Sunday, January 11, 2009

REALITY CHECK (A CAVEAT)

Okay, beefore I get carried away thinking all is rosy in da garden of poeetry Ireland let me admit that I hadn't read the hole yoke and I hadn't got to page 72 where d'auld dinosaur rears it's ugly head again with a review of Eilean Ni Chuilleanain's selected poems that would make an art critic sound like a straight talker. This review by Kitt Fryatt is pretentiously hi-flown to the nth degree and is demonstrative of where poetry and it's effete world goes hideously wrong. An intellectual apartheid where poetry is wrestled from the unwashed masses( of which I am one) and put upon a pedestal, confined in an intellectual ivory tower for the supposed elite to frown and fawn upon. Real poetry Is almost always from the outsider looking in , once you lose that you lose truth. Let me quote you a bit to either illustrate this ,or to show i am completely wrong again as I have been many times in the past.This is what Kitt says. 'More sophisticated versions of this solution instruct poets to render any application of folk tradition relevent through psychological aptness, historical parallel, or poetic structure( I sometimes suspect that the broad highway to the 'project' is paved with poetic structure). The cruder of these injunctions accounts for the appeal of traditional material rather better than the supposedly subtler: the attraction of folklore is not its potential to make sense of our atavisms(which in any case is nearly nil) but the opportunity it offers to indulge them.Its uncanny impersonality is analgous to the deconstructionist notion that language, in Pual de man's words,'does things that are so radically out of control that they cannot be assimilated to the human at all.'It might well be better, ethnically speaking, to drown the myth -kitty than strain to accomodate it to an age of human rights.' Admittedly this is taken out of context , but buy PIR read it and tell me I'm wrong. The rest of the stuff is good, some of it is great, no publication is perfect and I think this Ed is still the Bizz.Looking forward to finishing this edition and look forward to da next , will even submit-hope the waiting times have improved as much as da content!

8 comments:

Liz said...

TFE, thought I'd responded to the Dell from Hell post but must have got sucked in somewhere ...just to say that maybe get a second opinion on salvaging the photos - the word of one tech. may not be enough.

And glory-be! that review you mention is a bit difficult to grasp...will have a full heads-on read when in Dublin.

Dr. Jeanne Iris said...

Assimilated structure
with a swig of fine tea
may be all anyone needs
to write good poetry
emanating from the heart
and onto the page
historical bubbles
of one’s perceptive stage.

Totalfeckineejit said...

Hi Liz, Yes I was thinking of getting one last techno to have a look. I,ve been blaming dell But I think it might actually be gogle, I;ve been using Picassa not beause I'm a cheapskate but because I have no money,it is free but recently upgated itself from Picass 2 to Picassa 3 and I believe that is when da fotos were lost, looking at the helpline it has happened to other people.Thank God you find that review difficult to grasp ,whatever about me i know fer sure dat ye are very intelligent.I always worry I will make a fool of myself with my observations. Having said that you may well think different when you read the whole thing, but I hope not.Let me know in Feb!

Totalfeckineejit said...

Hello Jeanne, nice words again as usual,I emailed asking if I should include your address phone no and email on me blog post fer yer book but I'm not sure it was sent. Should I include dem or just the publishers details?

Dr. Jeanne Iris said...

Thank you for asking, Mr. T!

You may certainly include the following phone number, email address and FAX (U.S. so all country codes should be applied):

Phone: 203-837-9245 (office)
Email: Lakatosj@wcsu.edu
Fax: 203- 837-3953

The Fax is my Dept. Fax at the Univ., so a cover letter would be helpful.

Go raibh maith agat!

Totalfeckineejit said...

Consider it done Ms J

Group 8 said...

I find that review by Kit F impenetrable. I understood bits but mostly I was like, 'Whah?' The bits I understood were fawning too...

Nothing wrong with straight forward, unacademic reviews, IMO.

Totalfeckineejit said...

Wha-hey!Lightnin' striketh twiceth Anudder inteligent poet agrees wit me. Tanx WRW, I can put me coat away -for now! :)