Who is the third who walks always beside you
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
- But who is that on the other side of you ?

TS Eliot – The Wasteland 

I am fascinated by names and naming — how a “thing” got to be called that “thing” — and in the cyber world, names and the act of naming take on new meanings. I have screen names, blog names, email names, avatar names (I sometimes forget which cyber name I am) and yet none really describe who I am. There is an anonymity to names in the cyber world — to show as much or as little of yourself as you want. You can be adventurous, mysterious, mythical, powerful, artistic, ironic, comic, and/or satirical. And, sometimes, you can just change your cyber name, much as the seasons and weather changes.

Thinking of names reminded me of TS Eliot and the naming of cats and how we have our private and public faces, just as we have our private and public names.

“O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.”

~ T.S. Eliot

(Most recent post in this series—Nov. 2. Others at irregular intervals and in the Archives.)

I went to college under the impression that I would major in art. I only vaguely recall now why I thought I could have any kind of future as an artist, but fortunately, after one or two college-level art courses, I realized that (a) I wasn’t nearly as talented as I had somehow been led to believe, and (b) I didn’t care enough about art to work at it as hard as I would need to in order to get better. College is like that, or can be.

So I changed majors to something I had always cared about: English. The English department at St. Andrews included a strong creative writing and modern poetry contingent, led by Ron Bayes. I took a modern/contemporary poetry course with him, in which the foundations were Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, H.D., and then Roethke, Stafford, and the Black Mountain poets—Creeley, Olson, Levertov, etc. He taught us how to read and appreciate these open forms, and gave us the skills to develop our own tastes. Having spent some time in Japan, Bayes was also enthusiastic about Japanese poetry and the fiction of Yukio Mishima; for me, the poetry took, the fiction did not.

Bayes is an encourager—not only in the writing workshops I recall, when probably some of us should have been stifled a bit more. He supported my applications to creative writing MA/MFA programs. Thanks to Bayes, I knew that “Old Possum” was a nickname of T.S. Eliot (as in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats), enabling me to answer the Final Jeopardy clue correctly, even though I still only came in second. And when I co-edited a book recently, Bayes was kind enough to e-mail congratulations, even though the book was nothing to do with poetry.

Bayes is still going strong and apparently unstoppable. As I prepared to compose this post, I googled him and the first result was a story about his readings this past week in Wilmington. Dozens of SAPC English majors and writers will testify to his skills as a poet and teacher, and to his graciousness.

i move as any crustacean crawler:

one claw at window & one at bay

one that dont, one what may

one for night & one for day.

this sickness aint one of shoot or pace—

isnt pinch or ounce of me!

i merely saw his lover drown

while mermaid’s voice was peeling down.

          Night is a purple mass

          bruise w/ streetlight for green & brown

          the patient, not quite living, yet risen

          Lazarus not needed—

          the bridge keeps its girders

          while its architect takes tea.

used to start at static’s visage, waving the lilac branch:

    the dirty dishes, the sugar cube

resting in garden soil,       the dust

that settles from foot-to-foot

traffic & my decaying brain

nowhere to be seen!

…

“if i considered my reply meant for one who might oneday return to the world,

most certainly this flame would

cease to flicker; and yet

since none — if what i hear is true — ever

returned alive

from this abyss, then

w/o fear of facing infamy, i answer you.”*

                and the answer is a question

                no longer that shapeless one

                kept for dark rooms, bleak streets

                   and far flung from        the face that wears

                  round glasses,   a handkerchief used chiefly to augment the pocket

                & no longer Do I dare Disturb the universe?* but

                Do I dare not?

you say there will be

and i say there IS

time

to put clean sheets on the bed

before dirtying them again

time to saturate then remove

to rip to tearing

then recalibrate what’s riven

time for a you to be a you

& a me to be a me, no longer

               married to the sea.

but perhaps what you feared most

was a stab of the pin

spearing guts to wall

immobile in the display

of a coffee spoon life’s demise

     for always it is best

         to appear unsuspicious

       best to continue the erudite chats

           & upper-air friendships

           that an admission would overturn.

You were happy to be of service

but walking on the beach

admiring the obscurity of an ocean’s depths,

the callow of a crab,

one would wonder that maybe

the artist’s mask may have revealed

the reverie he’d intended conceal!

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre –
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.

–From “Little Gidding,” part of The Four Quartets

The other stanzas are at least twice as long. This is the entire fourth stanza. That’s all it needed to be. Check out the way the fifth stanza closes:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

Read the whole thing sometime. I mean, all quartets. It’s powerful; it’s worth it. You’ll see why the man received the Nobel Prize in Literature.

28th October-2nd November

Now the light falls

Across the open field, leaving the deep lane

Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon

(East Coker, TS Eliot)

Finally have a chance to catch up after a hectic few days of bardic busyness – it’s that festival feeling again, as a flurry of events occur around Halloween, the deadline of the year (in Celtic Tradition the festival was celebrated as Samhain, summer’s ending, and Celtic New Year – for Celts, midnight was considered the middle of the day, and so the ‘midnight of the year’ – as I feel Samhain is, more than the Winter Solstice, which has a glimmer of light, as the sun is ‘reborn’ – would similarly be its negative axis – the dark pole around which the wheel of the year turns).

As Mary Queen of Scots put, stitching the shortening threads of her alotted time: ‘In my end is my beginning’ and as TS Eliot added in The Four Quartets, ‘In my beginning is my end.’  It is an Alpha/Omega time of year (although in truth, things are always ending and beginning – it just depends on when our awareness starts). With the nights drawing in, it feels like a shift of focus, a turning inward – nature hunkers down – but life, alas, has other plans for us human animals! Hibernation is not an option!

Wednesday saw another Guest Writers in Conversation with fabulous female poets, Helen Moore and Rose Flint talking at Bath Writers’ Workshop, the event I co-run with screenwriter David Lassman. Helen and Rose’s work and ethos shared some common ground but also has interesting differences – teased out through the insightful talk and critical response they gave. They both performed a selection of their work and answered questions from the audience. Another superb evening – it was fascinating to hear the poets talk about the evolution of their work and themselves as writers. Lesser know writers rarely get a chance to discuss their work in such depth and have a fellow writer interview them and offer an insightful response. Both are great poets – check them out!

