PhilippePetit: "Why?" That is the question people ask me most. Pourquoi? Why? For what? Why do you walk on the wire? Why do you tempt fate? Why do you risk death. But, I don't think of it this way. I never even say this word, death. La mort. Yes of okay, I said it once, or maybe three times, just now... But watch, I *will* not say it again. Instead, I use the opposite word. Life. For me, to walk on the wire, this is life. C'est la vie.
Philippe Petit: [now standing in the torch of the Statue of Liberty] So, picture with me it's 1974, New York city, and I am in love with two buildings - two towers. Or as everyone in the world will calls them, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. They call to me. These towers, they stir something inside of me, and they inspire in me a dream. My dream is to hang a high-wire between those twin towers, and *walk* on it! Of course, uh, this is impossible, not to mention, illegal. So, why attempt the impossible? Why follow your dream? But, I cannot answer this question why, not with words. But I can show you how i happened. And so, we must go back in time, and across the ocean, because my love affair with these beautiful towers did not begin in New York. In case you couldn't tell, I'm not from here. No, my story begins in another one of the world's most beautiful cities, se Paris.
I mention this, not just to remind everyone that I think Dorothy Wordsworth was the poet in that family, (ha!) but also because Raifteir was blind from the age of six, and in both poems, sensation is the key to the escape, not the literal viewing of the landscape, but the feelings that they can inspire.
I like this low-key observation from the poet, because again, there is a reversal of a common idea that the city is the sophisticated or civilized space. There is a Kavanagh-esque rejection of Dublin here, preferring the established, understood ritual of neighbourly trade.
To digress a little, you must remember that Ireland was first written about by Christians. Our earliest literature was penned by monks and abbots, for whom it was essential to express Irish tradition in a Christian framework. Even the old pagan mythology, a sturdy part of the oral tradition, was articulated from Christian perspectives. It was these monks and priests who literally expressed Ireland, in the Irish language, and embedded into it almost indelible Christian ideology. Thankfully, however, they did incorporate much of the folklore and superstition of the pre-Christian world. It seems contradictory, and yet we can still see plenty of evidence of the pagan and the Christian co-existing comfortably in much of the literature of Ireland.
After the reformation in England in the 17th Century, a series of laws, named Penal Laws, were prescribed to stamp out Catholicism. Ironically, this caused a more intense devotion to what now was part of the Irish tradition, and also created a significant link between politics and faith, i.e., nationalism and religion. So much so that when the Irish Republic came to be in the early twentieth century, the Irish Constitution was unmistakably Catholic in its construction. This was very problematic on many levels, and therein lies a debate for another day, but I think it is correct to say that for anyone growing up in rural Ireland in the twentieth century, everything you did was under a very stern eye of priest and doctrine. It was a very present and consuming reality, so we should expect to see it in rural Irish poetry.
So, Kavanagh has juxtaposed two ideas here- sexuality, and child-like innocence. Which makes me think that what he really seeks here is love- not adult love, which was then, binary, and challenging, and subject to rules and (in an Irish context) very much tinged with guilt and shame, but the love a child has for everything; an unbridled happiness that can see magic in everything.
I love the language in this section. Its run-on lines, breathlessly speaking as a kid would, gasping from joy to wondrous joy among the most banal and mundane of things. Who else, but Kavanagh could attach romance to a bog hole? Well, Seamus Heaney, but remember, he came after!
For Kavanagh, there is healing and wisdom and love at the end of a journey that may appear daunting and punishing at the outset. It struck me that 2020 is the year that most of us have been forced into circumstances we would never have chosen, and that have challenged us utterly. We all look forward to January, and a better year ahead.
And the newness that was in every stale thing
When we looked at it as children: the spirit-shocking
Wonder in a black slanting Ulster hill
Or the prophetic astonishment in the tedious talking
Of an old fool will awake for us and bring
You and me to the yard gate to watch the whins
And the bog-holes, cart-tracks, old stables where Time begins.
A good friend was in Hazlewood, in Sligo last week, a favourite haunt of Yeats, and she send me some wonderful photographs of the swans there. We are very lucky, in this part of the country, so dotted with coastal inlets and lakelands, to see these beautiful creatures everywhere we go.
