EDITORIAL
Welcome to Issue 25. We seemed to have reached our first quarter of a century. Time to open the champaign bottle - Dom Perignon, £104 per bottle - 'honest grapes', just like Ol' Chanty. What more could you ever desire?
A lot of water seems to have flowed under the bridge since we last went to press. Brexit to start with. I've mixed feelings about that. The EU is not what it's cracked up to be, and little more than a corporate club I would say, but I also suspect a lot of self-delusional little-Englanderism was also involved in the result. Time to revert to Pounds, Shillings and Pence and 'get our country back from these furners'. Hopefully, Corbyn can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat (Oh what a cliche!), but I'm not holding my breath. What it might mean for Scottish independence is another matter entirely, however. It's certainly about time, I would say. And then, of course, there's that horrendous choice being offered to the US electorate. Now that push has almost come to shove, I'm not sure which side I'd prefer to win. More war under Hillary and God knows what under Trump. The "lesser of two evilisms" strikes again, though this time I can't make up my mind which is the lesser of the two evils. Probably Clinton - at least from the point of view of the Americans, if not many people in other parts of the world. It certainly shows the impasse that US 'democracy' has reached. Who knows but that by the time we next go to press WW3 might have started. I hope my readers have already invested in their own nuclear bunkers. I'll try to make future issues of Ol' Chanty available to them there. So whether it will ever come to a big nuclear one remains open to question. After all, lots of dosh can be made out of small proxy wars, but the risks of a nuclear war probably outweigh the potential for future investment, therefore, I suspect such a war is unlikely. That's not to argue that some people are not daft enough for anything, because it seems to me rather obvious they are.
In spite of it all, Ol' Chanty keeps going. There's has been a bit of a lapse since last January, when I really felt like giving up the ghost, but once good material started to come through my email letter box again, I thought I should continue with the next issue's print-run. So here we have it - warts 'n' all, as they say. Don't forget to keep sending stuff in. A magazine like this depends on its contributors.
QUOTE - Friedrich Nietzsche
"And those who were seen dancing
were thought to be insane
by those who
could not hear the music."
CONTENTS
Poem - Abigail Cargo
Story - John Bennett
Poems - Alan Catlin
Poem - Edward Mycue
Poems - Lavinia Murray
Quote - Paul Valery
Poem - Michael Murray
Poems - Alex Migliore
Poems - Hannah Greenberg
Essay - Richard Livermore
Review - Richard Livermore
POEM – Abigail cargo - aged 14
Science
All those little particles which spread out in air,
Tiny innumerable pieces—pieces, invisible; molecules,
microscopic. Complex atoms building on each other
like a child playing with blocks; each tower is stronger
than the next, each level steps up, rising; more parts,
more pieces. Prokaryotes. Eukaryotes. Twisted strands
of DNA. Double Helix. Duplication. Prophase, Metaphase,
Anaphase, Telophase—and there is division of cells. Millions.
Building and growing, coming together in shapes--
forms that begin in shadowy darkness; then billowing
outwards: light. water, earth, sky. Particles. Sometimes
destroyed into more pieces—dead pieces. Crumpling shapes.
Mutated DNA. Growing, multiplying forever, until time stops
with a last tick—stretching and groaning, as the last watch
is thrown into a black void, and all shapes, pieces,
particles return to the dust which they came from.
All those little particles which spread out in air,
Tiny innumerable pieces—pieces, invisible; molecules,
microscopic. Complex atoms building on each other
like a child playing with blocks; each tower is stronger
than the next, each level steps up, rising; more parts,
more pieces. Prokaryotes. Eukaryotes. Twisted strands
of DNA. Double Helix. Duplication. Prophase, Metaphase,
Anaphase, Telophase—and there is division of cells. Millions.
Building and growing, coming together in shapes--
forms that begin in shadowy darkness; then billowing
outwards: light. water, earth, sky. Particles. Sometimes
destroyed into more pieces—dead pieces. Crumpling shapes.
Mutated DNA. Growing, multiplying forever, until time stops
with a last tick—stretching and groaning, as the last watch
is thrown into a black void, and all shapes, pieces,
particles return to the dust which they came from.
story - john bennett
Death Of The Rainbow
A Fistful of Meds
Somehow it got to be Saturday, somehow the line formed at the rear, somehow a planet blew to smithereens, somehow he tried to make a fresh start, tried to learn his ABCs from scratch, claim his place at the dinner table with the ebony servants, the universal smorgasbord. But it was a no-go.
Back to the drawing board, to the squirreled secrets under a moth-eaten cassock. Cassock, Cossack, nut sack, sperm bank. Hail a cab, hail Mary with the grace of an elephant, three kings and nine lawyers will buy your way out of anything. Binary division and custard pie. The tie that binds. Tie her up, tie her down, let the fun begin, the last show of the evening, half-price tickets, a free lunch. The grudge machine, churning out nasty consequences. Dial M for murder, Dial soap, soap operas, the slippery eel that makes children cry. Postmortem, post bail, post a message, pick 'em up, lay 'em down, bring the boys home, the legions of folly. Yank out his fingernails, he won't bat an eye, he's the son of God, Al Capone's nephew, the late-news anchor man, and now he's coming your way. Even the speed of light is befuddled.
Separation of state, state of separation, dotted lines, sign above, down below where you're bound to go. Hi-ho, hi-ho, off to work in your Maidenform bra--look at me when I talk to you.
That's the ticket. Now sit down here, shut your eyes, open your mouth, let the maggots out. Rim shots and anal probes, you'll be right as rain when I'm through with you. An epidemic of mayhem, virgin saints on the drawing board. Sit there until the phone rings. Sing until your teeth grind.
***
He tried to give pointers, keep his hands dry, it didn't work. He crashed into hedge plans, spewed lies, Tourette syndrome runaround, a lexicon of wrong doings.
The uniform fit and then didn't, rat-a-tat in the outback, the payback, the blue lagoon, the flagged cab, draped coffin, he just got fat is all. Start the meter, get me out of here.
The lost cause, the forfeiture, the lost war. Hatch marks for eyebrows, jab marks in his veins, a handful of blue pills. Doctor, doctor, pray the old familiar prayer, chase the boogie man, race the moon. In comes trouble dressed like an old friend, he's seen it all. Lock and load and he's out the door.
They stretch and yawn and think life is good but he'll show them, trim their whiskers, implode their dreams, their silly pile of smiles. He's got answers that came in a body bag, two tours in Nam, the G.I. Bill, he'll never talk.
***
Sons of Adam, daughters of the moon, offsprings of Moloch, angels of death. Bareback in a tiger cage, linguistic desecration, ripped to shreds declarations and cash dividends. He'll stir the pot, find a woman, raise a family of warriors. Land mines, land ho, leveled playing fields, rabbits run thru with bayonets.
The clock runs backwards, decisions in reverse, this can't go on forever. Learn to dance with a wooden leg, close your eyes, pretend you've got soul. See how they work you?
***
That was then, this is now, and there goes Charlie streaking through the wet jungle, who asked him to the party? Everyone's climbed the mountain, swam with sharks, learned to rollerblade, stay on your toes.
He snuck in the back door. He traded his begging bowl for a portable TV and an I-pad. I-pad, maxi-pad, he was on his way up the ladder. He was licking his wounds like a butchered cow. No one came to visit. So what, who needs absolution?
***
The meds were working, he couldn't get out of bed in the morning. He needed a nurse with a dirty mind. Well, sort of working. He still talked funny when he played darts and – bam, just like that his mind goes blank.
Shooting blanks, buried tanks, peace talks, bullshit walks, all these women dancing naked on his grave. Wait a minute, he's not dead, he's not a tank. Muzak pounding out of the Greyhound speakers. All aboard.
No, that's train talk. Tip the conductor and climb on up there. Top berth in the travel morgue. The train pulls out of the station. Close your eyes, hang on tight.
***
He's lit up like a Christmas tree, like the 4th of July. A full pot of coffee and a fistful of meds. He hangs up his cartridge belt and takes off his helmet. POW! BLAM! Brains splattered over an acre of papaya trees. No, wait, wrong war, retrograde flashback, hands on the car, motherfucker! Slice and dice, payback for the Third Platoon. The meds are working. Can you hear me, do you feel me, are you ready to go down for all you hold dear? Oh dear, dead deer splayed on the hood of a jeep, bring it on home to mama.