Thursday, after an exciting test run of a beautiful Triumph Legend – my next bike! – I went to Bristol with David for the Cafe of Ideas, a monthly forum. I was invited to be on a panel discussing narrative with a bank manager, professor and BBC presenter. Held at Co-exist, an arts collective based at Hamilton House, the space was transformed with performance poetry, music and a buffet. A sister event (same theme, format and panel) will take place at the Chapel Arts Centre, Bath, on November 26th.

Friday I was a guest performer at What a Performance! – a monthly open mic held at St James Wine Vaults, Bath. MCed by Richard Selby, keeping the spirit of Dave Angus (it’s founder and original host) alive and kicking. The evening was dedicated to the writer Moyra Caldecott - in her eighties and now unable to perform her work due to a stroke. Moyra has been a great influence and inspiration on me – she has supported my work for the last ten years – so it was a pleasure to participate in this event to honour her. I read out 3 of her poems as well as my own 14 page epic, Dragon Dance (from memory). My fellow guest performer Kirsty was on form with her three fabulous tales – and there were many other great contributions.

Talking to Ronald Hutton at Stanton Drew

Saturday I attended an OBOD open ceremony at Stanton Drew, a stone circle not far from Bath. It was very moving, as we were asked to think about those we have lost, and what we wanted to let go of. A pint in the Druids Arms afterwards  helped to bring us back into the land of the living! Later, for something ‘completely different’ I went to a ‘Halloween Chic’ party. It was interesting – two very different ways to celebrate the same festival!

Entering Stoney Littleton long barrow - something watches from inside...

Sunday looked like it was going to be a washout but the skies miraculously brightened after midday and I went for a quick rideout to Stoney Littleton long barrow, travelling back five thousand years as I crawled into the narrow Neolithic burial chamber to remember my ancestors at the time of Samhain.

Anthony Nanson launches Garden of Awen with a spooky tale - Chapel Arts Centre, Bath, 1st November 2009

Later, I hosted the first Garden of Awen at Chapel Arts Centre, Bath – an event I put on with Svanur Gisli Thorkelsson, whose Icepax Productions did the business once again. A guest, Rosie, said she had never seen the venue look so good. A Bath Spa art student, Jennifer, painted two great backdrops to help create an Arcadian feel. Foliage was festooned on screens. Green candles and poem flowers decorated the tables. Chapel technician Jonathan provided some snazzy lighting. Svanur brilliantly choreographed the acts: Anthony Nanson, storyteller, got things going with a gripping and stylish start with an atmospheric tale about a vampire. Nikki Bennett launched her new poetry collection, Love Shines Beyond Grief, with a bang (or a pop and a fizz – as we wet the baby’s head with flutes of Cava). David Metcalfe ended the first half with a powerful set of British death ballads and his spine-tingling poem, The Last Wolf. The second half started with a tune from Marko Gallaidhe, just back from Bampton Festival, but with still enough puff in him for a song. Richard Austin shared his poetry with aplomb. Marion Fawlk, also from Stroud, looked regal on the stage in her lovely velvet dress – sharing her deeply felt goddess poetry. The evening ended with a blistering set from guitar-shaman and sublime songsmith, James Hollingsworth. He was ‘resurrected’ for a stunning encore of Led Zep’s classic ‘In My Time of Dying’ – a suitable way to end our evening themed on ‘Death & Rebirth’.  And so, the 1st November, Celtic New Year, saw the birth of a sparkling addition to Bath’s literary firmament – a professional spoken word showcase on the first Sunday of the month. Writer Crysse Morrison, in her blog said: ‘

‘Great to see such an atmospheric venue join the local network of alternative entertainment.’

The Garden will return with its ‘high quality diversity of spoken word and music’ on the 6th December with an amazing line-up. Check out www.awenpublications.co.uk for details.

Meanwhile, I’m going to get me some quality zeds…

Give us streusel, needle pie,
Till the blackbirds have perched atop some guy
And some monkey’s left his poops along the mantle;
Give us trim that’s never seen a chicken’s feets,
Or split its slitted seats
Or bashed its head on pig-iron pantaloons
And big old waitresses on sunny dunes:
Feets that fester like a mold-encrusted jelly bean
That’s tinted yellow-green
That makes me want to puke like I’m a hydrant
Oh Lordy give me power
To chew it back another hour

All the time my girlfriend’s knitting socks
Pattern’d with bears and Goldilocks

A feeble clown that whacked his bike upon the parking deck
A wimpy mime that crashed his cycle in the parking deck
Whooshed his poodle through a firey hoop of whimsy
Published a little guide for sorting speck
Squeezed in his red Corolla a dozen white-faced colleagues
Rolled through the projects, baked a waffle cake
And, syrup rolling down his sodden rayon smock,
Belched ether in the air and shat a rake.

Listen up, you crusty jerks
As the sickly clown goes over falls in swimsuits
Calling his shrink despite the roaming fees
You crusty jerks, you crusty jerks
I’ll stab your stabben faces till my blade’s point is moot
You crusty jerks just stole the wrong guy’s beans
The chili recipe’s in crisis now
As, to the distant north, a baby weans
Jerks that rob and jerks that kill
Some jerks can eat a million stacks of pennies
And a jillion fries from Wendy’s or Benny’s
I’ve crushed my thumb and now must have my pill.

All the time my girlfriend’s knitting socks
Pattern’d with bears and Goldilocks

Listen up, you crusty jerks
My jumpsuit, “It’s on fire!” Ouch. “It’s on fire!”
Your sister lit me up like a funeral pyre
And in two short days I was set to retire –
(Fluffy clouds: “Go through Sears and cut northwest!”)
Diesel gas, dripping aliens bursting through my fancy vest,
A hamster chewing carob, gnashed beneath a wooden chest –
(Goober Grape: “That’s the sandwich spread the kids love best!”)
Have you seen
Ma petite pamplemousse?
Every day I floss incisors and sell gallons of their juice.

