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F e n t o n ’s W o o d e n H o r s e How t h e E n g l i s h P r a i s e t h e I r i s h

Kevin Murphy

In the eighth circle of Dante’s Inferno there is a specific

habitat for practitioners of a certain type of fraud. In this

malehorge, or evil pouch, Dante the pilgrim discovers Mas­

ter Adam, the counterfeiter of Florentine gold coins, bicker­

ing with Sinon, the Greek who persuaded the Trojans to

open their gates to the enormous wooden horse the Greeks

had constructed as supposed tribute to the besieged town. It

was a difficult job, since Sinon had first to persuade the Tro­ jans that he had sincerely abandoned the Greek army. We all

know what happened to the Trojans (we are now aphoristi­

cally warned to be wary of Greeks bearing gifts), and Dante,

by placing Sinon in the outermost circle of fraud, gives him

his due. But what can one make of a gift offered by the Pro­

fessor of Poetry at Oxford to the Nobel Laureate of litera­

ture who, as it happens, was the previous occupant of his

post?

A recent essay by James Fenton (“The Orpheus of Ulster”

in The New York Review of Books July 11, 1996) sets out to

review three recent Heaney publications: The Redress of

Poetry, the lectures Heaney gave when he was Professor of

Poetry at Oxford; Crediting Poetry, the lecture he gave upon

receipt of the Nobel prize; and The Spirit Level, Heaney’s

most recent volume of poems. The issues Fenton focuses on, however, have little to do with Heaney the poet. Instead,

Fenton the Englishman takes it upon himself to defend, of all things, the Irishness of Seamus Heaney and Heaney’s rightful place in the shifting hierarchical sands of contem­ porary British poetry. see Fenton’s Wooden Horse page 8 Jack Sherman Inside “Heaney’s Balancing Act,” by John Bowers, page 6 p a g e 2 T he RQQKPRESS September 1996 Problems and Pleasures at N.Y. Art Exhibitions

