Pillow Talk by Paula Meehan
contumacious corsair
from book of the same name, The Gallery Press, 1994
The hot midsummer nights I whisper
assignations, trysts, heather beds
I'd like to lay you down in, remote beaches
we could escape to, watch
bonfire sparks mix with stars.
I want you to stay alive til we two
meet again, to hold the line, to ignore
the gossip traded about me in the marketplace.
I fall back on cliche, the small
change of an adulterous summer,
plots of half-hatched movies, theories
of forked lightning, how you make
the soles of my feet burn when I come.
What you don't hear is the other voice
when she speaks through me
beyond human pity and mercy. She wants you.
Put her eye on you the first time
she saw you. And I'm powerless,
a slave to her whim. She shall
have you. What can I do
when she speaks of white river stones,
elfin grots, her sacred birds?
I know she once tore a man apart,
limb from limb with her bare hands
in some rite in her bloddy past.
My stomach turns at the hot
relentless stench of her history.
Nights you stare out
panic-stricken through the mask.
I think you may have heard her speak:
you realize that you ride a demon
that the dark has no end to it.
Though I mean you no grief,
I cannot vouchsave her intent. I fear
not all my healing arts can salve
the wound she has in store for you.
PQ
Gitche Gumee
GG
(aka Brooooooomhilda)
--------------------
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Hockersmith
> pillow talk mmmmm certaily original
> GG
And ummm...Wow! :)
KateH
The Pirate Queen
I love this poet. She is bold, direct, sometimes lyrical,
sometimes raw, and always passionate regardless of whether
she is talking about human emotion, family or nature. This
is one I would say wow to!
Man Sleeping by Paula Meehan
How deep are you, how far under?
Here's rosemary I stole on my walk
and the first lilac from the Square.
I lay them on the quilt. You talk
in your dreaming. "I am the beating tide,
mine is the shore." Taste of the sea,
pulse of my heart. "Don't leave me,
don't leave me." I dive beneath
and you stiffen to my mouth.
You'll be deep within me when you wake,
your pulse my own. Wave that I ride,
I'll take everything before you break.
----
PQ
"Love can sometimes be magic. But magic can
sometimes . . .just be an illusion." ---Javan
Holly
poem intended to be about a man and a woman-could have other means?
Holly
contumacious corsair wrote in message ...
Hockersmith
> I love this poet. She is bold, direct, sometimes lyrical,
> sometimes raw, and always passionate regardless of whether
> she is talking about human emotion, family or nature. This
> is one I would say wow to!
>
> Man Sleeping by Paula Meehan
>
> How deep are you, how far under?
Okay......what are ya doin' here? Is yer honey outa town or wha? :) Very
...hmmmm...nice! Yeah, it was "nice". Thanks! :)
KateH
Terry McT.
<hock...@internetnw.net> wrote:
> Gitche Gumee > wrote ...
> > pillow talk mmmmm certaily original
> > GG
>
> And ummm...Wow! :)
Did you see the movie Pillow Talk? Ewan MacGregor was in it. All over
it, actually. From this movie, I learned that if you really love a man,
when he dies you skin him, tan his hide, and make a book out of him.
Personally, I'd settle for snapshots, a tasteful headstone, and being left
something suitable in the will. Not a book with a unique leather cover,
however.
--
Terry
tam...@usl.edu
Hockersmith
> Did you see the movie Pillow Talk? Ewan MacGregor was in it. All over
> it, actually. From this movie, I learned that if you really love a man,
> when he dies you skin him, tan his hide, and make a book out of him.
Thanks for the warning.
KateH :)
The Pirate Queen
>Please forgive my inexperienced attempt at poetic interpretation but is
this
>poem intended to be about a man and a woman-could have other means?
Think man, woman, desire, obsession, anger and sometimes one
or all beyond control. Meehan's poetry speaks to me in a certain
way, but it could mean something totally different to you and that's
okay. I'm not of the school that only one interpretation is correct.
I don't spend time analyzing the words either. I absorb them,
savor them, speak them outloud so I can hear the rhythm, the
connections, the internal rhyme, and respond with whatever emotion
they conjure in that moment.
PQ
The Pirate Queen
Advisor Kate, if you haven't seen Silence of the Lambs, don't.