There are giant frogs in Jersey, giant frogs –
They are in the attic, the pantry, everywhere,
When I’m tired sometimes I sleep in my boss’s chair
And then she wakes me from my nap and we play Pogs
Till there are icicles in my nasal hair
And in her underwear

When there’s a beagle in your jockeys, kick him out
Those dogs that circle in a hypnotizing way
And when they’ve circled, laying on the floor
That’s when they get the spray
I’ll eat a big bowl of some fish and sauce
Yo, Biggie Smalls for mayor!
And when there’s corn in mama’s chowder, throw it out
If it’s hot, or cold, or mild
(If you eat it, your seed will never bear a child!)
Is it soup from a can
That’s sexier than my hand?
Soup that burns when babies touch, overflown by trout
B.I.G., the rap slayer
My eyes just got the spray.

***

Did you ever go down south and fry yourself a ham
But shaved the glaze that’s on it in a pan
And saved it for Thanksgiving, frosting granny’s dentures?
You ought to see the way it snows
When the eagles molt their cadmium beaks into cumulus.

***

A shot of whiskey, my resume, now my career’s at stake!
Chewed-on burnt nuggets
Fatty … Greasy … Opaque butt plug-its,
Spattered on the wall, sending invitations to New York’s elite.
One time, when I combed and plucked and blotted
I charmed a British gal into saying she “fahted”
And then when she licked my eyeballs, kissed my bum,
And when we cut through Sears (north by northwest), she stole a rack of blouses
We got engaged then — and then clicked our mouses;
We have raised a family here in Frisco
And we have trademarked magic Oreos lined with Crisco
And, in short, we both felt dumb.

And can I get a witness, anyone,
Support my job, my calligraphy, my buns,
Ignore my nature trails, ignore my frightening cache of guns,
Can I get a witness,
Who will tell me that my beagle’s not too old
Who will scratch the sciatica from my back
And save it in a death-defying planter
And say: “I am your father, you’re from my balls,
Come praise your daddy’s sack, I still have my sack” –
And sell, haggling euros at the mall.
Your pitch: “These flakes are at least as good as crack
These flakes are just like crack.”

And can I get a witness, anyone,
Will someone testify,
She looks like Gwyneth only taller and with bigger boobs
And she’s a Pisces, and I’m a Virgo, and we’ve seen “The Big Lebowski” a thousand times
And cuddled, and our farts nearly rhyme? –
Get your feet off my trash can or I’ll smash your face!
Just imagine steroid panthers up in this place:
Will someone testify
My butt, contouring the seat beneath my mass,
It smells, “Just like a piece of Bourbon Pie,
Like whiskey baked in pie.”

***

Shit! I forgot my muffins, left the oven on;
Someone call the fuzz, the firemen too
And bring dalmations, if you know what’s good for you,
And feed my newt, you prat, you vile punk,
Abandonza! It’s good to be the king,
Wafer-thin, spritely, and rectangular
Devour my wages, make the ladies sing;
Alas, my groin, it seems triangular –
My groin, alas, is skunked.

Where’s your hand? … Where’s your hand? …
I feel something moving on my naughty gland.

Does your mother do your laundry? Have you seen Keanu’s wife?
You can climb the tallest mountain if you buy a Ginsu knife.
You’ll excuse me please, I’ve got to take a life.
Your zipper’s down, bro. XYZ.

I can smell your family’s spirit in my pool
Skimming the scum from the surface slicked slime
Looking round longingly for a lime

There’s a monkey in the cockles of my heart
She feeds me little guavas when I’m in town
And makes fart noises on my belly when I lay down.

Revolving Doors

a symbol of life?

(cursor over image will reveal location of the revolving door)

‘…We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time’.

© Janezworld 2009

]]> http://kissing.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/everything-is-contained-in-now/ Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:19:23 +0000 monkeymind http://kissing.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/everything-is-contained-in-now/

Time present and time past.
Are both present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all the time is eternally present
All time is unreedemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

  T.S. Eliot (1935). From “Burnt Norton” in No.1. Four quartets.

Trial-and-Error Symphony         by Mark Nielsen, Oct. 28, 2009

Composing. Caring. Not caring.

Never minding the bad notes.

Changing them later.

Embracing the eraser.

A potter and a pot.

Creating an earthen vessel.

Made of magic mud.

A cracked pitcher, poured out.

A cup who runneth over.

Sweet spirit. Potent.

Refilled daily. Leaking love.

Sparkling. Rippling. Reflecting my source.

Making a decision to not be perfect.

Flying. Falling. Feeling.

Forgiving. Everyone.

Being stuck. Being lost. Being okay.

Try again anyway. Anything. Anywhere. 

Here, now, before it’s too late.

Believing it’s never too late.

Remembering. Smiling.

Finger-painting. Messing around. Making noise.

Using dirt to get clean.

Mud and memory.

Blood and ashes.

Slow. Learning. Asking forgiveness.

Surviving death by drowning.

Boundless untapped potential.

Broken.

Always new.

In between.

Crossing bridges, rivers, fingers.

In repair.

Behind the scenes.

My original face, an unspoiled place.

Beautiful.

Planting. Planted. Planned.

A seed.

Seeking harmony.

Waiting. Hoping. A certain kind of knowing.

Seeing,

I  AM.

I am.

I am

In a rare public appearance, TS Eliot’s widow Valerie attended a reading of her husband’s poems last night at London University.

“It was marvellous to hear Tom’s poems and to have them read so well,” she said. It is 86 years since TS Eliot published The Waste Land, revolutionising English poetry and placing him as its greatest 20th century exponent.

The readers were Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, actor Jeremy Irons, The Wire’s star Dominic West and actress Anna Cartaret as part of the TS Eliot International Summer School. It is more than 44 years since Valerie Eliot was widowed and she has been the sole executor of his literary estate ever since, cleverly allowing Andrew Lloyd Webber to use her husband’s feline verse for the musical Cats which effectively bankrolled Faber & Faber as the music became a global hit.

The reading in the Brunei Gallery was organised by Josephine Hart, who has pioneered public poetry readings at the British Library and recorded CDs of verse read by Harold Pinter, Ralph Fiennes, Roger Moore, Edward Fox and many other great British actors, with a CD and book given to every secondary school, introducing pupils to the auditory power of poetry.

Mrs Eliot, 82, married the American-born poet in January 1957; he was 37 years older than her. She was the great love of his life, rejuvenating him after his disastrous first marriage to Vivien who was mentally ill.

