I spent most of the afternoon today with an anthropologist, whose book I’m translating… on the history of nationalist movements in Galicia and the Minho. Together these two provinces, one Spanish the other Portuguese, comprise that corner of Northwest Iberia which is so strange and gorgeous. Galician (the language) is halfway between Portuguese and Castilian. Its resurgence (reinvention) began more or less at the end of the 19th century after a hiatus of hundreds of years. Richard Zenith translated a collection of Galician “cantigas” which date back more or less to the time of the troubadours…but then gradually with the consolidation of the Spanish state, the language entered a period of dormancy, except perhaps at the village level. I love the arcana of my adopted peninsula, but my anthropologist is very high-strung. He has four kids and a short attention span.

But what a relief to move from ethnography back to poetry. After he left I spent a half hour swimming through the poems you put up. I know Spicer’s work, but not what you published, and I only knew of the existence of Helen Adam. What a revelation, the way she brings Scottish balladry into that 1950’s and 60’s zeitgeist. The effect is both delightful and haunting. I followed Thomas’s link to a wild video where she sings a bizarre funeral song about rats and roaches and Tompkins Square wearing big 3-d glasses with thick black frames, and a floral print dress; it’s filmed in what seems and unbearably dark and cluttered apartment – it’s a glorious performance.

Do you know W.S. Graham’s work (no one ever talks about him)?

Today, Tuesday, I decided to move on
Although the wind was veering. Better to move
Than have them at my heels, poor friends
I buried earlier under the printed snow.

( First lines of one of his most famous poems, “Malcolm Mooney’s Land”)

Did people talk about him at all when you were in England.

Martin
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I’ve always found this quote from Duncan’s bio statement at the back of “The New American Poetry” genuinely moving, as well as a paradoxical opening shot of post-modernism — paradoxical because post-modernism has so often been associated with chronic irony, and Duncan was one of the least ironic of poets.

“In grasping the inspiration of Helen Adam, in admitting her genius, I was able to shake off at last the modern proprieties — originality, style, currency of language, sensibility and integrity. I have a great appetite for approval from whatever source, and only the example of this poet who cares nothing for opinions but all for the life of the imagination, for the marvellous that is the grain of living poetry, saves me at times.”
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By the way, I’ve been wanting to post the text of Don’s citation of the Reader as it appeared on the Poetry Foundation website, since I find it so apt:

“As eerily powerful as Rossetti’s “Goblin Market,” as polemically anachronistic as Spenser’s “Faerie Queen,” yet as contemporary-sounding as Charles Bernstein, Adam’s fiendish ballads are an off-kilter connection to an ancient poetics that still turns out to have lots of life left in it.”

I love the comparison to Spenser, a poet I have a real fondness for as revealed in the discussion on an earlier thread.
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Seriously, I have done a lot of bodywork and once scheduled a Watsu session I had to cancel. I’m intrigued by it even more now, especially given the explicit connection made to his poetry, and am looking forward to reading the downloaded book. Thanks Don!
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http://www.watsu.com/harold.html

There’s a link to a PDF there which has a selection of his work; you can buy a copy of his collected poems, Finding Ways to Water, for under 20 bucks here:

http://www.watsu.com/bookdvds.html
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9b7RhTYUKE
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Terreson
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