Yeats was influenced by Irish and Greek mythology, and swans are present in both. To him, they do symbolise beauty, immortality, and endurance. In this poem, he uses the presence of the swans on the lake at Coole as markers of Time. They are constant, patient, faithful and beautiful, and they remind him of a changed world since he first saw them as a young, frisky poet, and as he now regards them, nineteen years later.
Do me a favour, daughter: sometime, in time, wear for me
a sweetheart neckline, slingback sandals, my good ring
and howsoever many of your necklaces and bracelets.
Walk your walk through ten thousand doorways
so the music of you is one and the same as the music
of starlings and new moons and traffic lights and weirs,
only in a new arrangement arranged by, and for, you.
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the poetry blog. Today, I want to tackle the subject of commemoration of historical figures and events. Ireland is currently moving through a period of centenary commemorations- our evolution to political Independence (technically) began with the 1916 Rising, followed by the War of Independence (1919-1921), and the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921. As is common to most conflicts, there is no single narrative that can comfortably and calmly embrace the memories, sensitivities, and legacies of what happened, and this can make commemoration complicated and divisive.
The singer is on the stage, the heat rises up from the audience, and the show begins. The first song is a lament for James Connolly, written by Patrick Galvin. Connolly was one of the founders of the Irish Citizen Army, one of the signatories of the proclamation, and one of the men executed in the Gaol.
Dorgan reminds us that these men suffered. Their last living memories were filled with pain and fear. Dorgan imagines their confusion as witnesses to the hateful gaol now filled with lights, music, action. Flags last seen on bomb sites are now backdrops on a stage. WTF, you imagine them think.
There is a profound sincerity and honesty in the last line of the poem, completely antithetical to any hint of appropriation or chest-beating. Dorgan has successfully documented a moment of transcendence, delivered by a singer on a stage. His message seems to be that commemoration need not be discordant, if one can reach beyond politics, to humanity. The boatmen and boatwomen who can take us on this journey are the artists, and the transport is the dignity of art. If we trust this, we will pay the due respect to the dead.
As you read on, you see where the poet is going now. People who have suffered, and have been forgotten. Victims of circumstance who cannot help themselves. People who are not seen, and depend on others to act on their behalf. All they are able to do is survive, and wait.
There are so many lines here that continue the plant metaphor, but are loaded with horror and distress, torture and torment. The last verse is a desperate appeal for empathy and activism. Look at the way we have moved from torpidity to turmoil. What appeared to be inert and invisible reveals itself to us to be immediate and urgent.
In the second section, Heaney is angered that his natural voice has been disabled, rendered archaic by colonization, and warped by the influences of Scottish and English language which artificially distort. He is rejecting all forms of English; the highbrow and the low.
While Bloom, in the novel, refines his definition of nationality more particularly, Heaney does not. Heaney very deliberately stops the poem there. He seems to have found a satisfactory resolution. By contrast to the furious and unstable movement of the other verses, the last verse is solid, calm, assured.
However, can he leave it at that? Unfortunately not. He imagines her reflecting on this, and regretting her loss. Oh William! In beautiful poetry, he describes the love that once could have been hers gone forever, hidden in the mountains. He leaves her, in his imagination, sadly looking to the stars for the soul mate that was lost.
The photograph used is of a ceramic rose person, by artist Eva Marie Restel. Do visit her site to read the very moving back story of these beautiful pieces. I am the lucky owner of a rose person, thanks to my dear friends Carol & Liz, and it seemed to be the perfect illustration of this poem.
I found this poem many years ago, and it is so lovely and simple, and appropriate for these days. It is also a poem you can use no matter where you are- the poem itself assures you that even if you do not have the direct sensations of being outside, the evidence of these facts of nature exist- the poet himself is behind a window, and the sea is merely reflected for him, but that is enough for him to get out of his physical boundaries and into a more hopeful space.
Hi everyone. Last week, I had the pleasure of rambling to a little harbour in County Sligo, called Raghly, which has, at its entrance, the old home of the Gore-Booth Family. The Gore-Booths relocated a little further up the coast to Lissadell House in the 1830s, and in 1870, Eva Gore-Booth was born there. Eva Gore-Booth is one of the most interesting women writers and activists of her time, but her story has often been overshadowed by her famous sister, Constance Markievicz. However, Eva is a fascinating woman in her own right, and it was her poetry that came to mind as I walked along the Sligo coastline.
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