Christian reading in his book, one of 28 illustrations Blake did to accompany Bunyon’s “The Pilgrim’s Progress” courtesy of Interesting Literature / Public Domain
“I think; therefore, I am.” René Descartes
Whence it so happened that Descartes left tracks in
John Bunyan who impressed his mind on the way
to William Blake, decent soul that he was. Long ago
we were said to have souls, that mysterious interior
invisible, unknowable. And then things changed.
It was not God so much as that a new burden of knowing
came to be ours. This knowing no bloodless rule, no abstract thing.
Blake no Age of Reason pontificator: “To Generalize is to be an Idiot;
To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit,” Blake wrote.
And here in this, he particularizes, oh how he particularizes.
Christian physically bound in his reading.
Blake kindles hot the near insanity of the meeting,
As his very soul looks right into the physical.
Christian hunched over, hovering, wild eyed.
A look nearly of terror and unearthly joy woven into
the silent shouting shock of reading alone like this.
That bunch of heavy brown modern bears his back down.
Like a hunchback leering, Christian is peering,
Like a frozen loner where Christian has never gone before.
“It is so new,” he says “I am all alone.”
So alone he can’t sort himself out to see
how surrounded he is by dangerous sharp points behind.
Brown peaks assault him from afar, vulnerable as he all be.
This new man, making progress on this new journey of himself.
He is reading in his book. Reading like taking a deep plunge
into the visionary unknown Blake so admires:
“The man who never in his mind and thoughts travel’d to heaven is no artist.”
And the person who does not get hysterically lost doesn’t start to see.
Wounding, piercing brown ochre colors and open slopes
mark Christian in his place as new man trapped in himself.
Christian’s gasping face besieged by what Dr. Johnson,
early psychologist, once called “the invisible riot of the mind.”
Christian knows too much to voice any of it.
He is all lit up with himself and it. So hauntingly, quintessentially alive,
with a new thing, himself and words to see,
that we would offer him a smoke to ease the strain of his face, if we could,
alleviate his face and quiet his burden with a shared smile.
I am delighted to let you know that Linda Chown’s Narrative Authority and Homeostasis in the Novels of Doris Lessing and Carmen Martín Gaite(Routledge Library Editions: Modern Fiction) is now available through Amazon in hardcover and Kindle. Linda tells me a budget-wise paperback edition will be available in six-to-eight months.
This study, originally published in 1990, assesses a shift in the presentation of self-consciousness in two pairs of novels by Doris Lessing and Carmen Martín Gaite: 1) Lessing’s The Summer Before the Dark(1973) and Martín Gaite’s Retahílas (1974) and 2) Lessing’s The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974) and Martín Gaite’s The Back Room (1978). Three major structural divisions facilitate examining implications of the novels for 1) feminism 2) literary narrative and 3) the lives of people-at-large. / J.D.
LINDA E. CHOWN grew up in Berkeley, Ca. in the days of action. Civil Rights arrests at Sheraton Palace and Auto Row. BA UC Berkeley Intellectual History; MA Creative Writing SFSU; PHd Comparative Literature University of Washington. Four books of poetry. Many poems published on line at Numero Cinq, Empty Mirror, The Bezine, Dura, Poet Head and others. Many articles on Oliver Sachs, Doris Lessing, Virginia Woolf, and many others. Twenty years in Spain with friends who lived through the worst of Franco. I was in Spain (Granada, Conil and Cádiz) during Franco’s rule, there the day of his death when people took to the streets in celebration. Interviewed nine major Spanish Women Novelists, including Ana María Matute and Carmen Laforet and Carmen Martín Gaite.
always at war.
Every bulletin lists casualties,
devastated buildings, grief.
Bloodied, scarred, lost, missing,
found dead. What about the lost dead?
Forever wanting you to discover,
uncover their brief candle burn.
We Live
in a fake peace between world wars,
shop and shop to stay reasonable.
Families are killed elsewhere.
We see their relatives tears on plasma screens.
Sometimes tears drop closer to home,
and we are reminded of our fake comfort,
that is preferable, a faux fur covered blade
sometimes bleeds and we are keen.