They threw him off the bus in Omaha.
***
It's not a fun town to walk around in. Slaughter houses and insurance firms, tornadoes and sand storms. He thought the bus was a train. He stormed up and down the aisle looking for the bar car. In-coming! and he dove for cover. Get off me, fool!and a police escort. They took his meds away and he went bonkers. Call, they said, anyone. Here, here's a list of names, there's the door. Who's your mama?
Bring in the reserves, going thru platoons like rosary beads, the buddy system, why die in the arms of a stranger? Three condoms and a shot of morphine, why suffer? Pack it in, pack it out. They tried to get him in a straitjacket but no luck. If he could just reach California, they had phone books in California, they spoke Spanish and swam with dolphins. Lock and load for the old days. They turned him loose but kept his stiletto and gas mask.
What can you do to help? Will you iron his shirts? Of course not. You came around the corner at the wrong time is all and bumped into him, so glance at your watch like you're late for something and then back-pedal like a motherfucker. Join the in-crowd, cocktail hour, turn it into a story. He was fucking out there, man, I mean way out there. He looked like a gladiator with false teeth! Hey, buy me a fucking drink, man, I have seen the enemy!
But no one's buying, no one's laughing, the whole thing is backfiring, you've been ambushed, you weren't combat ready, your guts are hanging out and you're screaming medic! medic! He got you good, he took you out, there goes the wife, the house, the kids won't look you in the eye.
Time to learn chess and pass on the curse. The whole country's fucked.
Johnny Comes Marching Home
Johnny comes marching home. They stopped him three blocks from his house for walking funny. Search and destroy. What were they looking for? Citizenship? Discharge papers? A gun? He turned it in to the Sergeant-at-Arms along with his bleached skulls and a jar full of ears. He was clean.
Mom! I'm home!
Yesterday. All his troubles stuck to the sole of his shoe like warm gum. Not funny. Not funny at all. Serious business. Global meltdown coming in fast, like napalm. Crispy critters.
The G.I. Bill. How would he do in English 101, thinking like this? How would he write it down? Would he split his infinitives? Should he study science instead? Go out for basketball? Dribble his way back into the mainstream?
Trojan horses everywhere. Cities under siege. Street gangs and eclipsed moons. A hot shower, a home-cooked meal, and out the door in his civvies, looking for the old action.
***
The moon used to be 10,000 miles from earth and raised havoc with the oceans. And then the whole thing turned to ice. Nothing bigger than a single-cell microbe for three billion years and then the whole thing started multiplying. Is this true?
Maybe his whole life is a lie. Maybe he shouldn't have shot that girl and her mother and the three pigs down by the Srepok River. Three little piggies. His whole life a nursery rhyme.
***
He slept all day and watched TV all night. With the sound off. He was learning to read lips. He'd go into his mother's room after she was asleep and watch her lips twitch. So that's what she thought of him. He burned incense for his father, shot to hell on a beach at Normandy.
He started reading. He'd watch TV and read lips and read books all at the same time, jamming popcorn into his mouth and washing it down with Budweiser. Now and then he'd dial a number on the phone and talk in telepathy.
“Who is this? Who's there? I'm going to hang up,” they'd say.
That's how he learned about the moon and the earth turning to ice, from reading. Snowball earth they called it. He imagined himself packing rocks into a snowball and throwing it in God's face. Someone had to do it, why not him? He had training, he just needed someone to give the order. “Yes sir! Can do, sir! I'll smash God's face in, sir!
Then he read about Krishna and Vishnu and that whole crowd and saw what he was up against. God was a shape shifter.
***
Sometimes he'd unstrap his wooden leg and order it to march around the room, but it just stood there. It was nothing without him. But when he strapped it on again it came alive. Maybe he was God.
He was beginning to see things no one else saw, even the people who wrote the books.
Rover, Red Rover, Send the Enemy Over
Christmas rolled around and Hannibal rode over the Cascades on a llama. Wrong mountains, wrong beast, time shifts and shape shifts, warped space. Einstein spaghetti. Marco Polo fabricating journeys to China from a bordello in Marseille. Napoleon contemplating his dong, shaped like a seahorse.
He was flunking out, mixing science with fantasy, lurking outside the girls dorm after midnight.
Night patrol.
***
School sucked. He missed sleeping days and reading lips at night. He missed the war, but they wouldn't put him back in, what with his wooden leg, one glass eye and a missing pinkie on his left hand. Don't ask what your country can do for you, haven't they done enough already? He field-stripped his .45, cleaned it, put it back together, slammed in a clip.
Rover, Red Rover, send the enemy over.
***
He played with the ghost of his dead dog in the back yard while his mother peeked thru the curtains. Rover knew about the three pigs down on the Shrepok but just didn't give a shit. Dogs are that way. He'd hug Rover and let him gnaw on his wooden leg, throw grenades for him to chase. KA-BLAM!
The neighbors complained. About the noise, about the craters in their backyards. The police came and left in a hurry and then a SWAT team showed up and he put three slugs in the flak vest of the lead man when they kicked in the door, two in the left leg of the second man, and one thru the ceiling as a warning shot. Time had lost sequence. Things were running backwards. He crawled into his mother's womb and turned into an embryo. They locked him away and shot juice thru his brain and tripled the blue pills. He pretended he couldn't speak English.
***
When he was nine his father taught him to shoot robins out of trees with a single-shot .22, said it was his Constitutional right, said slingshots were for sissies. A few years later he left him up in the mountains in the dead of winter with a tin of K-rations and a Bowie knife. Don't come home until you kill a deer.
He wandered into a hunter's camp one night and killed everyone with his Bowie knife while they slept, then cut the heart out of the deer they had hanging upside down from a tree limb and ate it. Then he sawed off an antler, got into their pickup and drove home. He was covered in dry blood. He threw the antler at his father's feet where he sat in front of the TV, trying to read lips.
So right, he never went out for sports but he shot 500 robins out of a lot of trees and ate a deer heart raw and no one messed with him.
When he was 18 his father shot a robin right out of his own brain with a .357 Magnum and the very next day a Wednesday he drifted into the Marine Corps recruiting station. Fun down on the Shrepok with a girl named Giang and her mother and three pigs. They made him a sergeant.
They Read His Lips
People came to visit, uncles and aunts and an old girlfriend, the gym coach who molested him when he was twelve and called it love, total strangers with credentials hanging around their necks and eyes full of distrust. They said he looked great, all but the men in suits with the credentials hanging around their necks. They said he was doing fine, they said his whole life lay in front of him, he'd be out of there in no time, five or six more shock treatments and some red pills to go with the blues, all he needed now were some white pills and he'd be a first-class citizen again, three jars of pills and a wooden leg.
Did he want a cell phone? Ha-ha, just kidding. Stick with the pay phone down the hall, if he could just get down the hall, but every time he tried orderlies tackled him and whispered threats in his ear on the green linoleum floor. They knew what went down on the Shrepok, they knew what kind of white boy he was, they had sisters who bore his children, what was he trying to do, integrate the whole fucking human race? Time, by God, to confess the whole sordid mess.
He made pots and did watercolors. He wove blankets with Navajo designs. He carved his initials with a kitchen fork in his wooden leg, just under where Rover'd been chewing. D.P. Were those his initials? Was he Dave Pearson, a good old boy who hunted with a Bowie knife? No! The wooden leg was whispering secrets. He was a displaced person, that's what D.P. stood for. He belonged back on the Shrepok, face-down in the mud with Giang and her mother and the pigs.
Insights. He was a hotbed of insights that they tried to fry with electric shock. He shat his pants, and that distracted them. They were not going to make anyone well who had shit in his pants. They stuck a plug up his ass.
All the war heroes on the ward cheered him on. They'd had a taste of the action, they knew where he was coming from.
“Follow me!” he cried out in a strong semper-fi voice, and they read his lips.
Somehow it got to be Saturday, somehow the line formed at the rear, somehow a planet blew to smithereens, somehow he tried to make a fresh start, tried to learn his ABCs from scratch, claim his place at the dinner table with the ebony servants, the universal smorgasbord. But it was a no-go.
