns,she added hastily as if omitting that interest would severely anger Mary.
I think we’ll invite two men and two women ,all single.They can bring their cats for Emile to play with if they want.And we’ll eat in the kitchen to make it more relaxed.
Thank God,said Mary as the dining room was full of paper and books.
Why don’t I have a study,she pondered.Or ,if I slept in the dining room, my bedroom has a lovely view and I have an old desk somewhere.
Mary ,in her younger days, had often moved the furniture around and had even slept on a camp bed on the lawn one summer but she no longer did this as looking after Stan had worn her down to a shred of her former self.
But beds do take up so much room.Without them ,the house would be quite spacious.And how about tables and chairs… her mind ran on as she quite fancied a new start without moving house.
With fewer clothes ,she could ditch a wardrobe… on the other hand ,she could not afford such quality clothes again on her widow’s pension.Isn’t life tough?
To think she might have to stop wear Bowlands of Wrath was a rather painful thought.Still most of humanity have got hardly anything so maybe Mary will think more deeply about donating some to Oxfam.
Suddenly the doorbell rang.Dave was outside
Are you both ok?I’ve not heard from you lately,he remarked as he powdered his nose.
Well,I do have an old desk that you can carry upstairs for me,Mary told him thoughtfully.Then we need the floor scrubbing.I’m sure the NHS will pay.After all dirt might make us ill!
And so prey all of us.
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Quote of the Day — Alec Nevala-Lee
The mental imagery involved with pianistic tactilia is not related to the striking of individual keys but rather to the rites of passage between notes. —Glenn Gloud, The Glenn Gould Reader
via Quote of the Day — Alec Nevala-Lee
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Will I still be me?
A filling fell out of my tooth
So in public I was uncouth
The dentist got the roots out
And,wow look at this ,shouts!
But I didn’t to tell you the truth.
She said , it’s part of your body,my dear
I said,that is precisely my fear
With my retinae detached
I feel rather too twitched
Will I still be me after here?
How many parts must we lose
Not counting our stocking and shoes?
Before I.m not me.
But who will I be?
Does the good Lord allow us to choose?
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The serpent
Battre le fer pendant qu’il est chaud.
Batter the serpent,kill or show!
Butter the four pence.Dante keemest shows
Bien mal acquis ne profite jamais.
Been Mahler who’s the key prophet,I’d say
Behind Mall. a key non-property is away.
Bonne renommée vaut mieux que ceinture dorée.
Bonne renamed ;vote, my eye!Who sent Doh,Ray?;Further on it evokes miaows!get onto her Faure
Bon sang ne saurait mentir.
Bouncing, no sore,Eamon,tears
Big sing ;no Faure was mentioned.
Pie Jesus
Peer Jesus.
Poor Jesus
Ce sont les tonneaux vides qui font le plus de
Recently,tons of videos with indecent lap dances.
Incessant Leighton with key, for he wants the view
How my heart speaks 