Our Justification
for the gang rape
and killing
of your eight year old
Child
Is that, like you,
She was
Not human
And therefore
Not under
The rights
And privileges
Of humans.
You must
Be tolerant
Of our beliefs
If you wish
To stay
On our land.
Some Baked Bread
or the journey
to the hole in the ground
where they were asked to lay
on the still warm dead
neighbours and children
to be shot
As their ethnicity was cleansed.
the soldiers with guns
wrote home from the war.
It was such an event.
A Queued
Life. Born to this line
Of cotted bairns,
Crocodiled infants,
Slumped with others outside
A locked classrroom,
Marshalled exams desks,
Job interview staring at strangers,
Ranked at work,
Drs, dentists waiting rooms,
appointmented even my wedding.
Waiting list for a council house,
Parents evening lined up with others
Listed as deceased in papers, online.
Regimented plaque for my cremation.
As that world ends another begins.
Join another queue, another thought
of final judgement already delivered,
or forever pended.
Without Permission
he walked on her grass,
uprooted her wild flowers,
She says “Don’t touch
without asking. It’s abuse.
Stop it. No means no!”
Fantasies of ravagement
on both sides who know
these are merely fantasies
that should never be public
so a no becomes yes,
and abuse pleasurable. Always safe
words agreed beforehand.
Always taken too far, control
and power corrupt.
Slavery
is good for you. All folk
should be chained,
manacled to a mortgage,
to work, to an employer
a partner. Freedom denies
your human rights. Slavery
teaches you the meaning of life.
demands you act properly
constrains you to common sense,
sets out a wild world of imagination
creativity and invention. Freedom
is too wishy washy. Lock
and load your chains. Don’t let
loose and free your mind. Freedom
Is heavy, restricts, denies movement
of blood, bone and brain.
Become a slave and see our world
with new eyes, fresh perspectives.
Hopelessness Is Life
Only the hopeless live.
Only hopelessness makes you smile.
When all hopelessness is gone
then you will grieve at the loss.
There are three streets we can go down,
Faithlessness, Hopelessness and Selfishness
Without one of these the others cannot exist.
There must always be hopelessness
in the best of times. It reminds us of an edge
to life. Surrender to hopelessness
and all will be well. It is the force that drives
all that is worthwhile and good.
An Inappropriate Life
Born inappropriate to this inappropriate world
this inappropriate earth I learned how to be inappropriate
in school, met a lass
who said she was inappropriately ready
to be inappropriately wed, so we inappropriately married
after three months of inappropriate courting
she bore inappropriately our first kid
after six months whilst I worked inappropriately
in inappropriate employment
Promoted inappropriately to inappropriate manager
so we bought our first inappropriate home,
furnished inappropriately, after decorating inappropriately.
I had an inappropriate allotment where I grew inappropriate carrots
and potatoes and cabbages.
She died inappropriately after seven years inappropriate fighting
lung cancer. I never remarried inappropriately
Bring up our second child inappropriately
tell her inappropriate dream stories
of our inappropriate love inappropriate life.
Guns Are
good. Make you feel safe.
Make you more responsible,
like your own child. Nobody
hurts my child. I’ll shoot anyone
that does. My child needs
A decent education. Some shooter
Who wants to be famous kills
my little one in lessons.
I’m glad I’ve got my gun
So I can kill the shooter
And his family. Guns are good.
Make folk sit up and listen.
A Bridge
anastomosis [ah-nas″to-mo´sis] (pl. anastomo´ses) (Gr.)
It is bin day. Sound of breaking glass.
A vein.
between places,
one person and another,
A Bridge
anastomosis [ah-nas″to-mo´sis] (pl. anastomo´ses) (Gr.)
It is bin day. Sound of breaking glass.
A vein.
between places,
one person and another,
you and your kids,
a busy crossing between beliefs.
from wick to ash.
full to empty.
Broken, blocked, under investigation.
No link, information dammed,
Adamant your side is right,
other side apostate.
Bloodied metal sends a message,
via media bridges.