Back to the drawing board, to the squirreled secrets under a moth-eaten cassock. Cassock, Cossack, nut sack, sperm bank. Hail a cab, hail Mary with the grace of an elephant, three kings and nine lawyers will buy your way out of anything. Binary division and custard pie. The tie that binds. Tie her up, tie her down, let the fun begin, the last show of the evening, half-price tickets, a free lunch. The grudge machine, churning out nasty consequences. Dial M for murder, Dial soap, soap operas, the slippery eel that makes children cry. Postmortem, post bail, post a message, pick 'em up, lay 'em down, bring the boys home, the legions of folly. Yank out his fingernails, he won't bat an eye, he's the son of God, Al Capone's nephew, the late-news anchor man, and now he's coming your way. Even the speed of light is befuddled.
Separation of state, state of separation, dotted lines, sign above, down below where you're bound to go. Hi-ho, hi-ho, off to work in your Maidenform bra--look at me when I talk to you.
That's the ticket. Now sit down here, shut your eyes, open your mouth, let the maggots out. Rim shots and anal probes, you'll be right as rain when I'm through with you. An epidemic of mayhem, virgin saints on the drawing board. Sit there until the phone rings. Sing until your teeth grind.
***
He tried to give pointers, keep his hands dry, it didn't work. He crashed into hedge plans, spewed lies, Tourette syndrome runaround, a lexicon of wrong doings.
The uniform fit and then didn't, rat-a-tat in the outback, the payback, the blue lagoon, the flagged cab, draped coffin, he just got fat is all. Start the meter, get me out of here.
The lost cause, the forfeiture, the lost war. Hatch marks for eyebrows, jab marks in his veins, a handful of blue pills. Doctor, doctor, pray the old familiar prayer, chase the boogie man, race the moon. In comes trouble dressed like an old friend, he's seen it all. Lock and load and he's out the door.
They stretch and yawn and think life is good but he'll show them, trim their whiskers, implode their dreams, their silly pile of smiles. He's got answers that came in a body bag, two tours in Nam, the G.I. Bill, he'll never talk.
***
Sons of Adam, daughters of the moon, offsprings of Moloch, angels of death. Bareback in a tiger cage, linguistic desecration, ripped to shreds declarations and cash dividends. He'll stir the pot, find a woman, raise a family of warriors. Land mines, land ho, leveled playing fields, rabbits run thru with bayonets.
The clock runs backwards, decisions in reverse, this can't go on forever. Learn to dance with a wooden leg, close your eyes, pretend you've got soul. See how they work you?
***
That was then, this is now, and there goes Charlie streaking through the wet jungle, who asked him to the party? Everyone's climbed the mountain, swam with sharks, learned to rollerblade, stay on your toes.
He snuck in the back door. He traded his begging bowl for a portable TV and an I-pad. I-pad, maxi-pad, he was on his way up the ladder. He was licking his wounds like a butchered cow. No one came to visit. So what, who needs absolution?
***
The meds were working, he couldn't get out of bed in the morning. He needed a nurse with a dirty mind. Well, sort of working. He still talked funny when he played darts and – bam, just like that his mind goes blank.
Shooting blanks, buried tanks, peace talks, bullshit walks, all these women dancing naked on his grave. Wait a minute, he's not dead, he's not a tank. Muzak pounding out of the Greyhound speakers. All aboard.
No, that's train talk. Tip the conductor and climb on up there. Top berth in the travel morgue. The train pulls out of the station. Close your eyes, hang on tight.
***
He's lit up like a Christmas tree, like the 4th of July. A full pot of coffee and a fistful of meds. He hangs up his cartridge belt and takes off his helmet. POW! BLAM! Brains splattered over an acre of papaya trees. No, wait, wrong war, retrograde flashback, hands on the car, motherfucker! Slice and dice, payback for the Third Platoon. The meds are working. Can you hear me, do you feel me, are you ready to go down for all you hold dear? Oh dear, dead deer splayed on the hood of a jeep, bring it on home to mama.
They threw him off the bus in Omaha.
***
It's not a fun town to walk around in. Slaughter houses and insurance firms, tornadoes and sand storms. He thought the bus was a train. He stormed up and down the aisle looking for the bar car. In-coming! and he dove for cover. Get off me, fool!and a police escort. They took his meds away and he went bonkers. Call, they said, anyone. Here, here's a list of names, there's the door. Who's your mama?
Bring in the reserves, going thru platoons like rosary beads, the buddy system, why die in the arms of a stranger? Three condoms and a shot of morphine, why suffer? Pack it in, pack it out. They tried to get him in a straitjacket but no luck. If he could just reach California, they had phone books in California, they spoke Spanish and swam with dolphins. Lock and load for the old days. They turned him loose but kept his stiletto and gas mask.
What can you do to help? Will you iron his shirts? Of course not. You came around the corner at the wrong time is all and bumped into him, so glance at your watch like you're late for something and then back-pedal like a motherfucker. Join the in-crowd, cocktail hour, turn it into a story. He was fucking out there, man, I mean way out there. He looked like a gladiator with false teeth! Hey, buy me a fucking drink, man, I have seen the enemy!
But no one's buying, no one's laughing, the whole thing is backfiring, you've been ambushed, you weren't combat ready, your guts are hanging out and you're screaming medic! medic! He got you good, he took you out, there goes the wife, the house, the kids won't look you in the eye.
Time to learn chess and pass on the curse. The whole country's fucked.
Johnny Comes Marching Home
Johnny comes marching home. They stopped him three blocks from his house for walking funny. Search and destroy. What were they looking for? Citizenship? Discharge papers? A gun? He turned it in to the Sergeant-at-Arms along with his bleached skulls and a jar full of ears. He was clean.
Mom! I'm home!
Yesterday. All his troubles stuck to the sole of his shoe like warm gum. Not funny. Not funny at all. Serious business. Global meltdown coming in fast, like napalm. Crispy critters.
The G.I. Bill. How would he do in English 101, thinking like this? How would he write it down? Would he split his infinitives? Should he study science instead? Go out for basketball? Dribble his way back into the mainstream?
Trojan horses everywhere. Cities under siege. Street gangs and eclipsed moons. A hot shower, a home-cooked meal, and out the door in his civvies, looking for the old action.
***
The moon used to be 10,000 miles from earth and raised havoc with the oceans. And then the whole thing turned to ice. Nothing bigger than a single-cell microbe for three billion years and then the whole thing started multiplying. Is this true?
Maybe his whole life is a lie. Maybe he shouldn't have shot that girl and her mother and the three pigs down by the Srepok River. Three little piggies. His whole life a nursery rhyme.
***
He slept all day and watched TV all night. With the sound off. He was learning to read lips. He'd go into his mother's room after she was asleep and watch her lips twitch. So that's what she thought of him. He burned incense for his father, shot to hell on a beach at Normandy.
He started reading. He'd watch TV and read lips and read books all at the same time, jamming popcorn into his mouth and washing it down with Budweiser. Now and then he'd dial a number on the phone and talk in telepathy.
“Who is this? Who's there? I'm going to hang up,” they'd say.
That's how he learned about the moon and the earth turning to ice, from reading. Snowball earth they called it. He imagined himself packing rocks into a snowball and throwing it in God's face. Someone had to do it, why not him? He had training, he just needed someone to give the order. “Yes sir! Can do, sir! I'll smash God's face in, sir!
Then he read about Krishna and Vishnu and that whole crowd and saw what he was up against. God was a shape shifter.
***
Sometimes he'd unstrap his wooden leg and order it to march around the room, but it just stood there. It was nothing without him. But when he strapped it on again it came alive. Maybe he was God.
He was beginning to see things no one else saw, even the people who wrote the books.
Rover, Red Rover, Send the Enemy Over
Christmas rolled around and Hannibal rode over the Cascades on a llama. Wrong mountains, wrong beast, time shifts and shape shifts, warped space. Einstein spaghetti. Marco Polo fabricating journeys to China from a bordello in Marseille. Napoleon contemplating his dong, shaped like a seahorse.
He was flunking out, mixing science with fantasy, lurking outside the girls dorm after midnight.
Night patrol.
***
School sucked. He missed sleeping days and reading lips at night. He missed the war, but they wouldn't put him back in, what with his wooden leg, one glass eye and a missing pinkie on his left hand. Don't ask what your country can do for you, haven't they done enough already? He field-stripped his .45, cleaned it, put it back together, slammed in a clip.