Mrs Eliot edited the first volume of her husband’s letters and also the facsimile volume of The Waste Land with the manuscript showing how Ezra Pound cut it brilliantly by a third, ensuring its position as the most important poem in modern history.

She said she was moved and exhilarated by the readings which were fast, lively and produced a standing ovation from the audience.

“History before our eyes, an incredible connection,” said Heaney.

More Random Bits

Have let go of having 48 bits done by tonight–will give it a week. 10 down, 38 to go. I like this

I’m slightly less sick now. Thanks to all of you faithful blog followers who have been diligently bringing up this site, waiting to see if I’ve turned into a swine. I don’t want to disappoint any gamblers who might have been betting against me, but I’m still just a short caucasian girl with a runny nose. I blow things out of proportion sometimes. However, I still think Meredith might die. She rides her bike to school in the rain, so she hasn’t gotten better yet.

I’m reading The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon right now. That book is a trip. I think I might understand it better if I were smoking something while I read it. But it’s not a pleasant trip like something you’d get from listening to the Beatles (though it was written in the 60s). It’s a grungy sort of feeling that leaves me wishing the world weren’t so…blech. Maybe I just don’t get it. I’m only on the third chapter, so I can’t fairly jump to any conclusions yet. I just need to get into a Pynchon state of mind (a frightening thought).

My professor talked about how Pynchon is Postmodern. His description of Postmodernism sounded like a mess of sameness, shallowness, flat functionality, and ugly, practical architecture. Me, I’m a fan of Modernism. Modernism had TS Eliot and Yeats. Those are my boys. They looked at life and said, hey, why are we so alienated? We’re alienated from each other, we’re alienated from nature, heck, we’re even alienated from our selves. We don’t know who we are or what we’re here for.

I can feel that in my own life. I feel the most myself when I’m in nature. I don’t have to perform for anyone or worry about society or who I’m supposed to be. I feel most at peace and closest to God when I’m in nature. It always gives me the sense that if everything else fell down around me, as long as I could run off into the woods or the mountains, I would be content. When I sit on the bank of a creek and listen to the natural sounds of life, Psalm 46:10’s admonition is easy: “Be still and know that I am God.” Then, if only briefly, I know who I am and what I’m here for. Since part of what I’m here for is to love, I try not to be alienated from people either. I’m a story teller. I love talking to people and telling them everything in my head and on my heart. As much as I love nature, I wouldn’t survive long without genuine interactions with other people. When I manage to shut my mouth for a while, I love to listen to people too. But I know what Eliot is getting at about alienation in Prufrock when he says,

“And I have known the eyes already, known them all– The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? And how should I presume?”

Existentialism might be a bit much for me, but I do like to think about it, too. Sometimes I go through life just trying to be functional, but it always leaves me feeling empty and antsy for something else, something different, something more. I know there’s more to life than existence. I don’t want to just be here.

This class- The Rise and Triumph of the Novel- is the best ever, by the way. Call me predictable, but my favorite so far is The Great Gatsby, which I somehow didn’t read in high school. But now it’s time to get back to Pynchon. Maybe my eyes will be opened.

Jenni Murray recently discussed preventative mastectomy on Woman’s Hour; you can listen here to her interviews with a genetic medicine consultant and a BRCA+ woman who had prophylactic bilateral mastectomies and runs a helpline for hereditary breast cancer. Only 8 1/2 minutes, and well worth it.

I’ve not touched the subject of prophylactic mastectomy/oophorectomy/hysterectomy here yet (and to think that eight months ago I didn’t even know how to spell “mastectomy.” Now I’ve had one. Precocious, non?) — largely because I’m still not entirely sure how I feel yet. Maybe I never will be. Also, I know I have a readership of BRCA+ women who have had preventative surgeries without ever having had cancer, and it’s not my intention to offend by seemingly trivializing what is a serious personal decision. So I can only speak strictly subjectively.

And I will.

The BRCA mutation is a bitch. You can’t reason your way out of it; having up to an 87% chance of developing breast cancer & 60% chance of developing ovarian cancer is shit.

And as T. of Teri’s Blip, BRCA+ blogger who’s recently had preventative surgery (& appears to be doing great – congratulations, lady; you are an inspiration & I truly mean it), once commented: “If you were told you had an 85% of winning the lottery, you’d damn sure buy a ticket.”

But I have to admit I cringe a little at this neologism ”previvor.”  Having a BRCA mutation is an intense psychological struggle. But until you feel that lump in your breast, it is strictly psychological.  True, often the psychological aspect is worse than the physical; after all, worrying about metastasis made me sicker than the chemo ever did.

Are too many BRCA mutants jumping prematurely on the cancer bandwagon?

I can’t say. I won’t deign to patronizingly speak for them. It’s personal — and personally, I’ve never been able to speak from the position of knowing, even suspecting, that I had a genetic mutation, but not having cancer. I just got cancer.

Which is how I know that, no matter how I look at it,  the risk of the disease is not the same thing as the disease. “Previvor” is not synonomous with “survivor.” Because even though it’s an awful choice to have to make, preventative surgery is still a choice. And cancer isn’t.

Am I saying that having cancer is some kind of magically transformative experience that you can’t possibly understand unless you’ve been there, no matter how many loved ones you’ve watched deal with it?

Well, maybe.

Having had a stepparent, and arguably the best person I’ve ever known, die in a car crash at the age of 44 makes me scrutinize the possibility of having any further surgery for prevention. Yes, I could develop cancer in the other breast. But I could die in a car crash too. I mean. Have you seen the way I drive?

 It’s not a fantastic comparison, since my risk of dying from the cancer is immeasurably higher than dying in a freak accident.

But then, I’m no philosophical eternalist. For me, all future is purely hypothetical. If the future isn’t real until it happens, then future hypothetical “cancer” should carry the same psycological weight as future hypothetical “piano dropped from window.”

Of course, it doesn’t actually. Questions beginning “what if the cancer…” are fair. And cutting out that worry is, for many women, well worth the surgery and its aftermath. But for me, well, I can’t help but think: what if you cut off your breasts and cut out your ovaries and then skiied into a tree before the cancer ever got you?

Like a black fly in yr chardonnay, eh? Perhaps not exactly ironic, but it fucking sucks.

For me, the surgery was the worst of it. Right now, I can’t imagine subjecting myself to it again unless it became absolutely necessary.