Africa, The Art Of A Continent extraordinary contribution of the African conti­ mainstream American exhibitions, where pologically-driven shows—broad cultural and Solomon Guggenheim Museum, N.Y.C. nent to the world’s visual culture,” the organiz­ American audiences are used to being almost artistic surveys of continental Africa—in our Through September 29, 1996 ers designed what they believed to be a “revo­ overwhelmed by the richness of Nigerian tradi­ major museums. Were the organizing powers lutionary” production—the “first major art tions, especially Yoruba arts and the royal tradi­ so uncertain of the public’s reception of Atrican Winslow Homer “Blazing Whites And exhibition ever to present Africa as an entity tions of Benin, this time the West African pres­ art that they felt they had to find some sort of Other Wonders” unbroken by the Sahara.” This, in essence, is ence is modest. Nevertheless, some widely- blockbuster hook to ensure an audience? Do Through September 22, 1996 the Guggenheim’s claim to fame. acknowledged masterpieces from other areas of they really like African art themselves? The Metropolitan Museum Of Art Accordingly, the art of ancient peoples, the sub-Saharan Africa occupy center stage. Cen­ But what is most astonishing is the show’s Egyptians and Nubians, pastoralists of East and tral Africa is particularly well-represented, thunderous omission of Africa’s modem arts. South Africa, and Islamicized traditions unfold notably the astonishingly dynamic hero figure Apparently, the continent’s contemporary Nancy Neaher Maas along the spiraling main gallery, together with of the Chokwe, the diminutive “twins” of a artists have no place in this temple designed to art from the savannas and forests of West and Luba headrest (which is too easy to overlook in encourage the contemplation of visual and plas­ His arm raised, gripping an iron spear, a for­ Central Africa. The offerings are diverse, its current space), and the inimitable Kongo tic arts. There is a deep irony in the fact that midable image is poised for deadly action. including visual and plastic arts made for dis­ nkondi. items created for specifically functional ends Sheathed in a forest of nails, his body literally parate purposes over an extended time frame. If Some unexpected inconsistencies mar the would be acceptable to the Guggenheim, but bristles as his whitened countenance tenses for geography is the central determinant in the dis­ visual impact of the show. While the prepon­ not recent creativity aimed directly at the aes­ battle. This startling figure resides at the play, it is nonetheless a fairly loose imperative, derance of objects exhibited are of world-class thetic experience, despite the fact that many of Guggenheim this summer, safely encased in as the arts of various constellations of peoples caliber, some are of lesser quality. For example, Africa’s sculptors, ceramicists, and painters glass; he goes by the name nkondi. Originating intermingle, transcending rigid chronologies. with the exception of one remarkable seated have received international recognition for their among the Kongo of present-day Zaire, nkondi Prehistoric art coexists with San (“Bush­ figure, the Tada bronzes of Nigeria should not efforts. Some might argue that no show can do served as treasured agents of action, producing man”) rock paintings created in the last two to have been included. Although these objects are everything. Yet, for an institution renowned for desired results ranging from the healing of three hundred years. West African wood sculp­ highly important for historical and technical its dedication to contemporary art to excise physical and emotional problems, to military tures— in which the actual object is usually no reasons, their awkward forms merely confuse Africa’s implies that “traditional arts” rank as success and conflict resolution. With repeated more than 75 years old—appear side-by-side an honest attempt to understand them as works Art, but modem developments don’t make the use, figures such as this one gained formidable with metalworking traditions dating back a of art. Tellingly, they go virtually unreported in cut. Such fallacious judgments reveal more reputations for efficacy. If it was formerly thousand years. Elegant, virtually realistic royal the Guggenheim’s catalogue, as do several of about the provinciality and short-sighted elitism admired for its utility, nkondi now receives the busts from the forests of Ife, Nigeria make a the ancient objects that may attest to the antiq­ of elements of the art establishment than they appreciative glances of Americans purely vivid counter-statement to the highly stylized, uity of Africa’s art but not to its aesthetic do about the reality of African Art. enchanted with its form. almost cubistic masks of the Bamana and other import. To be entirely fair to the Guggenheim, a sep­ Along with one hundred other sculptures and groups living in the savanna of West Africa. By subtitling “Africa: The Art of a Conti­ arate gallery on a lower level features a selec­ objects, the Kongo nkondi stands guard at this Visually evocative traditions of different peo­ nent,” a “revolutionary” first, its organizers tion of African photography. In contrast to the summer’s unfolding of “Africa, Art of a Conti­ ples are frequently shown as a unit, such as the demean their effort by casting it in an unduly atmosphere of timeless, abstract, purity which nent.” He joins a heterogeneous army arrayed headrests and slender staffs of the Shona and competitive light. On the one hand, the public is pervades the main exhibition hall, these images along the ever-ascending spiral of the muse­ Zulu-related peoples, which delight the eye introduced to a broad, visual survey of the art of project a loud, bold Africa, lull of life and con- um’s main exhibition hall, which— like mute with their calligraphy of form. Sometimes continental Africa. This overview accords with flict. The almost surreal