Rover, Red Rover, send the enemy over.
***
He played with the ghost of his dead dog in the back yard while his mother peeked thru the curtains. Rover knew about the three pigs down on the Shrepok but just didn't give a shit. Dogs are that way. He'd hug Rover and let him gnaw on his wooden leg, throw grenades for him to chase. KA-BLAM!
The neighbors complained. About the noise, about the craters in their backyards. The police came and left in a hurry and then a SWAT team showed up and he put three slugs in the flak vest of the lead man when they kicked in the door, two in the left leg of the second man, and one thru the ceiling as a warning shot. Time had lost sequence. Things were running backwards. He crawled into his mother's womb and turned into an embryo. They locked him away and shot juice thru his brain and tripled the blue pills. He pretended he couldn't speak English.
***
When he was nine his father taught him to shoot robins out of trees with a single-shot .22, said it was his Constitutional right, said slingshots were for sissies. A few years later he left him up in the mountains in the dead of winter with a tin of K-rations and a Bowie knife. Don't come home until you kill a deer.
He wandered into a hunter's camp one night and killed everyone with his Bowie knife while they slept, then cut the heart out of the deer they had hanging upside down from a tree limb and ate it. Then he sawed off an antler, got into their pickup and drove home. He was covered in dry blood. He threw the antler at his father's feet where he sat in front of the TV, trying to read lips.
So right, he never went out for sports but he shot 500 robins out of a lot of trees and ate a deer heart raw and no one messed with him.
When he was 18 his father shot a robin right out of his own brain with a .357 Magnum and the very next day a Wednesday he drifted into the Marine Corps recruiting station. Fun down on the Shrepok with a girl named Giang and her mother and three pigs. They made him a sergeant.
They Read His Lips
People came to visit, uncles and aunts and an old girlfriend, the gym coach who molested him when he was twelve and called it love, total strangers with credentials hanging around their necks and eyes full of distrust. They said he looked great, all but the men in suits with the credentials hanging around their necks. They said he was doing fine, they said his whole life lay in front of him, he'd be out of there in no time, five or six more shock treatments and some red pills to go with the blues, all he needed now were some white pills and he'd be a first-class citizen again, three jars of pills and a wooden leg.
Did he want a cell phone? Ha-ha, just kidding. Stick with the pay phone down the hall, if he could just get down the hall, but every time he tried orderlies tackled him and whispered threats in his ear on the green linoleum floor. They knew what went down on the Shrepok, they knew what kind of white boy he was, they had sisters who bore his children, what was he trying to do, integrate the whole fucking human race? Time, by God, to confess the whole sordid mess.
He made pots and did watercolors. He wove blankets with Navajo designs. He carved his initials with a kitchen fork in his wooden leg, just under where Rover'd been chewing. D.P. Were those his initials? Was he Dave Pearson, a good old boy who hunted with a Bowie knife? No! The wooden leg was whispering secrets. He was a displaced person, that's what D.P. stood for. He belonged back on the Shrepok, face-down in the mud with Giang and her mother and the pigs.
Insights. He was a hotbed of insights that they tried to fry with electric shock. He shat his pants, and that distracted them. They were not going to make anyone well who had shit in his pants. They stuck a plug up his ass.
All the war heroes on the ward cheered him on. They'd had a taste of the action, they knew where he was coming from.
“Follow me!” he cried out in a strong semper-fi voice, and they read his lips.
Poems - Alan Catlin
The Long Hot Summer
Still nights raw with heat
and the scent of spilled gasoline.
The ground so dry it aches for
rain that never comes.
Even the weeds dying, all the tall
grasses brown and seer like straw.
Nothing moves but beer drunk
youths, their thin torsos slick
with pitch and sweat, Zippo lighters
ready to crisp another wood
framed barn, to torch another field
just to watch the flames, the smoke
smother yet another hunter’s moon.
Their feral eyes are as red as coals
that have absorbed all available light.
An Elegy For A Tragedy About To Occur
She was the black angel in
the heart of a murder ballad,
without a soul, blue eyes like
dry ice in a locked chamber
where all the unidentified are
stored, face posed Bette Davis
style, so mad dog crazy,
her lips were white foam coated,
split at the corners but bloodless
as cut worms in the fresh buds
of picked flowers. Nights she stalked
the images of dreamers shocked
awake, off key singing a song of
her own invention, “brown fields
forever...” The weeds she planted
as wayward thoughts in susceptible
minds, flourished as sublunar
memories even before they occurred.
Her insanity was a gift that could
never be returned.
Still nights raw with heat
and the scent of spilled gasoline.
The ground so dry it aches for
rain that never comes.
Even the weeds dying, all the tall
grasses brown and seer like straw.
Nothing moves but beer drunk
youths, their thin torsos slick
with pitch and sweat, Zippo lighters
ready to crisp another wood
framed barn, to torch another field
just to watch the flames, the smoke
smother yet another hunter’s moon.
Their feral eyes are as red as coals
that have absorbed all available light.
An Elegy For A Tragedy About To Occur
She was the black angel in
the heart of a murder ballad,
without a soul, blue eyes like
dry ice in a locked chamber
where all the unidentified are
stored, face posed Bette Davis
style, so mad dog crazy,
her lips were white foam coated,
split at the corners but bloodless
as cut worms in the fresh buds
of picked flowers. Nights she stalked
the images of dreamers shocked
awake, off key singing a song of
her own invention, “brown fields
forever...” The weeds she planted
as wayward thoughts in susceptible
minds, flourished as sublunar
memories even before they occurred.
Her insanity was a gift that could
never be returned.
poem - edward mycue
ECHELONING TAPESTRY STRANDS
NOTICING NOTIONS THAT RISE
People and Trees -- my favorite things)
Some of the nicest people I know
are dead, and not much hope for the others
Mellifluous phrasing, dulcet tones,
incantations
Mio bambino
caro always noticing
pop-up notions of incompleted themes
Quiescent
beauty -- of laundry days (“of towels
that don’t smell like bowels and sheets
that don’t smell like feets”)
plus the crapadile badinage -- urban legends in people’s own minds
What we choose,
select,
what we have to emphasize
about our family histories
and pillory in place of policy
Pregnancy and poignancy -- of end-of-life memories
Fears that eat will
Closing + blocking the door
Gall + shell= the person
And the winner: in an end
Has been a process
NOTICING NOTIONS THAT RISE
People and Trees -- my favorite things)
Some of the nicest people I know
are dead, and not much hope for the others
Mellifluous phrasing, dulcet tones,
incantations
Mio bambino
caro always noticing
pop-up notions of incompleted themes
Quiescent
beauty -- of laundry days (“of towels
that don’t smell like bowels and sheets
that don’t smell like feets”)
plus the crapadile badinage -- urban legends in people’s own minds
What we choose,
select,
what we have to emphasize
about our family histories
and pillory in place of policy
Pregnancy and poignancy -- of end-of-life memories
Fears that eat will
Closing + blocking the door
Gall + shell= the person
And the winner: in an end
Has been a process
poems - lavinia murray
1 - The Occult Real Time
Hell, twenty seven ghosts are skewered on my metronome
one after the other like some kind of waving timeline
one ghost’s grafted itself onto cigarette smoke
others are being mashed down to make baking powder
a woman works her spoon on them
couple of ghosts turn themselves into things
skid marks on a snowy road
white hairs on a nonchalant pudenda
3 - The Catastrophic Distinction Boundary Begins Anew
he stepped out of his trousers!
he planted a sapling in the crumpled round of each leg --
they were Cenozoic stressed denims
bleached to suggest his Holocene credentials:
femur, tibia, fibula and phallus
anyhow
the sky’s slithering down
its blue colloidal slick
succumbing to gravity
Death will be slotted into the jet stream
becoming veined with igneous lightning
grave goods will include
swallow and snow-goose migratory paths
7 – Wherefores
I manufacture dolls from the meltdown of ancestral dentures
due to a continuously misplaced belt in childhood, I have two waists.
I like this one better than that one
the pharmacy where I draw my medication
consists of a square, white room
with a swing door set in each wall through which the wind continually rages
the pharmacists sit on weathervanes,
all their pills and potions are unlabelled
nothing is counted, nothing is measured
the pharmacists tilt donor bottles over receptor bottles
and they fill ad hoc as the wind spins them
they dispense meteorological doses
forecasts.
