Pretty useless things : by Poethead

Wiki image of Maurice Ascalon Art deco.

Pretty useless things by Poethead.

A Summer’s evening, its gray raining.
The flames of five candles are dancing gay.

As counterpoint, your little lamp is straining
her low glow across the space between us.

And you give me pretty useless things,
these symbols of light;

A golden bowl figured in silver round,
red-glazed, a red not in nature found.

This poem published in the Poetry Ireland Forum members area
is from an MSS provisionally titled Names for Trees

Maurice Ascalon
Wiki

Poetry Against Blasphemy Laws : ‘Over the Edge’.

It’s great when your government ministers do not recognise
their own traditions of blasphemy, thats mostly because they
have little in the way of time to read a book- though one hopes
when they are fcked out next election that they will increase
their literacy level…

Ireland has a wonderful tradition of blasphemic utterance, in poetry,
in fiction and in literature, mostly we are a people that refuse to take
ourselves so seriously:

I feel that Dermot Ahern has not one iota of intellection in this issue.
What a sad and expedient little man he has proven himself to be.
I hope many people submit as govt consistently erases cultural
memory in pursuit of what gain? Cheap and tawdry idiotic family
members pretending they can write books, or good tailoring- who
knows what attracts the witless bureaucrat to a position of power
therein to laud their ignorance as if it were somehow commensurate
with actually having a brain >?

Poets and Blasphemy via ‘Over the Edge’, Submissions Notice.

The ‘Ephemera’ Titles on Poethead.

Anyone who reads this site (and lots do) will note that there
are titles *Ephemera I-VI*.

I did not start an Ephemera Category , nor do I much feel
like developing one. It’s mostly direct C+P without operating
links from email leakage or indeed from one or other site
that I happen to contribute on. I have published them also
into a group in Linkedin because I strongly believe that
*everything should be filed somewhere*.

( makes things easier to find, even if they are rough and ready.)

The Six Poethead Ephemera Links are now added into this post:

Ephemera # 1.
Ephemera # II.
Ephemera # III.
Ephemera # iv.
Ephemera # IV (a)

Ephemera # V; Knickers to Google.
GBS : Ephemera # VI.

Agnes Nagy’s Poetic Prose translated by Hugh Maxton.

Baskin Mosquito.

From ‘Leaf-Stalks’

“Yet I would not dismiss the nonentities. The things that nearly are
not. Journey of woodbine, ampelopsis on the ancient walls (of garden
and its house), clutch of tendrils and trailing plants, the shuffling of
their minute paws, with pads of suction for terminals of their thread-like
minute fingers, and claws, green zig-zag path of lizards this way and that,
climbing always higher until, until there are masterpieces of space-fillment.
No question of it: indeed we bathe our faces in the roistering fire of
some noted blooms, therby healing up our remoteness. But what of
the props and supports? Candle-stick under the candle’s flame, the stalks,
the vegetable scales, thorny pronged candelabras. And the floating wicks,
nightlights of a provisional kind, shoepolish tins in times of siege..”

Night-Stalks, from ‘Between’ by Agnes Nemes Nagy

In a brief afterword attached to this Volume of Between by Nagy,
Hugh Maxton discusses his approach to collaborative translation, along with a
brief description of the history and political situation in Hungary in terms of
Linguistic revival and conservation. It’s well worth the read, I shall be looking for
an online link to add in here.In my last piece on translation , I alluded to the appalling
translations of Nagy that I found online whilst searching for material by the writer
and In brief to the importance of linguistic heritage, (though I am no expert in the
field ), it’s actually easy enough to identify a terrible translation into English.

The Nagy/Maxton collaboration is a triumph in sensitivity and awareness, thus his
approach to the project is something I would recommend to people who are
interested in the area of disseminating literature either online or in publication.
I also like Gallagher’s translations of Ursu and some scraps of Agren Mc Elroy’s
work on Nelly Sachs, both of whom I have mentioned on Poethead before now.

Between, The Selected Poems of Agnes Nemes Nagy, trans High Maxton,
Corvina Press Budapest, Dedalus Press, Dublin, 1988

Leonard Baskin Woodcuts.

Some EBB.

To George Sand

A Recognition

“True genius, but true woman! dost deny
Thy woman’s nature with manly scorn,
And break away the gauds and amulets worn
By weaker women in captivity?
Ah, vain denial! That revolted cry
is sobbed in by a woman’s voice for
-lorn!–
Thy woman’s hair, my sister, all unshorn,
Floats back dishevelled strength in agony,
Disproving thy man’s name! and while
before
The world thou burnest in a poet-fire,
We see the woman heart beat evermore
Through the large flame. Beat purer,
heart, and higher,
Till God unsex thee on the heavenly
shore,
Where unincarnate spirits purely aspire.”

The Soul’s Expression

With stammering lips and insufficent
sound
I strive and struggle to deliver right
That music of my nature day and night
With dream and thought and feeling
interwound,
And inly answering all the senses round
With octaves of a mystic depth and
height
Which step out grandly to the infinite
From the dark edges of the sensual
ground!
This song of soul I struggle to outbear
Through portals of the sense, sublime
and whole,
And utter all myself into the air.
But if I did it-as the thunder-roll
breaks its own cloud, my flesh would
perish there,
Before that dread apocalypse of soul.”

I highly recommend that young women who like poetry get into Mrs Barrett
Browning.