portraits of Seydou sentinels—bears witness to the diversity, inge­ shared functional concepts determine the place­ customary Western curatorial approaches Keita, or the politically charged images of nuity and enigma of Africa’s artistic heritage. ment of objects; a cluster of West African whereby aesthetic contemplation supersedes apartheid South Africa highlight the grandest Although this show constitutes a first for the “ancestral” figures are displayed together, any other means—such as intellectual—of dimension of African Art: its inseparability Guggenheim, it arrives long after other impor­ despite differences in origin and style. Other knowing works of art. In doing so, it is possible from the life of the human community. Thus, tant venues of art have focused exclusively on displays hint at historic relationships. Selec­ that the organizers gain victory on a technicali­ although the hundred or so sculptures and other Africa. Nkondi and his ilk have graced the halls tions from Nubia in stone, glass, and other ty. This may be the first major Art exhibition on objects arranged along the museum’s main cor­ of American galleries and museums for media reflect the impact of exchanges with a grand scale to be geographically comprehen­ ridor conform to Western notions of sophisti­ decades, so now that the Guggenheim has final­ ancient Egypt. Reciprocally, an enormous sive. cated Art, the visceral dynamism of African ly joined the crowd, is the effort worth it? Is this wood drum, characteristic of Sudanese chiefly Nonetheless, one must acknowledge the con­ aesthetic traditions reveals itself in full force to show innovative, does it enhance the story told, prerogatives, clearly echoes a genre found tribution of multitudes of other, more discrete the visitor who wanders off the main path. or is it merely the tardy expression of a sleepy- throughout Sub-Saharan Africa in which an shows which have also been genuinely inclu­ The large crowds filling the Guggenheim’s eyed institution’s belated discovery that Africa elementally simple bovine figure sports the sig­ sive in their approach to Africa. Themes galleries indicate that the American public is has Art? The “face” of the exhibition speaks for nature of Islam—incised geometric designs encompassing East/South, Islamic and North ready for African art. A warm receptiveness itself: this is a well-meaning effort, but one framing a scimitar—on its massive flanks. In all Africa—as well as West and Central African pervades the air, even as visitors eye the daunt­ which falls far short of its aggressive claim as cases, informational labels are sketchy; one staples—have been featured in numerous ing journey before them. Over recent years, the “revolutionary.” would have to purchase an expensive catalogue venues for several decades. Moreover, in addi­ significance of these traditions has become ($70 for the London original, $30 for the tion to showcasing works of art, these earlier widely accepted by the museum-going public. THE SHOW Guggenheim publication in paperback) to edu­ shows went to great lengths to educate the pub­ Curiosity, even initial discomfort, has given cate oneself about the cultural context of a lic by explaining the conceptual principles way to open tolerance and enthusiasm. Decades “Africa: The Art of a Continent” originated given work of art. underlying various African traditions. The of education and enlightenment at the hands of at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the Not surprisingly, the real thrust of “Africa: Guggenheim has profited from such pioneering dedicated museums, galleries and the schools showcase of Great Britain’s year-long celebra­ Art of a Continent” is aesthetic. This is an Art efforts, freeing it from the burden of providing are paying off. Therefore, it is too bad that tion of lands which, in some cases, it formerly show, designed to give full play to the visual detailed cultural material and allowing it to con­ “Africa: The Art of a Continent” underesti­ colonized. A slightly downsized version arrived excitement of Africa’s traditional arts. For the centrate instead on this collection as Art. mates its audience. The public welcomes in New York in June, complete, nonetheless, most part, viewers will enjoy the experience of Granted, the art establishment is always pre­ African art in all its various guises, inflated with a phalanx of sponsors (among them Time seeing some exceedingly striking works of art, disposed to accentuate the visual, but this ten­ hyperbole notwithstanding. Warner, American Express, and UNESCO), an a number of which have not been previously dency is particularly strong when it comes to ***** international cast of honorary patrons and available to the American public. Especially Africa, thanks to Picasso and other 20th-centu­ This year New Yorkers suffering in the sum­ donors (including Boutros Boutros-Ghali and strong are emissaries from East Africa—such ry modernists who fell in love with the formal mer heat got a real break. All they had to do was Nelson Mandela) and a Harvard-accented in- as the Makonde and other Tanzanian sculp­ innovations of African figurative sculpture ear­ visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art for some house catalogue. With all the accompanying ture—selected items from the Cameroon, and lier in this century. Still, the organizers at the fresh breezes, glorious sunshine, and vivid blue media attention, this show was marked as one isolated sculptures like the marvelous “sword­ Guggenheim might have taken note of earlier waters. On display was the first comprehensive to be reckoned with— an aspiring Jurassic Park fish” mask from the Bissagos Islands, off the ecumenical treatments of African art. Off their survey in two decades of the paintings of at the art world box office. In “celebrating the Guinea-Bissau coast. In contrast to previous radar screen entirely are the decades of anthro­ Winslow Homer—exhilarating Maine coast-