QUOTE - Paul Valery
"WAR: a massacre of people who don’t know each other for the profit of people who know each other, but don’t massacre each other."
Hell, twenty seven ghosts are skewered on my metronome
one after the other like some kind of waving timeline
one ghost’s grafted itself onto cigarette smoke
others are being mashed down to make baking powder
a woman works her spoon on them
couple of ghosts turn themselves into things
skid marks on a snowy road
white hairs on a nonchalant pudenda
3 - The Catastrophic Distinction Boundary Begins Anew
he stepped out of his trousers!
he planted a sapling in the crumpled round of each leg --
they were Cenozoic stressed denims
bleached to suggest his Holocene credentials:
femur, tibia, fibula and phallus
anyhow
the sky’s slithering down
its blue colloidal slick
succumbing to gravity
Death will be slotted into the jet stream
becoming veined with igneous lightning
grave goods will include
swallow and snow-goose migratory paths
7 – Wherefores
I manufacture dolls from the meltdown of ancestral dentures
due to a continuously misplaced belt in childhood, I have two waists.
I like this one better than that one
the pharmacy where I draw my medication
consists of a square, white room
with a swing door set in each wall through which the wind continually rages
the pharmacists sit on weathervanes,
all their pills and potions are unlabelled
nothing is counted, nothing is measured
the pharmacists tilt donor bottles over receptor bottles
and they fill ad hoc as the wind spins them
they dispense meteorological doses
forecasts.
QUOTE - Paul Valery
"WAR: a massacre of people who don’t know each other for the profit of people who know each other, but don’t massacre each other."
michael murray
Noise
Once on a time
there was jostling, an oscillating -
it knew it existed, but had no purpose.
It wanted to find out
how to begin.
It tried the pause
between the last of sun, the darkening of olive.
It was empty and quiet there
but another part moved on.
And between them an argument started
it rolled off on its own,
to bounce around in the night.
Later another part tried mouths of animals.
It liked the taste of their forms,
stayed there. Some already had gone on,
to the wind, the weather.
They didn’t recognize each other
thinking each an enemy, fought:
victor becoming victim; victim, victor.
But some of this noise steamed off
finding refuge in the mouths of people –
this part, both gas and particle, developed a dialogue:
a discussion between tongue and breath.
There was still a part of noise not satisfied,
pitching camp among the restless stars;
moving on, following its own dissatisfaction
to the edge of silence.
It was like looking into a mirror.
Once on a time
there was jostling, an oscillating -
it knew it existed, but had no purpose.
It wanted to find out
how to begin.
It tried the pause
between the last of sun, the darkening of olive.
It was empty and quiet there
but another part moved on.
And between them an argument started
it rolled off on its own,
to bounce around in the night.
Later another part tried mouths of animals.
It liked the taste of their forms,
stayed there. Some already had gone on,
to the wind, the weather.
They didn’t recognize each other
thinking each an enemy, fought:
victor becoming victim; victim, victor.
But some of this noise steamed off
finding refuge in the mouths of people –
this part, both gas and particle, developed a dialogue:
a discussion between tongue and breath.
There was still a part of noise not satisfied,
pitching camp among the restless stars;
moving on, following its own dissatisfaction
to the edge of silence.
It was like looking into a mirror.
poems - alex migliore
A Confection Of Nuts
nothing is more
man than &
nothing more
mr & mrs than
to weigh love
down with love
nothing more
miserable than
a child who throws
off his fantastic
and his two
grains of fog
to pull an adult
out of his hat.
Marsh Poem
Set drum for dawn, boot for mud.
Walk forward into rusty fonts;
where consonants plunge,
diphthongs mount;
sibilants cosset stick and scrub.
Turn, loop, arc. Possibility
has perimeter, not direction.
Bear with all weakness for a path.
If found off-course, join the horns
of a crescent moon and extend
toward the horizon.
This will give you south, or north.
nothing is more
man than &
nothing more
mr & mrs than
to weigh love
down with love
nothing more
miserable than
a child who throws
off his fantastic
and his two
grains of fog
to pull an adult
out of his hat.
Marsh Poem
Set drum for dawn, boot for mud.
Walk forward into rusty fonts;
where consonants plunge,
diphthongs mount;
sibilants cosset stick and scrub.
Turn, loop, arc. Possibility
has perimeter, not direction.
Bear with all weakness for a path.
If found off-course, join the horns
of a crescent moon and extend
toward the horizon.
This will give you south, or north.
POEM - K J Hannah Greenberg
Illusions of Circle Bridges
Illusions of circle bridges, connecting one porte-cochère
To another, color vehicular traffic, cleave hearts, also
Remain dear to kitbash-loving hobbyists.
Modifying models means destruction drives creation,
Denotes some amount of profligate fashioning using
Kits, bits and pieces, or other boxed equipment.
On balance, no viaduct between emotional obstacles
Triggers healing in made-up characters, or my core;
Magic infuses no space of engineered crossings.
Illusions of circle bridges, connecting one porte-cochère
To another, color vehicular traffic, cleave hearts, also
Remain dear to kitbash-loving hobbyists.
Modifying models means destruction drives creation,
Denotes some amount of profligate fashioning using
Kits, bits and pieces, or other boxed equipment.
On balance, no viaduct between emotional obstacles
Triggers healing in made-up characters, or my core;
Magic infuses no space of engineered crossings.
essay - richard livermore
Beyond Surrealism
To say that surrealism interests me would be something of an understatement. It isn’t that I don’t recognise the cultic ‘world-saving’ element that came to possess it at times, but, as a movement, it still remains fascinating. In a book I have recently read based on the writings of André Breton called What Is Surrealism?, this cultic element comes across very strongly, not so much in the writing of Breton himself, but in the statements about surrealism made by the editor, Franklin Rosemont, a self-declared Trotskyite, who does tend to turn it into something of a dogma. For example, Rosemont calls Pablo Neruda a pseudo-poet because he happened to be something of a Stalinist, though I can’t for the life of me figure out how that would make him a pseudo-poet. Does poetry fall so easily into such political categories? I wonder. Reading Rosemont gives me a sense of déjà vu, taking me back to the 70s. I can’t recall how many times I was told by Trotskyites then that I didn’t have the ‘correct analysis’. The same feeling of déjà vu comes over me whenever I read an online journal like the Trotskyite World Socialist Website, which seems to call everyone else on the left with a different perspective to itself a “pseudo-leftist”. It must be so reassuring to be always in the right.
But back to surrealism. I am not here referring to the theory and practice of surrealism as first propounded by André Breton and developed since in various directions by numerous writers and painters – including the aforementioned ‘pseudo-poet’, Pablo Neruda. What interests me about surrealism is not just whatever was written or painted under its name, but also the more subtle and diffuse influence it seems to have had since - on poetry, art, film and the culture at large. For instance, I detect its influence – however ‘diluted’ - in the work of poets like Frank O’Hara and John Ashbery, whose poetry seems to move in a free-ranging manner which has something in common with surrealist experiments in automatic writing and free association. Ashbery in particular writes poetry with no obvious logic to it as it moves from one sentence to the next without apparently going anywhere. His sentence-structures certainly appear normal enough, but when you see how the meaning seems to drift, you realise something's amiss. The work throws out many leads, but doesn’t seem to follow them through. I think that such a method of writing, though it is only one poet’s uniquely individual method and therefore unrepeatable, can have a tonic effect on other poets and help free them from the constricting imperative always to make sense. I see a perhaps remote influence of surrealism in Ashbery’s work and it may be just one of the ways that surrealism has had of having a liberating effect on our culture, without its precepts being adhered to slavishly.
Two thinkers to bring into this equation at this point are Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatarri and their book Anti-Oedipus. Deleuze elsewhere has written about ‘nomadism’, which fits in here as well. Ashbery’s work seems to epitomise Deleuze’s concept of ‘nomadism’ in poetry very well. In Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guatarri discuss the difference between paranoia and schizophrenia in terms of ‘nomadism’. The former they say is connected to ‘reterritorialising’ the psyche while the latter is connected to 'deterritorialising' the psyche, which would make it a form of ‘nomadism’, bursting out in all directions, as opposed to shoring up the boundaries of one’s psychic territory and developing a siege psychology – as is obviously the case with paranoia. I am presenting these ideas in my own way, well aware that I could be misrepresenting the ideas of Deleuze and Guatarri themselves. After all, it must be well over 20 years since I read Anti-Oedipus.
