tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424364424049242300.post2378897918333686110..comments2023-06-21T18:53:11.897+10:00Comments on Pykk: the character of an austere moralistUmbagollahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14556344092820711893noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424364424049242300.post-77358946939986237022015-08-15T13:58:40.622+10:002015-08-15T13:58:40.622+10:00For Heaney the 'I work' and 'I write&#...For Heaney the 'I work' and 'I write' sprung directly from Patrick Kavanagh who constantly wrote from the tension between his labour on the land and with a pen. And the right of a small farmer of limited academic education to call himself a poet:<br />"Clay is the word and clay is the flesh<br />Where the potato-gatherers like mechanised scarecrows move<br />Along the side-fall of the hill - Maguire and his men.<br />If we watch them an hour is there anything we can prove<br />Of life as it is broken-backed over the Book<br />Of Death? Here crows gabble over worms and frogs<br />And the gulls like old newspapers are blown clear of the hedges, luckily.<br />Is there some light of imagination in these wet clods?<br />Or why do we stand here shivering?"Séamus Dugganhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00574186409184247059noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424364424049242300.post-77043165794175625532015-08-07T12:43:22.706+10:002015-08-07T12:43:22.706+10:00Then I suppose our -- job? as readers, must be to ...Then I suppose our -- job? as readers, must be to make the response chamber as sensitive as possible -- which is difficult.Umbagollahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14556344092820711893noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424364424049242300.post-86491361943746798792015-08-05T14:18:42.572+10:002015-08-05T14:18:42.572+10:00whisper thin differentiations spark something of w...whisper thin differentiations spark something of wizardry in the contemplation of ethereal realms of linguistic comparison. my wife says: <br /><br />what they are trying to say is the difference between legos and boulder dam" i'm not sure i understand that, but it rings some sort of chime in the old brain pan. i guess i rate lit in terms of resonance: how does the explication of a piece echo in my response chamber?... leading on to evermore evanescent judgements? the most real thing about literature is the phantom impression it leaves of the personality of the writer, which i semiconsciously accept or reject. my criteria have narrowed with age and now i read a lot of mystery stories. maybe we all come to that sooner or later.Mudpuddlehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17194891656971454279noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424364424049242300.post-87485893232325830382015-08-05T11:36:56.749+10:002015-08-05T11:36:56.749+10:00The funny thing is that Clare must have ploughed m...The funny thing is that Clare must have ploughed more fields, messed with more vegetables, and dug more ditches than Heaney ever had time for, seeing that it was the only way he had to make a proper living. When did it become possible for poets to say, "I work"? Umbagollahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14556344092820711893noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424364424049242300.post-30447305365104808872015-08-05T08:20:06.246+10:002015-08-05T08:20:06.246+10:00Goodness no, there's not a drop of labor in th...Goodness no, there's not a drop of labor in that poem. It reminds me, oddly enough, of Turgenev's nonfiction sketches. The same rambling past a working farm feeling. A wholly sensualized intellectual take on agriculture.<br /><br />I was thinking as I read this that it's sort of like an inversion of Seamus Heaney: in many of his poems about writing, one gets the impression of doing heavy farm work, digging ditches, building walls, etc.scott g.f.baileyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05726743149139510832noreply@blogger.com