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Sunday, March 29, 2020

LXXVII. - Spleen - Transversion from Baudelaire's Crown of Pain





                                                                   
LXXVII. – Spleen


I am like the Uncrowned King of Ireland,
Impotent, but rich, old yet still young,
Who, of all his retinue, detest the slavish,
Quarrels even with his dog as he does with all other beast.
Nothing can enliven him, not game nor falcon,
Nor his people dying beyond his balcony.
Even the clown from his favourite grotesque comedy
 Fails to distract him from this cruel sickness;
His fleur- de- lis bed transforms into a tomb,
And the women around, for whom all the rich are handsome,
No longer know how to beguile him,
There being no Wish list to put a smile on his young skeleton.
Even the hedge fund manager who made him his money 
Could ever with his being extract the corrupt element,
Nor the baths of blood from which the ancient Romans came,
And from which gave to others too their singular power,
    Resuscitate the dazed corpse
Where in place of blood the emerald waters of the Lethe flow.







Saturday, March 28, 2020

27032020






                                                   
                                                                27032020




                                   It was nine o’clock post meridian and the apartment
                                   Smelt of homemade pizza and wine. A typical
                                   Friday night, pizza and wine followed by some
                                   Dystopian movie to while away the night. Only,
                                   This time the voice of the Taoiseach came over
                                   The airways to announce the curfew that would
                                   Be enforced, due to the corona virus pandemic.
                                   Deaths, as had been forecast, were multiplying
                                   And we had to act fast if we were going to stop
                                  The spread of the contagion. As he spoke, we all
                                   Looked at one another. The mood in the home
                                  Changed. History was in the making, and we were
                                  All now caught up in the same movie, actors in some
                                  New human drama, our lives were in our own hands.






Saturday, March 21, 2020

Writing to date





Peter O’Neill

Novel

Hibernation – roman noire
Work in progress ( 24 000 – 80 000 words) 2020/21


Literary Criticism
3/4s - The Missing Quarter
Finnegans Wake, Comment c’est/How It Is
And the Many Correspondences with an 18th Century Neapolitan Philosopher – 2020
(Unpublished)

Poetry Collections

Malus – 2020
Merrion Square – 2019
Henry Street Arcade Bilingual Edition
With Translations into French by Yan Kouton – 2018
( All of the above unpublished and to be sold as The Dublin Trilogy II )

Multi-Genre

More Micks than Dicks
A Hybrid Beckettian Novella in 3 Genres Famous Seamus, 2017.
 The Gladstone Readings Anthology Edited & Compiled by Peter O’Neill
Famous Seamus, 2017.


Poetry Collections

Divertimento – The Muse is a Dominatrix mgv2>publishing, 2016.
Sker Lapwing Publications, 2016.
An Agamemnon Dead – An Anthology of Early 21st Century Irish Poetry
Edited by Walter Ruhlmann and Peter O’Neill mgv2>publishing, 2015.
Dublin Gothic Kilmog Press, 2015.
The Dark Pool mgv2>publishing, 2015.

Translations

The Enemy, Transversions from Charles Baudelaire, Lapwing Publications, 2015.

Poetry Collections
The Elm Tree Lapwing Publications, 2014.


Guest Editor Live Encounters April 2020



So, the April edition of Live Encounters which I guest edited has gone live. This was a real labour of love, there are some really talented writers included. I'm not going to list them here, as there are far too many to mention, but just click on the link below and you will be taken to the magazine directly.

A big thank you though to the Editor Mark Ulyseas for inviting me to guest edit this issue.

Enjoy!

 https://liveencounters.net/2020/03/20/live-encounters-poetry-writing-april-2020/


Sunday, March 15, 2020

Ways of Seeing





                                                   

                                                Laura in Porto Palma - Tunaria, Summer, 2001.






Ways of Seeing

The following essay was provoked by a poem by David Rigsbee which I shall reproduce here immediately. The poem is taken from his last collection of poems This Much I can Tell You published by Black Lawrence Press, 2017. The poem is called The Complaint.