My own mother was ‘mad’. She spent most of my early life in psychiatric institutions. I assume from her letters that her ‘madness’ was closer to the schizophrenic end of the ‘madness’ spectrum since they seemed to spill out in many directions - though I was never really privy to all the facts of the matter. What is quite interesting is that her letters to me seemed to ramble on like John Ashbery poems, from one train of thought to another – often changing tack mid-sentence as well. Of course, they did not have the control of Ashbery’s poems, and her language was not as rich or diverse, but the same basic ‘mechanisms’ seemed to be at work. What John Ashbery’s poems capture, and what my mother’s letters also captured, was this ‘spirit of nomadism’, through a language which doesn’t obey the imperative of ‘joined-up thought’. Ashbery has developed this as a technique in poetry and in this sense it has something in common with the automatic-writing and free-association experiments promoted by the Surrealists, the main difference being that Surrealism seems to have been largely image-based, whereas Ashbery’s work is more sentenced-based.
Both Ashbery’s work – and my mother’s letters – seem to exemplify what Deleuze might call ‘nomadism’. They don’t stay in one place, they wander and don’t seem to return to their point of departure, recapitulating their previous thoughts and ideas. I think that this is what the Surrealists were aiming at as well – to get underneath rational discourse to bring out the non-rational elements of thought and image-formation. The methods, of course, are very different. Surrealism aims to ‘tap’ the unconscious through automatic writing and free association – something Freud himself believed was impossible, since the method still left the ego in charge. It is also ironic that most of its successful practitioners were painters like Yves Tanguy, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, René Magritte and others, as well as filmmakers like Louis Bunuel. It seems to have had less of a long-lasting influence on poetry and even less influence on the novel and music – which suggests that the relative status of the visual image in these arts has to be taken into account when dealing with Surrealism. And it also perhaps suggests why in poetry it eventually moved off in a different direction to the one it took in painting and film-making. I have always felt that the last two art-forms could reproduce dreamlike states more effectively than poetry or music because dreams as manifestations of one's primordial 'animal self' are largely image-based phenomena. It thus seems to me that surrealism as a philosophy or ideology informing or shaping poetry could not have the long-lasting impact which it has clearly had on painting and film-making (The work of Kenneth Anger, for instance.) and it would sooner or later give ground to a different kind of ‘nomadism’, one that would take more account of the specific nature of poetry – as opposed to painting or film-making. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t had a beneficial influence on poets from Lorca to David Gascoyne to Dylan Thomas to Pablo Neruda – though only for a while I suspect.
The problem I have with Surrealism is precisely that it was an ism. Furthermore, it was attached to another ism – namely Marxist-Leninism. André Breton was quite specific about this connection. Furthermore, he invoked the dialectic of Hegel and Marx in support of Surrealism. For both Hegel and Marx, dialectics reflected being and therefore had some kind of ontological status – idealist in the case of Hegel and materialist in the case of Marx. I am sorry to play the role of the little boy in The Emperor’s New Clothes by Hans Christian Andersen and point out the obvious here, but the dialectic is no more than a method of thought and argument, not the reflection of reality that some people seem to assume it is. At its best it serves a regulative function by placing varying points of view in critical juxtaposition to one another, but it never really leaves the realm of concepts - as far as I can see. However, for both Hegel and Marx, it became somehow the royal road to reality itself. Marx (and Engels) even wanted to lay down ‘scientific laws’ for history based on the dialectic, viewing history in terms of stages of development which somehow or other had to conform to a dialectical pattern. Even nature followed a dialectical pattern of development according to Engels in his Dialectics Of Nature. André Breton was bitten by the self-same dialectical bug and it infected him badly. It was perhaps for this reason that Surrealism hit the rocks and foundered – or at least ran out of steam when it did. Of course, the greatest body-blow dealt to Surrealism was the Second World War, but then that is true of most cultural movements at the time.
While I do have a tremendous admiration for Breton and Surrealism, I must say that I dislike the authoritarian tendency in it – and in Breton. Perhaps that reflects the Marxist-Leninist influence. Personally, I think Surrealism’s value is primarily aesthetic, not political, and to attempt to harness it to a political project is ill-conceived. Furthermore, like so many cults, Surrealism developed a ‘for us or against us’ mentality which it insisted you adhered to. Expulsions based on political critieria were common. It also produced a list of writers you should or should not read. For instance – “Lisez – Lautremont, Rimbaud, Huysmans, Jarry, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Apollinaire” and so on. “Ne lisez pas – Verlaine, Proust, Balzac, Schopenhauer, Banville, Valery” – and so on again. I can certainly understand the logic behind the list, but all such lists tend to remind me of Lenin’s formula “Better fewer, but better”, which might have worked well for the Bolsheviks’ organisation as a party before the Revolution in Russia, but ended up destroying Soviet democracy once the Bolsheviks had attained power – something very conveniently forgotten by Trotskyists.
For my own part, I prefer to take a much more eclectic attitude and furthermore would rather make up my own mind concerning what books I should read and what books I shouldn’t – based on criteria much less definable. Moreover, I hardly think such lists are very conducive to the nomadic vagaries of surrealism. Perhaps, they are just advisory, but surely something should be left to chance in these matters. The eclectic, I think, is necessary if we are to develop in our own unique ways according to criteria determined by our unconscious predilections. And if that goes against the precepts of those who set themselves up as self-appointed arbiters in aesthetic questions, so be it. We will just have to live with their disapproval. There is something in Surrealism definitely worth preserving - something anarchic, excessive - in a word Dionysian - but it needs to be liberated from its Marxist-Leninist husk. And it is perhaps that something worth preserving that we need to develop more of in future, without trying to lay down the law concerning what its outcomes should be.
But back to surrealism. I am not here referring to the theory and practice of surrealism as first propounded by André Breton and developed since in various directions by numerous writers and painters – including the aforementioned ‘pseudo-poet’, Pablo Neruda. What interests me about surrealism is not just whatever was written or painted under its name, but also the more subtle and diffuse influence it seems to have had since - on poetry, art, film and the culture at large. For instance, I detect its influence – however ‘diluted’ - in the work of poets like Frank O’Hara and John Ashbery, whose poetry seems to move in a free-ranging manner which has something in common with surrealist experiments in automatic writing and free association. Ashbery in particular writes poetry with no obvious logic to it as it moves from one sentence to the next without apparently going anywhere. His sentence-structures certainly appear normal enough, but when you see how the meaning seems to drift, you realise something's amiss. The work throws out many leads, but doesn’t seem to follow them through. I think that such a method of writing, though it is only one poet’s uniquely individual method and therefore unrepeatable, can have a tonic effect on other poets and help free them from the constricting imperative always to make sense. I see a perhaps remote influence of surrealism in Ashbery’s work and it may be just one of the ways that surrealism has had of having a liberating effect on our culture, without its precepts being adhered to slavishly.
Two thinkers to bring into this equation at this point are Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatarri and their book Anti-Oedipus. Deleuze elsewhere has written about ‘nomadism’, which fits in here as well. Ashbery’s work seems to epitomise Deleuze’s concept of ‘nomadism’ in poetry very well. In Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guatarri discuss the difference between paranoia and schizophrenia in terms of ‘nomadism’. The former they say is connected to ‘reterritorialising’ the psyche while the latter is connected to 'deterritorialising' the psyche, which would make it a form of ‘nomadism’, bursting out in all directions, as opposed to shoring up the boundaries of one’s psychic territory and developing a siege psychology – as is obviously the case with paranoia. I am presenting these ideas in my own way, well aware that I could be misrepresenting the ideas of Deleuze and Guatarri themselves. After all, it must be well over 20 years since I read Anti-Oedipus.