F rien d s of the Bookpress This publication is M. H. Abrams George Gibian Terry McKiernan made possible, in Publisher/Editor: Jack Goldman Diane Ackerman Jody Gladding Scott McMillin Managing Kditor/Dcsign Editor: Isaac Bowers Martin & Leslie Bernal Jerry Gross Louise Mink part, with public Jonathan Bishop Marj Haydon Edward Murray Miriam Brody Neil & Louise Hertz M argaret Nash Contributors: E. Wayles Browne funds from the New John Bowers, Edward T. Chase, Dan Collins, Eva Hoffmann Benjamin Nichols Kenneth Evett, Kevin Murphy, P a tti & Ju le s Roald Hoffmann Andrew Ramage York State Council Cushing Strout, Paul West R. F. Cisne Phyllis Janowitz Nancy Ramage Maria & Gerald Coles George & Audrey Kahin Mary Ann Rishel Art: William Cross Alfred Kahn C arl S agan on the Arts. Jack Sherman, Daphne Sold, Jonathan Culler Peter Katzenstein Nick Salvatore Scott Werder, Don Karr Ruth Darling Isaac Kramnick Jane Parry Sleeper Robert J. Doherty Eva Kufner-Augsberger Cushing Strout The entire contents of The Bookpress are copyright Dora Donovan Sandra and W alter Lafeber Ann Sullivan 0 1 9 9 6 by The Bookpress, I nc.. All rights reserved. The Bookpress will not be liable for typographical error Ann D ru y an R. Carolyn Lange Deborah Tall or errors in publication. Subscription rate is $12.°° per year. The Bookpress is Joyce Elbrecht Deborah Lemon R ee T h ay e r published eight times annually, February through May and Kenneth Evett Alison Lurie Alison Van Dyke September through December. Submissions of manuscripts, art, and Letters to the Lydia Fakundiny David Macklin Gail & Zellman Warhaft Editor should be sent, SASE, to: LeMoyne Farrell Myra Malkin P a u l W est T he Bookpress, DeWitt Building Bryna and Harvey Fireside D an M cC all Winthrop Wetherbee 215 N. Cayuga Street, Ithaca, NY 14850 Sheldon Flory (607)277-2254; fax (607) 275-9221 James McGonkey Marian White e-mail: [email protected] Mrs. W illiam D. Fowler Maureen McCoy Carol Ann Wilburn September 1996 page 3