Or maybe it’s because I’m twenty-five years old and even despite having had cancer, I still can’t believe any of it is real. Or maybe it’s because I’m twenty-five years old and accordingly every biological impulse begs me to preserve my body as best I can. It’s been ravaged by chemotherapy and tamoxifen and maybe the menopause is forever, maybe I’ll be permanently infertile. But maybe not.  And right now my impulse to preserve my ovaries is stronger than the impulse to radically reduce my risk of ovarian cancer. Because I can’t willingly reduce the chance I’ll have children to zero. It sounds dramatic, but I don’t think I’d want to live.

And well, Jenna, the transsexual psychic medium who shared my hospital room (more later; it’s a whole other post), said I’d have one son.

I hope she’s wrong. Not about the son, but about the “one.” I’ve always wanted four or five children. Not that that’s really likely biologically, especially since I’m not off Tamoxifen for five years. But then, I would have been doing my Ph.D. during all that time anyway, so having children in my twenties was never going to happen.

Yesterday I was clearing up and ending up flipping through some notebooks from freshman year at Vassar. Earnest pencil diagrams of the human brain with its neatly-labelled hypothalamus (back when I fancied myself a scientist); sprawling sentence diagrams and phonetic transcriptions; paragraphs of delicate, accurate but grammatically stilted French. And all of it inscrutable to me now.

In the back of one of the notebooks–equally incomprehensible to my present self–was my name dreamily attached to a different surname, back when I thought I’d marry my boyfriend, and the names of four hypothetical children.

Is it a mania to mourn them?

Everything seemed so certain then, and so possible.

…

Ok, reverie endeth. Back to the original point on preventative mastectomy. 

I can only think five years in advance right now, not fifty. Fifty! My surgeon raised the same point as the man in this interview: when you think about the average life expectancy of a woman as eighty…”You’ve got a lot of years you could live,” was what she said. But I couldn’t take the extrapolation of my life to the “average.” The average woman doesn’t develop breast cancer at twenty-four. Your life expectancy’s a moot point. I cut the doctor in Pittsburgh off when he tried to reassure me with statistics. My statistical chance of getting cancer in the first place was less than .01%. Statistics mean nothing to me. Statistics mean shit.

I want to live to fifty. To most people that sounds tragically young. But I’m twenty-five. Living to fifty means doubling my life. Living longer than my grandparents did.

I probably have the BRCA mutation. But I don’t know for sure. And since I don’t plan to take any preventative surgical action for the next five years at least, I’m not so sure I want to know. I see how some people feel the genetic crystal ball is their saviour. But it’s kind of a curse.

I agree wholeheartedly with the point the genetic counselor raises in the Woman’s Hour interview: that the concern right now should be managing the first cancer, not agonizing over a possible new primary in the other breast. For five years at least. A lot can happen in five years. I should know; five years ago I was in college, reading T.S. Eliot and thinking I had the whole world ahead of me.

They poison you with that inspirational rhetoric. “They,” like, the people who say shit like “you’ve got your whole life ahead of you,” not T.S. Eliot.

–

We are the hollow women
We are the stuffed women
Leaning together
Breasts filled with silicon.

What a couple of days this has been! First the Booker – to Hilary Mantel for a huge fat novel about Thomas Cromwell, of all people. Henry VIII’s right-hand man, architect of the Terror. I’ve bought it. Vastly reduced on Amazon, less than half price. Heartening for a book of sweep, scope, historical perspective, ambition, win a prize – a non-solipsistic novel that looks outside the little bubble of the chattering classes… not by any of those people… etc… And the Tudors! When you get down to it, I think this is an excellent time for a novel about the creation, hoarding and abuses of centralised power.

I actually had a nightmare about Thomas Cromwell when I was 14 or 15, featuring – I don’t know how it worked, except in that metaphysical way dreams work – a painting of a blue dog, whose eyes followed you around the room, and the painting then fell off the wall, down behind a cupboard. I woke up in stark fear, whcih I couldn’t shake off for many days. I think it started out as Cromwell and became the blue dog. Very scary.

And speaking of power, abuses, etc – today Gary McKinnon lost his “right” of appeal against his ridiculous extradition to the USA. (If it’s really a right, can you lose it?) Talk about breaking the butterfly on a wheel. Talk about the UK toadying to the USA, allowing an obsessive UFO geek with Asperger’s to be extradited and made an example of on post-9/11 anti-terrorist legislation – where is the UK on this? Protecting its citizen? First of all, the software McKinnon used to gain access to the Pentagon’s systems was legal – schools use it – and secondly, he “hacked” into the Pentagon by identifying which users had no login passwords.

Why are they putting him on trial, and not the IT managers at the Pentagon???

And thirdly, it amazes me that senior politicians can possibly think it is a good thing to have a treaty or whatever it is, of any kind, which relinquishes jurisdiction of any British citizen to the US, at the US’ instigation. What?!?

Someone said somewhere the other day, we all think we have to worry about Big Brother, but we should really be worrying about Little Brother.

On which note, it was delightful when someone on Twitter said the Conservative Party Conference was like a Slytherin school reunion.

National Poetry Day was something else on Twitter: everyone was talking about poetry, it was like wow man. Then the Nobel announcement: all morning people were speculating about whether Murakami would get it, but that bubble was effectively burst at 12.58 by someone tweeting, “Does anyone seriously imagine that Murakami might get the Nobel?” Whereupon – er – he didn’t. It would have been so nice – everybody already knew who he is.

But Obama’s got the Peace Prize! Why is everyone saying he shouldn’t have it? Because he hasn’t made a difference yet? How big a difference does it have to be before it’s a difference? I think it’s nice that they’ve honoured something instantaenous, a snapshot in time as it were. The last Polaroid.

And speaking of photography, Irving Penn’s died. He was 92 but it’s still a shock. I was a little bit obsessed with his work for a while when I was very young, its sculptural cleanliness, and the wonderful shadows. The joy and depth in his fashion photos, and the mystery of his portraits. And the Clinique ads, that have so defined a brand that we don’t even see the qualities of the photographs any more.