My own mother was ‘mad’. She spent most of my early life in psychiatric institutions. I assume from her letters that her ‘madness’ was closer to the schizophrenic end of the ‘madness’ spectrum since they seemed to spill out in many directions - though I was never really privy to all the facts of the matter. What is quite interesting is that her letters to me seemed to ramble on like John Ashbery poems, from one train of thought to another – often changing tack mid-sentence as well. Of course, they did not have the control of Ashbery’s poems, and her language was not as rich or diverse, but the same basic ‘mechanisms’ seemed to be at work. What John Ashbery’s poems capture, and what my mother’s letters also captured, was this ‘spirit of nomadism’, through a language which doesn’t obey the imperative of ‘joined-up thought’. Ashbery has developed this as a technique in poetry and in this sense it has something in common with the automatic-writing and free-association experiments promoted by the Surrealists, the main difference being that Surrealism seems to have been largely image-based, whereas Ashbery’s work is more sentenced-based.
Both Ashbery’s work – and my mother’s letters – seem to exemplify what Deleuze might call ‘nomadism’. They don’t stay in one place, they wander and don’t seem to return to their point of departure, recapitulating their previous thoughts and ideas. I think that this is what the Surrealists were aiming at as well – to get underneath rational discourse to bring out the non-rational elements of thought and image-formation. The methods, of course, are very different. Surrealism aims to ‘tap’ the unconscious through automatic writing and free association – something Freud himself believed was impossible, since the method still left the ego in charge. It is also ironic that most of its successful practitioners were painters like Yves Tanguy, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, René Magritte and others, as well as filmmakers like Louis Bunuel. It seems to have had less of a long-lasting influence on poetry and even less influence on the novel and music – which suggests that the relative status of the visual image in these arts has to be taken into account when dealing with Surrealism. And it also perhaps suggests why in poetry it eventually moved off in a different direction to the one it took in painting and film-making. I have always felt that the last two art-forms could reproduce dreamlike states more effectively than poetry or music because dreams as manifestations of one's primordial 'animal self' are largely image-based phenomena. It thus seems to me that surrealism as a philosophy or ideology informing or shaping poetry could not have the long-lasting impact which it has clearly had on painting and film-making (The work of Kenneth Anger, for instance.) and it would sooner or later give ground to a different kind of ‘nomadism’, one that would take more account of the specific nature of poetry – as opposed to painting or film-making. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t had a beneficial influence on poets from Lorca to David Gascoyne to Dylan Thomas to Pablo Neruda – though only for a while I suspect.
The problem I have with Surrealism is precisely that it was an ism. Furthermore, it was attached to another ism – namely Marxist-Leninism. André Breton was quite specific about this connection. Furthermore, he invoked the dialectic of Hegel and Marx in support of Surrealism. For both Hegel and Marx, dialectics reflected being and therefore had some kind of ontological status – idealist in the case of Hegel and materialist in the case of Marx. I am sorry to play the role of the little boy in The Emperor’s New Clothes by Hans Christian Andersen and point out the obvious here, but the dialectic is no more than a method of thought and argument, not the reflection of reality that some people seem to assume it is. At its best it serves a regulative function by placing varying points of view in critical juxtaposition to one another, but it never really leaves the realm of concepts - as far as I can see. However, for both Hegel and Marx, it became somehow the royal road to reality itself. Marx (and Engels) even wanted to lay down ‘scientific laws’ for history based on the dialectic, viewing history in terms of stages of development which somehow or other had to conform to a dialectical pattern. Even nature followed a dialectical pattern of development according to Engels in his Dialectics Of Nature. André Breton was bitten by the self-same dialectical bug and it infected him badly. It was perhaps for this reason that Surrealism hit the rocks and foundered – or at least ran out of steam when it did. Of course, the greatest body-blow dealt to Surrealism was the Second World War, but then that is true of most cultural movements at the time.
While I do have a tremendous admiration for Breton and Surrealism, I must say that I dislike the authoritarian tendency in it – and in Breton. Perhaps that reflects the Marxist-Leninist influence. Personally, I think Surrealism’s value is primarily aesthetic, not political, and to attempt to harness it to a political project is ill-conceived. Furthermore, like so many cults, Surrealism developed a ‘for us or against us’ mentality which it insisted you adhered to. Expulsions based on political critieria were common. It also produced a list of writers you should or should not read. For instance – “Lisez – Lautremont, Rimbaud, Huysmans, Jarry, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Apollinaire” and so on. “Ne lisez pas – Verlaine, Proust, Balzac, Schopenhauer, Banville, Valery” – and so on again. I can certainly understand the logic behind the list, but all such lists tend to remind me of Lenin’s formula “Better fewer, but better”, which might have worked well for the Bolsheviks’ organisation as a party before the Revolution in Russia, but ended up destroying Soviet democracy once the Bolsheviks had attained power – something very conveniently forgotten by Trotskyists.
For my own part, I prefer to take a much more eclectic attitude and furthermore would rather make up my own mind concerning what books I should read and what books I shouldn’t – based on criteria much less definable. Moreover, I hardly think such lists are very conducive to the nomadic vagaries of surrealism. Perhaps, they are just advisory, but surely something should be left to chance in these matters. The eclectic, I think, is necessary if we are to develop in our own unique ways according to criteria determined by our unconscious predilections. And if that goes against the precepts of those who set themselves up as self-appointed arbiters in aesthetic questions, so be it. We will just have to live with their disapproval. There is something in Surrealism definitely worth preserving - something anarchic, excessive - in a word Dionysian - but it needs to be liberated from its Marxist-Leninist husk. And it is perhaps that something worth preserving that we need to develop more of in future, without trying to lay down the law concerning what its outcomes should be.
review
of
THE FLOATING CASTLE by Karen Magolis
The Floating Castle by Karen Margolis is, to use a musical analogy, a very polyphonic novel, highly adept at blending conflicting viewpoints while exploring the very human emotions and feelings which underlie them. Another musical term that came to mind while I was reading it was counterpoint, because it did seem almost as if it had different contrasting ‘melodies’ running through it, all held in balance in such a way that that no one of its elements (‘melodies’) ever completely dominated at the expense of the others.
So what is The Floating Castle about? In brief – and very roughly – it is about a sea-journey from South Africa to England taken by a Jewish family at the time of apartheid, though very little of the action takes place on the boat. Be prepared for lots of Jewish seasoning in the narrative. For being Jewish is what lies at the heart of this novel, but being Jewish in the countless ways there are of being Jewish – religious, secular, political, historical, cultural, geographical, generational – you name it. There is, for instance, being Jewish in South Africa during the apartheid period, where being Jewish meant being part of a cohesive group held together very strongly by religious beliefs and practices. The background politics of apartheid is shown through the impact it has on the novel’s protagonists, but it is not a central theme of the novel. (The same goes for the politics of Zionism later.) And then there is being Jewish in London where all the bonds – or chains, depending on the character being dealt with at the time – of Jewishness are much looser and more blurred. In London, religion plays a much smaller part, while assimilation into English society and ‘getting ahead’ are much more of a priority. It is the journey from the South African way of being Jewish to the English way of being Jewish that this novel is basically about. The boat is a very good device for bringing these aspects of the past, present and future into mutual focus. It’s also a very good device for bringing Israel into the equation and the viability of living there as a possible outcome for the heroine of the novel, Davida. However, the novel does not - and quite rightly in my opinion – deal with the vexed political issue of Zionism itself, as such fraught questions are not the novel’s primary focus.
The narrative itself does a lot of skipping and jumping about between the past, present and future - i.e., between the privileged life in South Africa and the uncomfortable position they felt they were in during the turbulent post-Sharpeville apartheid period and the rather dismal landscape of England – especially London – with its polite forms of anti-Semitism, all swept under the carpet, of course, in typically English suburban ways. Sometimes, it is difficult to keep up with all these changes between South Africa, the ship, England and Israel, not to mention those between generations, where you have to have a good handle on all the different names being used. However, the overall impression is less one of confusion than of the richness of all the different relationships between the characters who people the novel.
From my own past association with Jews, this novel comes across as very real. The intensity of Jewish family life is rendered very vividly at times. No less important are the conflicts that take place on the level of what it means to be a Jew. In this review I will be dealing largely with how this works itself out between the father, Isaac, and his daughter, Davida, because of the pointed contrast they clearly represent. One scene in particular that is very indicative of this is the scene in which Isaac almost strangles Davida because of the way she shows disrespect for Jewish traditions such as are exhibited in something as apparently trivial as separating meat and dairy products while eating. (Not exactly kosher, you see.) Yet, despite Davida’s sceptical attitude within ‘the bosom of the family’, she can still be driven by a snarky and bigoted teacher in her London school to defend a tradition like Rosh Hashanah simply because the insufferable attitude of the teacher had driven her into a corner.