PQ
Sutal
>>Pillow Talk by Paula Meehan (poet from Dublin)
>>from book of the same name, The Gallery Press, 1994
>>
I found it at Amazon & ordered it ( the wait is 3 to 4 weeks because it is a
special order!). There were a bezillion Pillow Talk titles, all of which had
to do with some form of sexual interaction. I thought they were going to be
talking about pillow fights like you have with your baby sister or people like
me who have to take their own pillow with them on trips or they get insomnia.
But it was just boring old sex talk. I like your poet, PQ. Thanks for telling
us about her.
ACooper213
>There were a bezillion Pillow Talk titles, all of which had
>to do with some form of sexual interaction.
But there's only one original.....the one based on the movie with Rock Hudson
and Doris Day.
Tony
The Pirate Queen
>I found it at Amazon & ordered it ( the wait is 3 to 4 weeks because it is
a
>special order!).
I know, but worth the wait. I ordered her stuff from Amazon also.
>I like your poet, PQ. Thanks for telling us about her.
Sutal my lovely comrade, knowing you as I do, I can almost guarantee
you will like her other poems. "Pillow Talk" was a finalist for the Irish
Times Literature Award. You should also consider getting her other
book "The Man Who Was Marked by Winter."
Quoting the foreward by Eavan Boland:
"Just occasionally there is a poet who marshals the details and
meanings of her time and place in such a way that she becomes
an essential voice. Paula Meehan is a poet like that.
[....]
And then, in beautiful surprises of language and argument, the
dimension unfolds and re-creates itself into the surprising and
ambitious spaces of contemporary vision: of a poet who is also
a woman, who is restating the Irish poem in terms of new
initiatives and perspectives.
This is a book of wonderful coherence and direction. Dependable
in its clarity of image, but unpredictable in its reach into
melancholy and elegy. And yet its purpose is always clear: to
honor the hard, daily human adventure -- to do it true justice --
by memory and music and language."
PQ
Enjoy Sister Sutal!
Terry McT.
<hock...@internetnw.net> wrote:
> Terry McT. <tam...@usl.edu> wrote
> > Did you see the movie Pillow Talk? Ewan MacGregor was in it. All over
> > it, actually. From this movie, I learned that if you really love a man,
> > when he dies you skin him, tan his hide, and make a book out of him.
>
> Thanks for the warning.
Ack! Ack! Ack!!!!!! I meant the movie "Pillow Book"! I think Pillow
Talk starred Doris Day and definitely did NOT involve tanning one's
deceased lover.
--
Terry
tam...@usl.edu
Lilly Langtree
The Pirate Queen <p...@someday.com> wrote re"The Man Who Was Marked by
Winter." by Paula Meehan :
(...)
> And then, in beautiful surprises of language and argument, the
> dimension unfolds and re-creates itself into the surprising and
> ambitious spaces of contemporary vision: of a poet who is also
> a woman, who is restating the Irish poem in terms of new
> initiatives and perspectives.
OH boy! Can't wait!
> This is a book of wonderful coherence and direction. Dependable
> in its clarity of image, but unpredictable in its reach into
> melancholy and elegy.
***And yet its purpose is always clear: to
> honor the hard, daily human adventure -- to do it true justice --
> by memory and music and language."***
Love that last comment! (Worth getting hassled for quoting and adding
nothin' to the thread other than "love that last comment!")
So lets invite this Paula Meehan to SCI. About time we had an Irish woman
taking over this place!
Hockersmith
> Advisor Kate, if you haven't seen Silence of the Lambs, don't.
Didn't ...won't.
KateH :)
Hockersmith
> Ack! Ack! Ack!!!!!! I meant the movie "Pillow Book"! I think Pillow
> Talk starred Doris Day and definitely did NOT involve tanning one's
> deceased lover.
Actually, if *Doris Day* was doing something hideous.......how bad could it
be? :)
KateH
Terry McT.
<hock...@internetnw.net> wrote:
I saw that movie the day it came out without knowning anything about it.
If fact, I took two fellow graduate students who had just arrived in the
US from El Salvador and Taiwan to see it with me. All three of us had our
eyes covered an unfortunate amount of time. On the way out, they were
asking me if this was typical of the movies shown in America. Ack! I
still can't eat darn fava beans.
