Muderous intent

Wrote nothing today, nothing yesterday. I kind of tried, but it ended up being worse than nothing. I think the mini-manu-script I'm handing out today is taking its toll.

I've just been reading Lindsay's reading package and a fantastic essay called The Accidental Plagiarist (VQR, Spring 2007) by a guy called Erik Campbell. He is brilliant so funny and pop and insightful and for some reason morbid? The overarching theme I think was to do with the tradition of good artists 'stealing' from others (as T.S. Eliot once said). And I can't really disagree. Stealing is a part of it. Making it better is also a part of it. Bill Manhire was talking a while ago (and in his poem On Originality) about not only stealing from your literary forebears, but killing them off too. Eventually the aim is to use them to make better art (at least more relevant to contemporary audiences) at which point you have successfully killed them off. And that is kind of what he did with Robert Creeley at the start of his career and what I am trying to do with Michael Palmer I think. I love his work, a lot, but I want to love my work more. Stick a knife in a twist it and if I have to plagiarise the odd line, plunge that in, twist that then so be it.

A question of place

Been reading some Jorie Graham because it has to go back to the library soon. Some of her stuff is really nice, some of it unpenetrable. Well, maybe not unpenetrable, but it takes so much time and effort. And the look of it isn't even that inviting. I quite like that difficult poetry that at first glance seems like a walk in the park. Hers doesn't. Long lines, long stanzas, brackets, weird line breaks, indentations, lack of concrete imagery/narrative. I'm sure it all has a purpose and is carefully considered, but at first glance you are like phoar! and after reading the first couple of lines you have to have a real will power to go on. They aren't all like that though and some of her earlier stuff is definitely more in the imagistic lyric pool like Two Paintings by Gustav Klimt (Dream of the Unified Field. 1996. Carcanet Pr.):

Although what glitters

on the trees,

row after perfect row,

is merely

the injustice

of the world,

the chips on the bark of each

beech tree

catching the light, the sum

of the delays

is the beautiful, the human

beautiful,

body of flaws.

[...]

(n.b. indentaion missing) Lovely music and mix of imagery and abstract. Which I guess what she is known for. This is defintely one of her more conventional and accessible poems though.

Also been reading Kay's reading package (I found a picture of her, she's trying to hide but you cant get away from me! haha) about 'place' which inspired me to write a poem called History of this place (12) which tries to be as unplaceful, unhistoric and unspecific as possible. I think it came more from thinking about Allen Curnow's regionalism arguments about putting a frame around NZ in our writig as much as Kay's stuff. After hearing Bill Manhire talk about his poem 'On Originality' which I think is basically a response to RAK Mason poem about 'poets I want to follow them all' or something like that. So I guess I've become interested in the critical response poem, but don't I need more respect or something first? It's not even that I disagree with Curnow, at the time that is exactly what NZ literature needed. And do I know enough about those poets/poems to respond in that way, because surely people are going to criticise my criticism and they will have to stand up to it? Why do I do stuff like this? It seem to cause more problems than it resolves. Why couldn't I just write a nice poem about Wellington or something?