It is mainly through these two characters that one is forced to consider issues of identity-politics - which, of course, is not just a Jewish thing. For example, Isaac is a very extreme example of a man clinging to his Jewish identity through thick and thin while his much more flexible daughter, Davida’s way of being Jewish is not through religion, like Isaac, but through Marx, Rosa Luxemburg Emma Goldman and others who, though still very Jewish, have actively questioned religion. Nevertheless, as we have seen, Davida is the first to stand up for Jewish traditions when they are challenged by anti-Jewish bigotry as in the scene in which she confronts the aforementioned teacher over Rosh Hashanah – something her mother, if not Isaac, would just have ignored. The relationship and contrast between Isaac and Davida raises a whole a lot of questions concerning the way different forms of identity are actually established and the extent to which any strong identification with the group to which you ‘belong’ can be a sort of defensive position growing out of a more fundamental challenge posed by society at large. Why people cling to their identities in this way in the face of others who are in some way different to them is a very interesting topic, but one I can’t really do proper justice to here. However, I would like just to mention one thing in relation to it. The title of the novel, The Painted Bird, by Jerzy Kosinski, is taken from the fact that if you isolate one bird in any flock of birds and paint it a different colour from the rest, the other birds will attack it. So perhaps some of these questions run deeper than we might think. Isaac in this novel, for instance, is so ‘Jewish’ that he cannot stomach the idea of any of his children going out with ‘goys’. It is almost as if Isaac is like he is because he feels that everything distinctively Jewish about him would collapse if he let go of even the tiniest part of it. His Jewish identity is clearly what holds him together in the face of the outside world, and that is obviously not the case with his daughter.
It is one of the many strengths of this novel that it provokes questions like this in the reader and it does so while engaging the reader’s sympathy for the characters within it – and Isaac and Davida are far from being the only characters of interest in the novel. However, I don’t think I should say too much more about The Floating Castle because that might spoil it for some readers. It is, nonetheless, one of the best books I have ever read on the subject of being Jewish. It is both rich and measured. The characters and relationships within the book are handled with a very deft touch and that is probably the reason why I found it as enjoyable as I did and so difficult to put down once I had started it.
Richard Livermore
___________________________________________________________________________
Karen Margolis says of The Floating Castle, “I originally wrote the book in 1984 and several publishers in the UK and Germany wanted to publish it but nothing ever happened. A pity. So I put it on Kindle in 2012.
Here is the link to purchasing it on Amazon.com https://www.amazon.com/Floating-Castle-Karen-Margolis-ebook/dp/B008A661LI
It can also be ordered from Amazon.co.uk and other local Amazon branches in Europe, USA, Japan etc.
Cost depends on local currency.
You do not have to be a member of Amazon or Kindle to buy it. All you need is a computer or phone for downloading, you don't need a special device to read it.”
So what is The Floating Castle about? In brief – and very roughly – it is about a sea-journey from South Africa to England taken by a Jewish family at the time of apartheid, though very little of the action takes place on the boat. Be prepared for lots of Jewish seasoning in the narrative. For being Jewish is what lies at the heart of this novel, but being Jewish in the countless ways there are of being Jewish – religious, secular, political, historical, cultural, geographical, generational – you name it. There is, for instance, being Jewish in South Africa during the apartheid period, where being Jewish meant being part of a cohesive group held together very strongly by religious beliefs and practices. The background politics of apartheid is shown through the impact it has on the novel’s protagonists, but it is not a central theme of the novel. (The same goes for the politics of Zionism later.) And then there is being Jewish in London where all the bonds – or chains, depending on the character being dealt with at the time – of Jewishness are much looser and more blurred. In London, religion plays a much smaller part, while assimilation into English society and ‘getting ahead’ are much more of a priority. It is the journey from the South African way of being Jewish to the English way of being Jewish that this novel is basically about. The boat is a very good device for bringing these aspects of the past, present and future into mutual focus. It’s also a very good device for bringing Israel into the equation and the viability of living there as a possible outcome for the heroine of the novel, Davida. However, the novel does not - and quite rightly in my opinion – deal with the vexed political issue of Zionism itself, as such fraught questions are not the novel’s primary focus.
The narrative itself does a lot of skipping and jumping about between the past, present and future - i.e., between the privileged life in South Africa and the uncomfortable position they felt they were in during the turbulent post-Sharpeville apartheid period and the rather dismal landscape of England – especially London – with its polite forms of anti-Semitism, all swept under the carpet, of course, in typically English suburban ways. Sometimes, it is difficult to keep up with all these changes between South Africa, the ship, England and Israel, not to mention those between generations, where you have to have a good handle on all the different names being used. However, the overall impression is less one of confusion than of the richness of all the different relationships between the characters who people the novel.
From my own past association with Jews, this novel comes across as very real. The intensity of Jewish family life is rendered very vividly at times. No less important are the conflicts that take place on the level of what it means to be a Jew. In this review I will be dealing largely with how this works itself out between the father, Isaac, and his daughter, Davida, because of the pointed contrast they clearly represent. One scene in particular that is very indicative of this is the scene in which Isaac almost strangles Davida because of the way she shows disrespect for Jewish traditions such as are exhibited in something as apparently trivial as separating meat and dairy products while eating. (Not exactly kosher, you see.) Yet, despite Davida’s sceptical attitude within ‘the bosom of the family’, she can still be driven by a snarky and bigoted teacher in her London school to defend a tradition like Rosh Hashanah simply because the insufferable attitude of the teacher had driven her into a corner.
It is mainly through these two characters that one is forced to consider issues of identity-politics - which, of course, is not just a Jewish thing. For example, Isaac is a very extreme example of a man clinging to his Jewish identity through thick and thin while his much more flexible daughter, Davida’s way of being Jewish is not through religion, like Isaac, but through Marx, Rosa Luxemburg Emma Goldman and others who, though still very Jewish, have actively questioned religion. Nevertheless, as we have seen, Davida is the first to stand up for Jewish traditions when they are challenged by anti-Jewish bigotry as in the scene in which she confronts the aforementioned teacher over Rosh Hashanah – something her mother, if not Isaac, would just have ignored. The relationship and contrast between Isaac and Davida raises a whole a lot of questions concerning the way different forms of identity are actually established and the extent to which any strong identification with the group to which you ‘belong’ can be a sort of defensive position growing out of a more fundamental challenge posed by society at large. Why people cling to their identities in this way in the face of others who are in some way different to them is a very interesting topic, but one I can’t really do proper justice to here. However, I would like just to mention one thing in relation to it. The title of the novel, The Painted Bird, by Jerzy Kosinski, is taken from the fact that if you isolate one bird in any flock of birds and paint it a different colour from the rest, the other birds will attack it. So perhaps some of these questions run deeper than we might think. Isaac in this novel, for instance, is so ‘Jewish’ that he cannot stomach the idea of any of his children going out with ‘goys’. It is almost as if Isaac is like he is because he feels that everything distinctively Jewish about him would collapse if he let go of even the tiniest part of it. His Jewish identity is clearly what holds him together in the face of the outside world, and that is obviously not the case with his daughter.
It is one of the many strengths of this novel that it provokes questions like this in the reader and it does so while engaging the reader’s sympathy for the characters within it – and Isaac and Davida are far from being the only characters of interest in the novel. However, I don’t think I should say too much more about The Floating Castle because that might spoil it for some readers. It is, nonetheless, one of the best books I have ever read on the subject of being Jewish. It is both rich and measured. The characters and relationships within the book are handled with a very deft touch and that is probably the reason why I found it as enjoyable as I did and so difficult to put down once I had started it.
Richard Livermore
___________________________________________________________________________
Karen Margolis says of The Floating Castle, “I originally wrote the book in 1984 and several publishers in the UK and Germany wanted to publish it but nothing ever happened. A pity. So I put it on Kindle in 2012.
Here is the link to purchasing it on Amazon.com https://www.amazon.com/Floating-Castle-Karen-Margolis-ebook/dp/B008A661LI
It can also be ordered from Amazon.co.uk and other local Amazon branches in Europe, USA, Japan etc.
Cost depends on local currency.
You do not have to be a member of Amazon or Kindle to buy it. All you need is a computer or phone for downloading, you don't need a special device to read it.”