--
Terry
tam...@usl.edu
Terry McT.
<hock...@internetnw.net> wrote:
The tanning would involve cocoa butter, a colorful beach blanket, and
picturesque scenery.
--
Terry
tam...@usl.edu
K. E. Dennis
> I love this poet. She is bold, direct, sometimes lyrical, sometimes raw, and
> always
> passionate regardless of whether she is talking about human emotion, family or
> nature.
> This is one I would say wow to!
&....
> Sutal wrote
>
> >I like your poet, PQ. Thanks for telling us about her.
[snippet]
> ....You should also consider getting her other
> book "The Man Who Was Marked by Winter."
>
> Quoting the foreward by Eavan Boland:
>
> "Just occasionally there is a poet who marshals the details and
> meanings of her time and place in such a way that she becomes
> an essential voice. Paula Meehan is a poet like that.
>
> [....] ... a poet who is also
> a woman, who is restating the Irish poem in terms of new
> initiatives and perspectives [;] ....to
> honor the hard, daily human adventure -- to do it true justice --
> by memory and music and language."
Such words from Eavan Boland are praise indeed.
I can add that IMVHO Paula Meehan is one of the shining lights of contemporary
poetry in English.
She's brilliant, actually, savage & yes, passionate... & the author of one of the
most devastating poems I've yet encountered - below.
It is incandescent w/grief & rage & yet meticulously structured, which IMO only
magnifies its impact. & it's pinned into place w/ words that strike echoes of
other well known poems of loss & lament that others have posted here lately.
Look - if you can bear it - @ how her words pick up the famous repetitions of an
Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire [see
http://www.wwa.com/~abardubh/poetry/caoineadh.html, &
http://www.wwa.com/~abardubh/poetry/poem172.html]:
> my lamb, my calf, my eaglet,
> my cub, my kid, my nestling,
>
> my suckling, my colt.
...tho here the litany of affectionate images, pet names, is spoken by a mother,
rather than the widow mourning her husband or the sister, her brother.
& note too (in a coincidence of timing that I've seen more than once in this
strangely bewitched space called s.c.i.) echoes of MacDonogh's images*
[http://www.wwa.com/~abardubh/poetry/poem197.html] - tho in reverse time: - wild
birds & other creatures - October - months of promise - images of a love-bed &
fields - bright flames & low fires & desolation...
But as you've said in another thread, Laura - everyone's encounter w/ a poem is
unique & personal, tho we can try to grapple w/ & share the the experience.... so
now I'll step back out of the way of this one.
*BTW, eala - I'm fairly sure that "She Walked Unaware" was not a translation from
(or "after the") Irish - but I can't claim to have disproved that hypothesis....
respectfully submitted,
|K. E. Dennis den...@mail.montclair.edu
|My employer is not responsible for my opinions,
|regardless of how sensible they are.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Child Burial
Paula Meehan
Modern Irish Poetry: An Anthology
Ed., Patrick Crotty
pub., 1995, The Blackstaff Press
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Child Burial
Your coffin looked unreal,
fancy as a wedding cake.
I chose your grave clothes with care,
your favourite stripey shirt,
your blue cotton trousers.
They smelt of woodsmoke, of October,
Your own smell there too.
I chose a gansy of handspun wool,
Warm and fleecy for you. It is
so cold down in the dark.
No light can reach you and teach you
the paths of wild birds,
the names of the flowers,
the fishes, the creatures.
Ignorant you must remain
of the sun and its work,
my lamb, my calf, my eaglet,
my cub, my kid, my nestling,
my suckling, my colt. i would spin
time back, take you again
within my womb, your amniotic lair,
and further spin you back
through nine waxing months
to the split seeding moment
you chose to be made flesh,
word within me.
I'd cancel the love feast
the hot night of your making.
I would travel alone
to a quiet mossy place,
you would spill from me into the earth
drop by bright red drop.
~~~~~~
Golden Arse, Ireland's Favourite Son
Bollocks. We have all that here in Skerries, but no sun tan at all. We're
all pasty-white fuckers. I hear you need the sun to finish things off
nicely. Must do that sometime soon. A holiday in the sun. Yes.
SCI Skerries Beach Bum