You have a wonderful way of falling on certain phrases and then shifting them slightly so that they diffract the light in an unexpected way. It’s a valuable thing to have such surgical reading applied to one’s own work.

Thanks, as ever…

Martin
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If my math is correct, we must have arrived in the Iberian peninsula more or less at the same time. I don’t know if you’ve been back since, but the changes have been quite dramatic. I wonder if the change is more interesting than the resistance to change. Both countries shook off dictatorship in the mid-seventies, but they did so in entirely different ways. Tony Judt’s discussion of this in his recent Postwar is very worthwhile. Thomas Jefferson was very aware of time lapse and spending lengthy periods abroad. He would understand exactly what you mean by “it’s an experience that’s with one always.”

Thanks for you thoughts.

Martin
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Excellent point, which since I generally don’t like to travel, and can’t remember the last time I engaged in tourism for tourism’s sake, I might have overlooked. As a corollary to the point you make we might consider how close “poetry” is to a glorified looking at oneself looking at the world, an over-delight in the infinite memory museum of the mind.

But let me think more on this. Thanks for the collaboration as always.

Martin
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a severe change in scenery and sound can effect a valuable change in perspective through displacement or–tilt (in russian, it’s called сдвиг), but the inherent danger is how easy it is to forget how close ‘voluntary exile’ is to a glorified tourism–a tendency to see the world as a sort of infinite museum.

and while i’m not accusing you of anything, i do hope there is an answer to that invisible accusation in your further posts.

james
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Thank you for your comment. It’s curious how we happened on the same solution: modifying “exile” with “voluntary”. You must really be feeling (since it’s your first day back after a year away) a rather involuntarily strange sense of displacement. It almost comes down to a kind of textural thing, more tactile than verbal. The penance you mention, practiced by the 9th century Irish monks, is interesting in this context. Penance usually involves some kind of physical discomfort. “Renouncing place”, as you say, must have been felt on a gut level, as much as on an intellectual one. In the 9th century life was short and brutal, and the known was all but eclipsed by the unknown. Interesting, as well, is how you see Trevor and Joyce as part of this tradition, as though putting that kind of stress on the system would push the imaginative faculty to work harder, more clearly, more coldly, whether it be in testing one’s faith, or testing one’s poetry and prose. I think it does. The word “exile” certainly can be used in the sense you describe. It’s just that one feels a certain embarrassment in doing so, since the plight on involuntary exiles seems ever more stark in the world today. The two forms of suffering are simply not commensurate. In a certain way the enforced exile of Darforians, the forced migration in the Balkans during the 1990’s, Stalin’s attempt to collectivize the kulaks…the list goes on; these peoples and their kind of exile are probably much closer to the experience of the ninth century Irish monks in terms of brute physical hardship than the kind of exile we are attempting to justify and describe.

Martin
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Martin, thanks for this post. I appreciate the definitions of terms, and I’m looking forward to the next episode. Community can be great, of course, but the poet struggling on his or her own makes for good drama.
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As a student, I didn’t have your legal struggles with my year in Europe (the first half was in Florence), and they’re what concern me about my chances of returning. (I go home – to the States – tomorrow.) I’m looking forward to your next post, and thank you for this one.
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