lines, the dark forests and lakes of New York's the artist with feelings of awe and sensuous Boat”(1892), picturing two canoeists in the Adirondacks, and the turquoise seas of the delight. Whenever people populate his paintings, Adirondacks, or his Bermuda landscape “Salt Caribbean. That’s not to say that Homer was Homer consistently portrays them with dignity Kettle”(1899), stark white, balanced by lus­ merely a purveyor of pretty pictures, pleasur­ and respect. His soldiers, farmers, hunters, fish­ cious variations on blue or warm reds or pinks, The Long Silence ably absorbed and then forgotten. Far from it. ermen, his children, young women, and his elevate these works to the rarefied status of Winslow Homer’s appealing genre paintings, African Americans all convey a nobility shared great art. Homer’s whites are not only achieved land- and seascapes reflect a uniquely Ameri­ by Nature itself. by leaving watercolor paper unpainted. He I remember now can genius, giving New Yorkers and everyone What, then, makes Homer unique? Part of the lends a hand to every artist aspiring to master The long silence else a perfect reason to enjoy the fruits of his answer lies in “the details,” having to do with this unforgiving medium— where once color is O f a single word labor. zestful embellishments which give Homer’s laid down it is extremely difficult to alter—by In a forest After perusing the approximately 100 oils, painting a verve and pizzazz lacking in the more leaving corrective marks of his own. One can O f words watercolors, and occasional sketches and prints conventional efforts of the time. Aside from his note opaque gouache whites subtly overriding a When you stood frozen featured in a dozen of the Met’s galleries, one formidable draftsmanship—pencil sketches color brush stroke. Elsewhere, more assertive Against a mesh of iron can only come to the inescapable conclusion reveal his enviable talent— Homer’s sophisticat­ gouging out or stippling of the paper’s surface A spidery wall that 19th-century America was fortunate to have ed compositional skills, his mastery of color with a razor’s edge can be detected. In one of And no one heard a first-class talent born as one of its own. nuances, and his clever renditions of light con­ Homer’s large watercolors, completed in Your silence which was Serendipity has its rewards, as Homer chose for verge to create arresting images which excite the Cullercoats, England, he resorted to scraping The silence of Spring subject matter aspects of mral and middle-class eye even today. While Japanese prints are out an entire background, leaving the dramatic O f time passing life, as well as the North American landscape. believed to have had some influence on Homer, study “Mending the Nets” (1882) which radi­ His imagery embraces scenes of the Civil War, they do not by any means fully account for his ates with an intense warm light. children at play, farmers at work, danger and lifelong preoccupation with effective visual bal­ Homer’s increasingly fluid and expressive What was l ?— heroism on the high seas, and hunting and fish­ ance. approach brought him to the frontiers of exper­ A rock ing in the backwoods. In the course of his The “Sharpshooter”( 1866), one of his earliest imentation in watercolor. With perhaps the The sky career, Homer’s interpretations increasingly canvases, is a case in point. What better way to exception of J.M.W. Turner, watercolor was a Turning over the forest played down the centrality of human pres­ structure this painting, isolating and angling the medium confined—usually carefully—to ren­ Consuming it ence—opting instead for a view of “man in marksman above the viewer? So simple and so dering subjects in nature on a modest scale. Its With night nature” which maximizes the awe of the latter effective. Or, take “Crossing the Pasture”(1872) history is one of restraint and control. Despite And all the spiders and the insignificance of the former. The choic­ with the two farm boys looking out beyond the the fact that water-driven pigments are, by Slept standing es do not, in the main, exceed the boundaries of picture frame. (Whether or not the bovine in the nature, unruly and unpredictable, earlier practi­ Upon the chests Homer’s predecessors or contemporaries. background is a bull is not absolutely clear to this tioners steered clear of excess, not only in terms O f brittle children Precedents existed for each of the directions his writer; some claim it is to explain the boys’ of technique, but also subject matter. Watercol­ And burning adults brush took him, from the sweeping landscapes apparent wariness. They could also be said to or became a “proper” medium where danger of the American luminists, to long-standing lack expression.) The boys dominate the fore­ was skirted by coloring detailed sketches with European fascination with the everyday activi­ ground just slightly off-center, and economical pallid layers of translucent paint. These were the coldest nights ties of ordinary life, most widely appreciated in curves shape the field and low mountains Then Homer literally opened the floodgates I remember the art of the Impressionists. But Homer proved beyond. As is typical of Homer’s landscapes, and let the medium loose. In his later work, bold Huddling close to be an independent soul who was consciously details are relatively minimal— a few deft flour­ layers of strong color define shapes, sometimes To my mother's skeleton uninfluenced by the traditions and techniques of ishes in the foreground to indicate wildflowers dispensing with former techniques of over­ Closing her hand his predecessors, whether American or Euro­ and grass; a flash of white to suggest the side of a painting or glazing. Detail becomes scanty; a Upon a crumbling photograph pean. Still, he, too, was very much in step with building catching sunlight. Homer was a colorist daub here and there suffice to indicate fore­ Some winged remembrance his time, and his natural instincts appealed as well, emphasizing a limited palette— in this ground foliage. A forested backdrop is suggest­ greatly to his contemporaries, explaining the case, muted hues of green and siennas, set off ed by a simple shape of dark blue, complete Ashes of memory success he enjoyed in his own lifetime. with the dramatic white of the little boy’s shirt. with watery "blooms.” the finicky painter’s Floated over the camp To this day, a number of Homer’s works— Throughout the body of his work, subtle varia­ anathema. Increasingly, Homer’s images Invisible as dreams most notably his seascapes—endure as visual tions on complementary colors—in infinite gra­ approach the border between realism and As faces icons, so embedded in the public’s psyche that dations of temperature, opacity and translu- abstraction, as sensuous color and strong shape In that long night every successive