Then there’s the BBC Arena special on TS Eliot – who was, as you may know, voted the “nation’s favourite poet” on National Poetry Day. (I voted for Donne. Contrarywise.) An amazing documentary, if a little repetitive, and with a few gaps. Really well worth watching. It’s worth watching just for the bit about Emanuel Litvinoff, and Danny Abse’s anecdote. Though really it is very sweet indeed about Valerie, like a love story. It’s marvellous stuff.

If that’s too mainstream for you, this came up over on the Poets on Fire forum: Keston Sutherland reading Section A of White Hot Andy. I really think you should watch as much of it as you can, especially right after the discussions of Modernism and The Waste Land in the TS Eliot film. Remember that Eliot was once shockingly new, and made his name jumbling up voices. (Though I agree with my fellow forum member that “arabesque of equivalence” is unfortunate. Possibly not a formation that Pound, say, might have sanctioned in his later flowering.)

Meanwhile, I’m on a scary poetry deadline, reading about Wilde, drafting poems ha;f asleep, or in the steam room at the pool, that when I go to write them down turn out to be awful – so not writing… I feel like I’m circling around something, homing in on it maybe if I’m lucky, who knows, who knows. Oh, it’s difficult.

Oh, and the readers’ notes on my essay on Anthony Hecht, written well over a year ago and only now getting edited! The readers thought my assertions were astonishing. They thought Sesame Street was a “very obscure reference.” Well – not to anyone under 55, I don’t think. Admittedly not the sort of reference usually bandied around in respect of Mr Hecht, but that was kind of why I did it. It was directly relevant to the passage of Hecht, in fact. I think I know who the readers were, and one of them, I think her name begins “Mrs.” So after ranting and raving and throwing around phrases like “heritage theme park” and saying, “Well clearly I shouldn’t be in this book then!” I have come to an understanding with my heroic, patient, long-suffering and extremely professional editor, the tireless Ernest Hilbert… All I have to do now is pluck up the courage to open the file. I’ll do it after Oscar. One thing at a time.

My lovely yellow 1940’s anglepoise lamp, the one I bought off eBay the other week for my desk – tired of typing in the dark – has been rewired. Imagine though when I got it home and found that the new cord has no on/off switch! It’s the sort of thing you might expect them in the rewiring shop to notice. But no. The guy is so lovely in there, but he was stuck on the why did I pay money for something with chipped paint thing. I’m there saying like a useless pseud, “It’s a design classic…” But I’m not lugging it back, I’ll just have to turn it on and off at the outlet. Who cares. It weighs a ton. It’s fine.

And that’s it, folks. The Baroque TV isn’t working; I called Virgin Media and they said it’ll be a whole WEEK before they can send someone round.  (I watched Arena on the computer.) Thank you, Virgin! And that really is it.

The rousing strains of Rudyard Kipling’s “If” might have catapulted him to a landslide victory in the vote for the nation’s favourite poem back in 1995, but the reading tastes of the UK appear to have taken a more modernist turn over the following 14 years with TS Eliot today named the nation’s favourite poet in a BBC poll.

The results of the online poll, released to mark National Poetry Day, saw Eliot win in a “tight final”, according to the BBC, narrowly pipping John Donne to the post. In an eclectic top 10, Rastafarian dub poet Benjamin Zephaniah came in third (the only living poet to make the top 10), while no female poets – not even poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy or Sylvia Plath – made the final line-up, which was rounded out by Wilfred Owen, Philip Larkin, William Blake, William Butler Yeats, John Betjeman, John Keats and Dylan Thomas. …

Today is National Poetry Day in Britain and the BBC has announced the results of its online poll to discover who is the Nation’s Favourite Poet. Amongst the final top ten are some names we might expect to see: Dylan Thomas, John Keats, WB Yeats, John Betjeman, William Blake, and Wilfred Owen for instance. For me there are some dreadful omissions, not least the unplaced William Wordsworth, who would rank highly in my own list, as would the equally unfancied Alfred Lord Tennyson.

John Donne has surprisingly come second in the poll. I do not mean I am surprised because I don’t rate him – Donne’s poetry is often gloriously witty, and shows a wonderfully open mind for one so defined by his faith – but because when I first encountered his work he was most unfashionable. His return to the top table is, I assume, due to the fact that people have begun to read him afresh and found him far less stale, pompous and materialistic than contemporaries like Ben Johnson.

I am particularly interested in the fact that of the six living poets originally eligible for public vote, only one of them has made the top ten. Current Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, ex-Laureate and Lemsip botherer Andrew Motion, Roger McGough, Seamus Heaney and Simon Armitage are all less popular with the voters than poets who had mostly died before any of the modern breed were born. This interests me because of the current trend amongst poetry magazines to act as though poetic styles and values of the past are a dirty secret which must be purged from our practises. Publications such as Ambit or The Rialto, insist on an often leaden 21st century poetry bereft of rhyme, stripped of metre and sometimes even lacking discernible rhythm. And yet the one contemporary poet who has made the top ten, finishing in an admirable third place, I might add, is Benjamin Zephaniah, a man whose poetry relies on an insistence of rhythms as well as highly structured metre and rhyme. Are those who voted in this poll not readers of such magazines? And if not, how many more readers would Ambit or The Rialto gain if they were to acknowledge that modern poetry can seem quite barren when compared with many of the names in the BBC’s list?

And the overall winner? Not British at all, but an American immigrant, Thomas Stearns Eliot. Yes, that’s the same TS Eliot who wrote one of the most evocative, if seemingly inaccessible poems of the Modernist era – The Waste Land. Yes, TS Eliot, whose Four Quartets are masterpieces of consistent rhyme, metre and rhythm, in case the editors of Ambit have not bothered to read him again since their undergraduate days. Eliot, the vaguely anti-Semitic, make-up wearing, monotone of voice, didactic playwright who worked as a bank clerk before winding up working for Faber & Faber. As a devotee of Modernist literature I am as surprised as I am delighted that Eliot should top the poll, but can’t help fearing that it has nothing to do with his credible work at all. What if the only reason so many thousands of people have voted for TS Eliot is not because they love The Waste Land or The Hollow Men? What if it’s the result of countless sheep-like theatre goers who think ‘Cats’ is high culture and who have an unread copy of Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats on a shelf somewhere to prove they are true fans? National Kill Andrew Lloyd Webber Day anyone?