Bins must be wheeled back to their places.
a busy crossing between beliefs.
from wick to ash.
full to empty.
Broken, blocked, under investigation.
No link, information dammed,
Adamant your side is right,
other side apostate.
Bloodied metal sends a message,
via media bridges.
Bins must be wheeled back to their places.
Mobiles
are in the shape of small graves
for children who mine the precious
metal inside that make it work
and I look Into the screen
to stay connected but do not see
their gritted lives as they haul
the valuable out of the hole
and the world has never been
so connected by this small grave
I carry in my pocket.
Deliberate Death Of A Conformist
I insist I nod in agreement
at all they accuse me of.
I refuse to make a spectacle of myself.
I will not protest. I agree with all
the folk in power do. I always obey
the law. Drive correctly. I want
an easy life. No hassle. Why am I
guilty? Whatever it is I did it.
They tell me -That’s too easy.
You must have done something worse.
If we told you to jump out
of that window would you do it?
So I do. Now they arrest me again,
-You caused a public disturbance.
-I agree I say. – There must be something
you don’t agree with they say -No I reply.
– If we tell you you died in that fall,
and this police station is heaven – I agree.
Refugee
is good. To belong
is wrong. Be homeless.
Mortgages and rents are chains.
Tread the world without burden.
Find a banquet in a crumb.
A glassful in a droplet.
Warmth in a newspaper blanket.
Comfort is a concrete underpass.
Our Folk Burn
Management say “Lessons will be learnt”
Folk have already warned bosses.
Management say “Our sympathies are with the families”
Death toll expected to rise.
Management say “Lessons will be learnt.
Austerity costs must be met.”
Because
people killed further away
do not grieve any less.
a mother is a mother
even if her fashion is not ours.
a father is a father
even if we disagree with his beliefs.
an explosion is an explosion
even when on a flat screen.
Nothing (For Manchester)
is real.
My smile was a pink balloon
floated above me. I sang.
A big bang.
Blood on the balloon.
I find metal nuts and bolts.
I can’t sing. It isn’t real.
I’m Just About
managing between the barricades.
My kids play between sniper targets.
I fetch the shop through broken
buildings perforated by gunshot,
past cars jammed across streets.
I’m just about managing between regimes.
“Why Dad?”
It happens a lot.
I look up to see
a soldier
with the butt of his rifle
move Dad forward.
“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.” Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
One winter I ate the sun, it warmed
It warmed the moon dancing with my heart
It calmed the seas that ran in my veins
It drew spring flowers from crusts of ice
I wrote a poem to the sun, to the future
I wrote another to the eons gone by
Still another told of history’s lessons
But it was love kept me anchored
Earthy, and yet not earthbound, love
Jamie Dedes. I’m a freelance writer, poet, content editor, and blogger. I also manage The BeZineand its associated activities and The Poet by Dayjamiededes.com, an info hub for writers meant to encourage good but lesser-known poets, women and minority poets, outsider artists, and artists just finding their voices in maturity. The Poet by Day is dedicated to supporting freedom of artistic expression and human rights and encourages activist poetry. Email thepoetbyday@gmail.com for permissions, commissions, or assignments.
An easy prompt this week: What would you do – differently or the not – if you got another shot at this life. Tell us in your poem/s.
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Jamie Dedes. I’m a freelance writer, poet, content editor, and blogger. I also manage The BeZineand its associated activities and The Poet by Dayjamiededes.com, an info hub for writers meant to encourage good but lesser-known poets, women and minority poets, outsider artists, and artists just finding their voices in maturity. The Poet by Day is dedicated to supporting freedom of artistic expression and human rights and encourages activist poetry. Email thepoetbyday@gmail.com for permissions, commissions, or assignments.
I am delighted to let you know that Linda Chown’s Narrative Authority and Homeostasis in the Novels of Doris Lessing and Carmen Martín Gaite (Routledge Library Editions: Modern Fiction) is now available through Amazon in hardcover and Kindle. Linda tells me a budget-wise paperback edition will be available in six-to-eight months.
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