attempt to picture these natur­ cence—work together to create a coherent begin to take on an identity unto themselves. al phenomena must come to terms with them whole. “Fishing the Rapids, Saguenay” and “The 1 lay down too first. His raging seas, his “Eight Bells”, as well All of these strands find ultimate realization in Coming Storm”, both painted in 1902, almost Closing my eyes as his gentler depictiorts of children’s play epit­ Homer’s greatest achievement: his capture of reach that point as identifiable shape and color Upon winter omized in “Snap the Whip”(1872), have light effects. Although Homer remained within nearly dissolve into pure abstraction. Her ghostly hard of silence become part of the visual folklore of this nation, the bounds of the kind of classic realism deliber­ Homer’s experience with watercolor seemed Her unimaginable truth. contributing to the repertory of thoughts, words ately abandoned by the French Impressionists to exert an influence on his last efforts at oil as and images which help to define an American and others seeking to accurately express the play well. Admittedly, the artist moved in reciprocal identity. The public at large may not necessari­ of light across form and color, he made up for his fashion between the two media for the duration ly recognize the name “Winslow Homer,” but conservatism by producing striking images of his career. Many a time, preliminary sketch­ they know his work. which literally sparkle with light. For example, es and watercolors established themes also exe­ One has to get beyond the strong appeal of there is no mistaking the impact of daylight in cuted in oil. Stylistically, too, techniques like Homer’s subject matter to fully comprehend the “Crossing the Pasture” which captures the very Homer’s signature flourish of white pervaded Writers Dream uniqueness of his contribution to American moment when a bright summer sun is partially his approach to both media. Yet, the utter sim­ painting. On the one hand, if his renderings of obscured by cumulus clouds. In other paintings, plification of his coastal Maine sea series of the daily life and the American wilderness diverged such as the oil “Eight Bells”(1886), Homer 1890’s evokes the direct force and drama of Celestial ruins only subtly from the efforts of other painters, so catches the moment when sun begins to break Homer’s late watercolors, as he pares down the O f trees Homer’s style—for all but the last decade or through after a storm at sea. Virtually every can­ imagery to elementals, relying on almost Shadows and two of his life —reveals incremental shifts from vas contains a dramatic shock of white, accom­ abstract swathes of color—and white—to con­ Drifting words the painting of his time, rather than radical panied by appropriate color nuances and shad­ vey a timeless narrative of nature’s shifting In icy wind departure. Some might even label his work con­ ow. These devices clearly reflect Homer’s spe­ temperaments. Broken figures servative. In contrast to the explosion of exper­ cial genius for handling light, an acknowledged If Homer can be said to have a fault, it would O f speech imental movements which caught fire in subplot in the painting of his generation. be his treatment of the human figure. While his Overestimating Europe in the latter half of the 19th century— If the oil medium was mastered to the point of 1870’s feminine subjects are lovely to behold, The whiteness beginning with Impressionism and moving for­ brilliance by Homer, it is his watercolors which at other times his figures lack natural grace and ward through Post-Impressionism and truly account for his recognition as a great Amer­ are a bit stiff in pose. Occasionally, figures are I could write beyond— Homer worked in deliberate fashion; ican artist. Homer’s style in oil pigments main­ disproportionately small-headed (to wit: the These things— his hand recorded the perceptual world around tains a fairly even maturity across the course of child in the white shirt in “Crossing the Pas­ him, consciously relinquishing little to his inner his career, but his handling of watercolor tells ture”). While some of the English fisherwomen The arched dead leaves imagination or to radical experiments in tech­ another story. Here we can follow with absolute are marvelously persuasive in all their volume Stretching bones nique. He was led by what he saw, not by an clarity Homer’s evolution from a respected illus­ and rounded mass, the monumental efforts O f bark inner eye fed by an over-heated imagination. trator to a truly innovative genius. As a result of Homer expended on “masterworks” like Rising up No doubt the realism of his imagery explains, in his working experience as an illustrator, ”Undertow”(1886) betray an anxious hand and Like quills part, his popularity. Homer’s beginning efforts in the medium adhere eye, resulting in an awkward grouping that In the theoretical Little guessing is involved in determining the to a realistic rendering of form, with substantial compromises the painting’s serious intent. For­ Dark meaning of “Prisoners from the Front”(1866)or detail and predictable, low-key color. Figures are tunately, in his late watercolors—as well as “The Two Guides”(1875). Devoid of flamboy­ fully detailed and even outlined, sometimes selected oils—Homer succeeds in suggesting Sculpting ant sentimentality or overwrought detail, appearing too studied and stilted. human subjects with the deft skill that typifies Finite forms Homer’s message is direct and unadorned. It It was much later, with his soaringly sponta­ his magnificent images of Nature. Thus, “The has been suggested that some of his paintings neous evocations of North American woods or Adirondack Guide”(1894) is one with its con­ Diminishing are statements of protest, such as his series of Caribbean seas, that Homer pushed watercolor text, as is the Bahamian “The Sponge The silence. watercolors documenting deer hunting prac­ to new heights, exploiting the medium’s ability Diver”(l898-99). If Nature was Homer’s tices in the northern woods of the early 1890’s. to capture the quick study with freshness and supreme subject, by the end of his admirable Yet this assessment is more likely based on our light effects impossible in oil. Here Homer sim­ career he came to include the human presence -Francesca Breton own environmental sensitivities rather than plifies composition to essentials, whips in crys­ as gracelully as one could ask. Homer’s, who was known to thoroughly enjoy talline colors of complementary value with one the hunt. That is not to imply that Homer’s art swoop, and exploits white-as-light to the maxi­ Nancy Neaher Maas is an artist and an art his­ lacked emotion. It is obvious that Nature filled mum. Whether it be the classic “Blue torian. She teaches at Suny Cortland. page 4 T he R OOKPRESS September 1996