The old poets used to complain about their
significant others. It was a kind of requirement.
They were cruel or remote, or cruel and remote.
Also cold, of course, and disinterested.
The categories are unacceptable, now that
centuries of repetition and variation have left
devoid of descriptive force. Not only that,
but the setup, from an analytical standpoint,
is quite unsatisfactory: objectification, the gaze
and all that. We worked hard to hone
these skills into useful shape, instruments
to look beyond the pretenses and conventions.
They reduce sentiments to what they really are
and so uncover the secret springs and motives
where once there seemed to be a simple, universal cry
that said, I don’t think X loves me, and I am
in pain! To which already we could go
in a hundred directions, each tailor- made
to register the unique soul that’s going to die.
Questions rise like curling steam, that ask
why did he not escape the common fate, why
did his singularity not move his love to pity?
Why, once the collapse had begun, did it seem
to be unstoppable, joined to the arrow of time,
like necessity, which knows no angel mighty
enough to come down on the side of the poets,
those complaining creatures, who rather
look around, and seeing nothing, begin
in their tears their uniform lament. Because it was
nothing itself: no lover, no message, no pity,
a position endorsed by God himself for the next
to order up the light, those monomaniacs dying
to illuminate a vastness into which they
and their loves were destined. God could have said,
its not so good, but He didn’t: He said quite
the opposite. Who are the young poets to jump in
and complain again? The point is, a world spun
out of that nothing, and here we are lined up,
goodness on one side, grievances on the other.

I guess I am one of those ‘young’ poets to jump in and complain again, as this is a complaint which really resonated with me. So, before I do, let me give you my response to David’s poem above.

He Answers a Complaint



Objectification is good, and a necessary ‘Evil.’
Always! Think back to that afternoon in November,
Ten years ago now, one of the coldest on record
When nature and human events, in Shakespearean
Accord, seemed to align - with the drop in temperature
The nation lost its sovereignty, and while delegates
From the IMF came She appeared before you
On the street, divinely proportioned, Vitruvian
In all manner. But you thought of the phrase by
Lucretius – voluptatem praesagit muta cupido.
While she walked upon Nassau Street before you,
Snow all around, and you repeated the words like an
Incantation, following her limbs as if led by a divinity,
So that the very air warmed, and your pockets were refilled.

I should like to turn now to Dante, going back over seven hundred years – indeed Italy prepares for their national poet’s 700th anniversary of his death next year, 2021. Here he is in Vita nuova when the poet describes his first encounter with Beatrice.

From the New Life
After Dante


When to my eyes appeared for the first time,
The glorious woman in my mind,
She who was called by many Beatrice,
Whom I did not know what to call
And who’d been in this world for some years,
As at the time when I first saw her,
The stars had been spread above me in the orient
During the twelfth century and who,
Because of her years, she being twice mine,
Had been kept from my sight till then.
She appeared dressed in a noble colour,
Humble and honest, blood red, fashionable
In the way of young people at the time.
At this point I can honestly say
That my life force, that which resides
In the most secret chamber of the heart,
Started to tremble, with such a force,
And my blood started to pump so violently
And the following words were uttered;
Ecce deus fortior me qui veniens
Dominabiton michi.
Here is a god much stronger than I
And which has come to rule over me.

Indeed, while rereading both these poems I am immediately reminded of the Muslim tradition of the burka a traditional style of dress which completely covers the woman’s body from head to toe, so powerful do they feel the possible impact of the vision of a woman on their menfolk that they would forbid their women to show themselves in public. In the west we have long protested such traditions, but in light of the fact of the poems above there is a poetic correspondence which is undeniable between the wearing of the burka and the impact of the vision of a woman on the soul of a man. Of course, the tradition in both the east and the west, as Simone de Beauvoir was to outline so memorably in Le Deuxieme Sexe, is that woman has for so long being perceived as the origin of evil. In the first part of her monumental work, she traces the origin in myths of perceived evil and womanhood. Figures such as Helen of Troy, for example.

Helen of Troy *

Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?
Are these the lips that spoke to me uttering her words?
Are these the eyes through which she has seen the world?
Is this the woman that has given birth to a girl?
Is this the companion who took you in?
Are these the legs which have traversed whole continents?
Are these the arms that have held so many lovers?
Is this the mind that has outwitted those others?
Are these the breasts which have given comfort?
Are these the hands which have cooled your brow?
Are these the feet that have marched to war?
Is this the back that has lain on countless beds?
Are these the thighs that have raised so many feathers?
Is this the sex that destroyed a world?


I started this short essay with a poem about a complaint evoking the male gaze etc. But, I conclude, equally, that it works both ways. Goodness is very rarely all on one side, nor are the complaints. We would appear to be, rather, all male and female, caught at the crossroads. One thing is sure, when it comes to the body it is always, also, a question about the soul.

Peter O’Neill
15/03/20
    

* Helen of Troy was first published in Chaos magazine, Fly on the Wall Poetry, 2019.