I was going to begin this post by wishing you all a happy National Poetry Day, I was even thinking of throwing in a jaunty little haiku, but I’ve just visited the BBC’s poetry season website (I blogged about it a while back) and read the results of the Nation’s Favourite Poet vote and now I don’t feel all that happy or jaunty at all (luckily for you; you’ve been spared my terrible haiku.)

Do you know, only four of the top ten poets were born in the 20th century? I was going to work out the average year of birth but I realised that John Donne in second place, born in 1572, would skew the results somewhat. Thank goodness for third favourite Benjamin Zephaniah, born in 1958, the only one of the nation’s top ten poets who is happily Not Dead Yet.

I certainly don’t wish to undermine the brilliance of the poets who made it into the top ten, I merely wish to point out that National Poetry Day seems not to have reached its goal of ”bringing poetry to the public eye” if most of the poets on the shortlist were firmly in the public eye, or at least somewhere in the back of the public’s minds, already. Who has not come across the Nation’s Favourite Poet T.S. Eliot before?  Have we not all had William Blake, W.B. Yeats and John Keats forced down our throats at school? Where are all the contemporary poets?

Before voting took place, thirty poets were pre-selected by a panel of judges (including the Director of the Poetry Society and the Director of the Arts Council). Each of the thirty names on the list is accompanied by a head shot and if you scroll through all the photos, you will see that only seven of them are in colour. That’s right. Most of the pre-selected poets lived before colour photography either existed or became popular. Some of them, judging by the oil paintings and pencil sketches, were around before photography existed. What were you thinking, panel of judges? You have done a great disservice to contemporary poetry. Looking at this list of thirty poets, one might think that poetry was a dying art.

On the contrary, poetry is alive and well and evolving with the times: in the last decade or so with the advent of mobile phones we’ve seen poems written in text speak and condensed into 140 characters; there have been poetry slamming events popping up around the country and videos of poets performing their work are all over youtube. The list of stale poets in the top ten (with the exception of Benjamin Zephaniah) makes no reflection on the dynamic nature of poetry. There are poets writing now about current affairs, about troops in Afghanistan and knife crime in London, issues that people today feel strongly about and can identify with. I have never studied English literature and I don’t read poems critically, but for enjoyment. I don’t feel that I can engage with the writings of TS Eliot, no matter how popular his poems were at the time he was writing with them. I do feel something, a kind of pang of recognition, when I read the poems written by women in the New Writing section of Mslexia. (Another disappointing fact: not one woman features in the nation’s top ten).

After this rant you’re probably expecting me to recommend some contemporary poets. I’m not an expert at all but recently I’ve come across and liked poems by Mark Thomson, Liz Niven and Meirion Jordan.  Here are links to youtube videos of Mark Thomson and Meirion Jordan reading their own poetry. Enjoy!

Tracking my life through poetry

Today is National Poetry Day.  Apparently the nation’s favourite poet is TS Eliot, although I’m not sure how many of them have read The Wasteland, or whether any of them actually ‘get it’ (I certainly don’t.  I’m not sure TS did, either).

This got me thinking about the poems I love and the poems I’ve written in the past and the poems I don’t write any longer (I haven’t written one for three or four years) and whether I could track a narrative of my life through them.  I wrote an awful lot when I was younger – my mum always says that I took a long while to learn and then just wouldn’t stop – and there was a rapid change from my pre-pubescent style, which was very reminiscent of Allan Ahlberg, Brian Patten et al, I suppose.  Consider the following from when I was about eight:

Easy to make and fun to do
That’s what the instructions read
“Oh, this will be easy!”
I later wished I hadn’t said.

It was supposed to be a ship
But it looked more like a plane
And so I took it all apart
And started it again.

I used to have books and books full of the stuff, interspersed with pictures of unicorns and descriptions of what the people walking past on the street were wearing.  Amateur anthropology, I think, or perhaps just spying.  I think it was about the same time that I wrote my seminal work, Sammy the Squirrel. It was a tour de force and debuted at our school Harvest Festival to wide acclaim.

After moving house, school and county and feeling drastically uprooted, all of my poetry became very alienated angsty teen (read: inutterably cliche) with (illustrated) moans about being a jigsaw piece put in the wrong jigsaw box.   “Unfortunately” I don’t have any examples; they’re all in notebooks under my bed in Shropshire.  All very depressing stuff really; as was my oevre in college, although then it took on a Tim Burton-esque goth tinge.  As did I.  I think I wrote the latter after reading Neil Gaiman’s Coraline.

Falling Apart

a man lived on a hill
the man he was lonely
he dreamt of a girl who was
his one & only

he dreamt of the one who’d
take his pain away
his longing consumed him
by night & by day

his clothes were a mess &
his hair was a fright
his longing consumed him
by day & by night

one day he created
a girl of his own
her hair was of wool
and twigs were her bone

her eyes were two buttons
through which she could peek
her mouth sewn by needle
so she could not speak

for breasts he used padding
he padded them well
though one was misshapen
you hardly could tell

he named his doll sally
he loved her much more
than any possession
that he’d loved before

but cotton wore thin
and holes wouldn’t mend
he tried to ignore it
he tried to pretend

he caressed her hands
as her stitches came free
and watched as her leg
fell apart at the knee

he sobbed as her buttons
fell out of her face
her once sturdy skin
was resembling lace

and with her decay
went the last of his heart
he looked on in horror
as she came apart

so that old man’s loneliness
a rag doll can’t fix
with his grief and his longing
he had loved her to bits

Amanda Fucking Palmer would be proud.

After another uprooting and the loss of home I returned to the intraspective moaning, although to be fair my style was a little more controlled and I’d lost the illustrations of jigsaws and sad faces.  I think it’s fair to say that I didn’t enjoy my first year of university, and I still feel some of that same bleakness and student-rage around this time of year when all the freshers arrive:

Winter of the Disillusioned Student

There’s rain and brollies ten-a-penny
(Gouging eyes and catching hair)
Holes in your trainers and wet in your socks
And the Christmas lights went up early this year

Yes the Christmas lights went up early this year
Even though you can’t afford it
And you know that it’s the thought that counts
These days money’s all you think about

Money’s all you think about
And it’s gone down the drain
(With your hopes about the future
And the ever-drizzling rain)

And the ever-drizzling rain
Is matching your state of mind
In the seas of unknown faces
And the seas of “left behind”

There’s flyers in the gutter
Of “BEST NIGHTS OUT!”; now old
There’s girls in nonexistent skirts
Pretending they’re not cold

And all the jobs are Christmas jobs
(When you’re not even here)
And what’s the point of Christmas trees
When there’s no Christmas cheer

Oh what’s the point of Christmas trees
When there’s no Christmas cheer
And you’re far away from “left behind”
And the lights went out early this year.