O ff Cam pus Mishima’s Final Draft At The Mark Seinfelt This presentation is part of our ongoing series of readings and talks upstairs in His death was his crowning achievement. He the DeWitt Mall. staged his ritual suicide as if it were the denoue­ ment of his last play, the final chapter of a novel, or the concluding line of some ultimate poem. Blood would have to flow, and it would have to flow in copious quantities, for Yukio Mishima to realize his youthful desire to make his life a Sunday, September 8, 4:00 p.m. work of art. His name itself was a fabrication— he was bom Kimitake Hiraoka. He selected it Irene Villar, for himself at the age of sixteen when his first story, “The Forest in Full Bloom”, was accepted granddaughter of a Puerto Rican for publication. He crafted his public persona nationalist who opened fire on the with the same diligence as he conceived and United States House of Representatives designed his novels. He would be Japan’s in 1954, will read from A Message Renaissance man, her Leonardo da Vinci. The From Cod in the Atomic Age, a razor death he chose for himself would have the great­ sharp memoir about the allure of sui­ est possible political impact, but would also Photo by Tamotsu Yato serve to underscore the philosophy he devel­ cide for three generations of women in Yukio Mishima oped in his fiction. According to the aesthetic he one Puerto Rican family. professed, a metaphysics of love and death flames. entwined, the successful art work would neces­ Both Etsuko and Mizoguchi seem to embody sarily end in an apotheosis of violence. In an aspects of Mishima’s character, and their final interview shortly before his suicide, when asked destructive deeds surely prefigure the author’s why he glorified ruthlessness and savagery in own death. To many Japanese, Mishima’s sui­ SundaySeptember 15, 4:00 p.m. his fiction, Mishima answered that, “This blood cide seemed an irrational, insane act. When and brutality is something we have stylized into informed of Mishima’s death, Japan’s Prime Zillah Eisenstein, a special sense of beauty. It comes from our sub­ Minister Eisaku Sato stated to the press that the Professor of Politics at Ithaca College, and a feminist activist for over conscious. We have always had a special sym­ celebrated novelist “was out of his mind.” If, twenty years, will discuss her book, Hatreds: Racialized and Sexualized bolism about blood.” however, one examines the author’s biography Mishima believed that the beautiful object and reads his work, the manner in which he Conflicts in the 21st Century. Professor Eisenstein's examination begins attained the highest measure of perfection at the chose to end his life hardly seems surprising. In with the body and ends with the globe, travelling between theory and the moment of its destruction. Again and again in retrospect, suicide appears to have been sites of everday politics, while constructing a passionate narrative about his numerous novels, short stories and plays, the inevitable. Moreover, it quickly becomes evi­ the horrors of hatred in today's world. action inexorably progresses to an act of immo­ dent that Yukio Mishima planned his death with lation. Something stunning and gorgeous—an all the care and deliberation of a Mizoguchi. art object or a living person— must be annihilat­ On November 25, 1970, the author paid a ed, obliterated. Sometimes, the destructive act visit to the headquarters of Japan’s Eastern Sunday, September 29, 4:00 p.m. remains a fantasy in the mind of a character, as Ground Self-Defense Forces at the military in the final scene of the early novel Confessions complex on Ichigaya hill near Tokyo. The mili­ o f a Mask. The autobiographical narrator dis­ tary authorities received him graciously. He had A. Manette Ansay, covers homoerotic yearnings within himself as made an appointment to visit the facility in graduate of Cornell's MFA program he watches a robust and vibrant youth dancing advance, and was accompanied by four mem­ and Assistant Professor of Creative in a cafe, and suddenly visualizes the young bers of the Tatenokai, or Shield, Society, an Writing at Vanderbilt University, will man’s chest bleeding and covered with wounds. organization of young men, mostly university read selections from Sister, the mov­ More often than not, the deed is carried out in students, Mishima had founded in 1968 for the ing story of a girl raised in a rural fact. In Thirst For Love, the central figure, the express purpose of putting samurai teachings Catholic community. Haunted by her young widow Etsuko, strikes down a servant into practice on weekend retreats. The recruits younger brother's disappearance, boy for whom she has developed an unquench­ were all personally selected by the author. He she struggles to reconcile her own able passion with a mattock snatched from the even designed the brown uniforms they proudly life with the wishes of her family and hands of her repulsive father-in-law, who has wore. The young men professed an interest in the church. forced her to be his mistress. In The Temple Of martial arts, but also shared Mishima’s right- The Golden Pavilion, the failed Buddhist monk wing political leanings, wishing to restore Mizoguchi sets fire to the famous temple in Emperor worship in Japan. Thanks to Mishi­ Kyoto whose beauty has haunted and obsessed ma’s literary reputation, a number of high-rank­ him ever since he entered the sect as a boy- ing Japanese military officers were persuaded to Sunday, October 6, 4:00 p.m. novice. support the organization, and members of the In contrast to Mizoguchi’s act of destruction, society routinely took part in military exercises Edward Hower, which is carefully conceived and planned to the along with regular soldiers. last detail, Etsuko’s crime seems a sudden In 1970, Mishima was at the height of his author of the critically acclaimed insane impulse. Yet, in both cases, the deed is fame. Although he was only forty-five years old, novels, W olf Tickets and The N e w foreshadowed by smaller destructive acts. Prior he had been nominated for the Nobel Prize on Life Hotel, will read from his newly to the murder, Etsuko attempts to inflict both three occasions. He had distinguished himself in published novel of adult passions physical and psychological pain on the object of a wide variety of genres, having written a dozen and youthful rebellion, Night Train her desire. The destruction of the Golden Tem­ novels, more than fifty short stories, many suc­ B lu e s. A resident of Ithaca, Edward ple, on the other hand, is prefigured by an inci­ cessful plays, both modem and traditional (No Hower gives us a story which rings dent in Mizoguchi’s youth. As a schoolboy, he and Kabuki), a travel book, and countless with authenticity, compassion, for­ deliberately disfigures the ivory scabbard of a essays. His talent, however, was not restricted to giveness, and, in the end, makes us soldier’s sword. Upon entering the temple as an his literary endeavors. He acted, directed, and all a little bit wiser. acolyte, Mizoguchi comes under the spell of the produced for the theater, and appeared in sever­ building, one of the great national treasures of al motion pictures: in one film he enacted hari- Japan. He feels overpowered by the pavilion’s kari and, in another, starred as a gangster. great beauty, and almost immediately desires Mishima had been a weak and sickly child, Sunday, October 13, 4:00 p.m. deliverance from the spell that the edifice casts but he developed into a superb athlete. In 1955, on him. During the war years, he fervently he began a much-promoted regimen of weight­ hopes that American planes will bomb the lifting and body-building. In the spirit of the Bryna and Harvey Fireside, shrine. When the war ends, and the temple samurai warriors, he trained himself to be an long time Ithaca community activists, and organizers of the local chapter of remains intact, Mizoguchi embarks on a course expert swordsman, and he became adept at Amnesty International, will discuss their new book Young People from Bosnia of calculated duplicity and wrongdoing that step kendo, the ancient sport of stick-fighting. He Talk About War. This moving memoir is based on interviews with 25 students by step leads to his last outrageous deed. At one also mastered several other martial arts forms, who recounted their stories of survival during three years of ethnic conflict. point, he accepts cigarettes from an American and earned a reputation as an amateur boxer. soldier for trampling on the belly of a pregnant Photographs of Mishima participating in various prostitute in the temple garden, causing her to sporting events regularly appeared in Japanese miscarry. He then gives the cigarettes to the periodicals. superior of the temple, implicating him in In short, Yukio Mishima had long been a fig­ Mizoguchi’s crime. Later, he spends funds set ure of national prominence. Not only was he a The Bookery aside by the temple for his tuition at the Bud­ writer of world renown, in Japan he had the sta­ DeWitt Building, dhist University at a Kyoto brothel, hoping to tus and celebrity of an American film star. In an 215 North Cayuga St., Ithaca bring the wrath of the superior down on his interview, when asked who he felt was the great­ head. But this attempt to effect his dismissal est writer of the twentieth century, he replied For more information call (607) 273-5055 fails, and Mizoguchi decides that liberation will Thomas Mann, but that if he could assume the come only when the temple is engulfed in identity of any person on the planet, he would September 1996 T he ROOKPRKSS page 5 PIANOS

