[New-Poetry] Poetics

[Roger Day]

http://www.dmblack.me.uk/

We shut the red judge in a bronze jar
-By "we", meaning myself and the black judge -
And there was peace, for a time.  You can have enough
Yowling from certain justices.  The jar
We buried, (pitching and swelling like the tough
Membrane of an unshelled egg), on the Calton Hill.
And there was peace, for a time.  My friend the black
Judge was keen on whisky, and I kept
Within earshot of sobriety only by drinking
Slow ciders, and pretending
Unfelt absorption in the repetitive beer-mats.  It was a kind of
Vibration we noticed first - hard to tell
Whether we heard it or were shaken by,
Whether the tumblers quivered, or our minds.  It grew
To a thick thudding, and an occasional creak
Like a nearby axle, but as it were
Without the sense of "nearby". - The hard flag-
stones wriggled slightly under the taut linoleum.
I supported the black judge to the nearest door
- Detached his clutched glass for the protesting barman -
And propped him against a bus-stop.  Maybe
It was only a pneumatic drill mating at Queen Street,
Or an impotent motor-bike - the sounds grew harsher.
My gestures stopped a 24 that spat
Some eleventh commandment out of its sober driver,
But I was more conscious of the rocking walls,
The pavement's shrugging off its granite kerb...

Quite suddenly the night was still: the cracks
In the roadway rested, and the tenements
Of Rose Street stood inscrutable as always. The black judge
Snored at his post.  And all around
The bright blood filled the gutters, overflowed
The window-sills and doorsteps, soaked my anyway
Inadequate shoes, and there was a sound of cheering
Faintly and everywhere, and the Red Judge walked
O thirty feet high and scarlet towards our stop.

On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 11:41 PM, Bob Grumman <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net> wrote:
> Robin Hamilton wrote:
>
> <<
>  I mean, don't the British have greenhouses?
>>>
>
> I'm told they prefer allotments ...
>
> But as a descriptor, "British" is a non-starter  ....  Try English Irish
> Scottish Welsh ....
>
>
> Any of the preceding.
>
> <<
> Maybe he's more bardic in his later poems, like the North American Sequence
> (if I have the name right), than British poets are, I dunno.  What you have
> goin' in the bardic line crost the seas, Robin?
>>>
>
> Well, I mean, other than our currently bearded archbish of Canterbury who's
> an Authentic Welsh Aestedfod Bard, dunno ...
>
>         <g>
>
> "Bardic" poetry calls up to my mind Dylan Thomas and the whole sorry
> catastrophe of the Apocalypse Group of the forties.
>
> Before that, Thomas Gray and "The Bard".
>
> I'm thinking Whitmanesque, but with Wordsworthian apoetheoses.
>
>
> <<
> Hughes a little, but not like Roethke, whose best poems, for me, are like
> Shaman journeys from utter darkness finally after great struggle to
> exaltation--Wordsworthian exaltation, it now strikes me. . .
>>>
>
> Oh, Crow -- well, if that's what you mean by shaman poetry ...
>
>
> A little.  Maybe the Crow series as a whole.
>
> Actually, if I had to put my hat to a name of who wrote authentic shaman
> poetry this side of the Pond, it would be D.M.Black.
>
> Robin
>
> I don't know his work.
>
> --Bob
>
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>
>



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