That one was published in the School of English zine, and I will actually never ever forgive them for chopping off the final two lines.  Bad form!

Since then I’ve stagnated poetically; perhaps because I’ve been reasonably happy.  After this year’s shake up (another loss of home, both physical and metaphorical), I would have expected myself to sit in a corner writing some more whiney drivel.  Then again, I suppose I did.  Perhaps it’s just taking a more prosaic blog-form this time around.

Anyway. National Poetry Day! My favourite poem is anyone lived in a pretty how town by e e cummings.  Thank you lovely, nervous, marker-pen-twiddling Neil Church of Ludlow College for introducing me to ee (my other favourites by the same, in case you want to look them up – and you should - are gee i like to think of dead and yonder deadfromtheneckup graduate, and I love Danse Russe by William Carlos Williams)

anyone lived in a pretty how town

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn’t he danced his did.

Women and men (both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn’t they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed (but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone’s any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
with by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men (both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

-ee cummings

I remember reading it through at 17 and thinking, well that’s quite a pleasing load of nonsense, and then re-reading and suddenly realising that – oh!  It’s about two people (the man, anyone, and no one, the girl; in case you haven’t been keeping up) and it’s a love story.  I also really like the cyclical nature and passage of time of it, life/death, spring/summer/autumn/winter, the almost folkloric heralding of the seasons.

But mostly, I love that moment of realisation you get with good poetry where you realise you haven’t looked closely enough.

What’s your favourite?

Saint Therese of Lisieux – Saints & Angels – Catholic Online

“I feel in me the vocation of the Priest. I have the vocation of the Apostle. Martyrdom was the dream of my youth and this dream has grown with me. Considering the mystical body of the Church, I desired to see myself in them all. Charity gave me the key to my vocation. I understood that the Church had a Heart and that this Heart was burning with love. I understood that Love comprised all vocations, that Love was everything, that it embraced all times and places…in a word, that it was eternal! Then in the excess of my delirious joy, I cried out: O Jesus, my Love…my vocation, at last I have found it…My vocation is Love!”

“In canto 30, Dante and Beatrice ascend to the Empyrean, the immaterial heaven of pure intellectual light and love, outside of all time and space, the tenth and last heaven, that of God’s immediate presence, where the choirs of angels and the souls of the blessed glorify the Deity and partake of his ineffable joy. The staggering effulgence blinds Dante at first, but then he dazedly sees a river of light with flowers on both banks, and living sparks flitting among the flowers like bees, bringing them God’s joy and love from the river. When Dante’s vision strengthens, he sees the sparks as angels and the flowers as the saints who dwell in the fragrant, snow-white rose of Paradise, consisting of more than a thousand tiers- and Dante can see all of them face-to-face in that unimaginably vast region where distance is meaningless.

After Beatrice desappears from Dante’s side to take her place among the petals of the rose, St. Bernard, the great twelth-century mystic, assumes the task of preparing Dante for the final mysteries he will witness (Para. 31). Bernard becomes Dante’s guide to where even Revelation cannot lead – the Beatific Vision. When Dante looks for his beloved, he sees her in her proper seat next to Rachel, symbol of the contemplative life. He thanks her for saving him, and she smiles at him one last time before turning to the ‘eternal fountain’ of light.

T.S. Eliot called the last canto, Paradiso 33, “the highest point that poetry has ever reached or ever can reach.” Bernard, most ardently devoted to Mary, implores her to intercede with her Son that Dante might be vouchsafed the vision of God. Lifting his eyes to her who is blazing with light and whose beauty is beyond description, he addresses her in an exquisite prayer structured on a series of paradoxes and antitheses, beginning “O Virgin Mother, daughter of your Son, / Humblest and most exalted of all creatures.”

Acceding to Bernard’s prayer, Mary raises her eyes towards the Sun that warms the Celestial Rose. In one hundred sublime verses, Dante describes the joy of a direct vision of the Trinity, and of Christ as God and man, in a radiant beam of simple light. That divine ray gathers in itself, as in a book, all the forms of things scattered like loose pages throughout the universe, and appears in the last line of the poem as “the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.” – from Sprezzatura: 50 Ways Italian Genius Shaped the World by Peter D’Epiro and Mary Desmond Pinkowish

Here he is, as I’m in a ghostly mood this week: the spectre that looms over us all -  ‘from which none of us can escape,” as he himself said of Ulysses. There’s no getting away from him. 121 today.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I have always found the relationship with Eliot rather problematical. Too megalithic to see past, too near in time to resist, too much the senior to engage with openly, as a reader – too much built-in, pedagogically-sanctioned awe – only dead a matter of ten years or so when I started to read him – the cautious, incisive, conservative, deeply intellectual, deeply unassuming, deeply male, deeply old-fashioned, categorically correct archetype of the great thinker about poetry. Poet.

Paradox: the unswerving pillar with the nervous breakdowns, the banker who wrote The Waste Land, the impeccably vulnerable eminent man of letters who never quite got over his early defiances – his young self shows in his face at all stages of his life, I think.

I had to stop reading him when I was about 20, because his cadences were just too ingrained in my head – I had to shake him well out before I could write a word. (I still have the copy of Ash Wednesday I razored out of a book and pinned on the wall over my bed when I was 16. For some strange reason I found it comforting.)

His poetry is dangerous in its influence. His criticism is bracing in its austere rigour. (But is he always right? It’s impossible to read Tradition and the Individual Talent, for example, without thinking he’s simply talking about himself. It would be hard to apply his precept to, say, John Berryman.) And his life is an example no one can (or should) attempt to follow.

He hangs in the air all around us.

Arrr.

(And about that: it was playing with fire, all right! If my little squib works at all, it’s because it’s built on Eliot’s architecture. I could feel it moulding my words as I went. The hand of the great man.)