• Rebuilt not choose to be Mann, or himself, or indeed any ued to frequent the gay bars in Tokyo’s Ginza •.Reconstructed other writer—he would choose to be Elvis Pres­ district, and at the time of his death was infatu­ • Bought • Sold ley. ated with Masakatsu Morita, the first student to Moved Bom in Tokyo on January 14, 1925 into an join the Shield Society and his primary accom­ Digging a Hole • Tuned upper-middle class family, Mishima was raised plice in his last deed. • Rented in traditional—if also somewhat peculiar— To the end, Mishima continued to produce fashion. Asserting her prerogative, his paternal such best-selling novelettes such as After the grandmother demanded that she be entrusted Banquet and The Sailor Who Fell From Grace I am digging a hole to plant a magnolia with raising the delicate sickly infant, and, over with the Sea. During this final period, he the protest of the child’s mother, Mishima was increasingly devoted himself to the composi­ and thinking of the others digging in theforest turned over to her. For the next twelve years, she tion of what would prove to be his masterpiece, brought the boy up and indulged him in every­ a tetralogy of novels known as The Sea O f Fer­ outside Srebrenica. It's hard to dig thing. He was frequently ill, but also was prone tility, in which Mishima explored the subject of to feigning sickness. Mishima later claimed that reincarnation. Every volume featured a differ­ a hole big enough for the roots of a tree Ithaca Piano Rebuilders his grandmother raised and dressed hirn as if he ent hero or heroine, each an incarnation of the (607) 272-6547 were a girl. Only when he visited relatives did he same soul. Three of the books—Spring Snow, let alone a body. "That's why the graves 310 4th St.. Ithaca (O ft Hancock St. 2 blocks from Rt. 13) have to act like a boy. “The reluctant masquer­ Runaway Horses, and The Temple of Dawn— Complete rebuilding services. ade had begun,” Mishima wrote. had been published by 1970. Mishima finished are shallow," said the forensic expert No Job too big or too small. Call us. After his grandmother’s death, Mishima the last book, The Decay o f the Angel, just prior moved into his parents home. At about the same to visiting the headquarters of the Self-Defense last night on the radio,"and the bodies skele- time, he was accepted into the prestigious Peers’ Forces. He placed the completed manusen; t on School, where he performed brilliantly and the vestibule table of his home when he left to tized." made his first attempts at writing. He was six­ join the four students on the morning of teen when he was first published, and when he November 25. He had prepared what would You might as well say there are only bones graduated, in 1944, he received a citation from happen next as carefully as his fictional charac­ the Emperor for being the school’s most out­ ter Mizoguchi had planned the destruction of I think, and wonder why they talk standing honor student. While attending classes, the Golden Temple. His life and work would Mishima was attracted to a muscular upper­ come to a conclusion on the same day. about remains when they mean bones. classman named Omi. “Because of him,” he When Mishima and the four students arrived later wrote, “I began to love strength, an impres­ at the Ichigaya complex, they asked for an Under a picture in the Times it said: sion of overflowing blood, ignorance, rough interview with the commanding officer, Lieut. A new exhibit gestures, careless speech, and savage melan­ General Kanetoshi Mashida. He invited them "A decomposed body can be seen in the fore­ choly inherent in flesh not tainted in any way into his office, where he and Mishima spoke for of early with intellect.” approximately a half hour. At the conclusion of ground," uklyo-e prints. When the Second World War broke out, their conversation, Mishima drew his sword Mishima was still a student at the Peers’ school. and the four students jumped the general, tak­ but I can only see a skull. He had already begun publishing stories and ing him hostage and quickly tying him to his poems on a regular basis. He claimed that he did chair. The noise of the struggle caught the JAPANESE PRINTS not enlist in the Japanese army due to his poor attention of staff aides outside the office. Sens­ May 1996 through summer constitution and chronic illness. However, after ing that something was wrong, these men "Can you definitely say they were not resisting his graduation he was drafted. By that time, the attempted to storm the room. However, by that SOLA ART GALLERY war was already lost, but the army was nonethe­ time, the general was already securely bound, when they were killed? "asks the interviewer; Dewitt Mall Ithaca, tlY 14850 less preparing to resist the anticipated American and the students had joined Mishima at the door Tell 607 272 8552 invasion. Mishima would later write in an essay to the office with samurai swords drawn. The the forensic man answers with no trace of Qallc/y tlourw Mon. -SaL 10.30-3:30 that he “shuddered with a strange delight at the besiegers were quickly repulsed. Six of the thought of my own death. I felt as if I owned the aides suffered stab wounds. Mishima demand­ irony: whole world.” Later he professed that he wanted ed that he be given the opportunity to address NATURAL to die in combat. However, he did not pass the the Self-Defense Forces at the base. By noon, a "When their hands are tied behind their final physical and was rejected for service at the crowd of 1,200 soldiers had assembled below FOODS last possible moment. After the war, at his the balcony of the three-story white building. backs father’s behest, he attended the Tokyo Imperial His hands on the railing, Mishima harangued and a large selection of University of Jurisprudence, from which he the troops for approximately fifteen minutes. you can safely say they were not resisting." alternative health books graduated in 1947. He then accepted a position He urged the soldiers to foment revolution in at the Ministry of Finance. Shortly thereafter, he order to overturn Japan’s post-war constitution, became the protege of Yasunari Kawabata, who which forbade war, and to restore the rule of the encouraged him to write his first novel. Mishima Emperor. He said the Self-Defense Forces had Half an hour, and I'm just two feet down. resigned his post and devoted himself to his lit­ failed to achieve anything during their twenty erary pursuits. Confessions of a Mask was pub­ years of existence, and accused its leaders of Eight thousand people disappeared at Sre­ lished the following year. being spineless. It was up to the servicemen Throughout his career, Mishima delighted in themselves, Mishima said, to restore honor to brenica. shocking the public. The poses he assumed were their country. The reception he received was often conflicting and paradoxical. Mishima’s chilly. The servicemen shouted for him to sur­ How many hours did it take to hide them? G reenStar critics claimed he was a crypto-fascist, but he render and to release his hostage. “We can’t act ( cooperative m a r k e t ) vigorously denied the charge. Though he cham­ in common with fellows like you,” one man After a while I imagine the Serbs pioned the traditional samurai spirit, he claimed shouted. Mishima gave three shouts of “Ban­ 701 West Buffalo Street that this was not the same as the militarism that zai” and went back inside. Upon returning to must have got tired and turned to the prisoners 607-273-9392 had brought Japan into the Second World War. the general’s office, he told the students, “They NEW HOURS: M-Sat 9-9, Sun 10-7 In Mishima’s view, it was the abandonment of didn't seem to hear me too well,” then sat down untied the hands of the ones not too weak the old code during Japan’s period of industrial­ on the floor and bared his torso. With his knife, OPEN TO EVERYONE ization and modernization in the late 18th and he committed hari-kari, suicide by disembow- from torture or old age and told them to dig. early 19th centuries that paved the way for his elment or belly cutting, formerly practiced by country’s defeat. Thus, Mishima felt, it was the samurai in cases of disgrace or by govern­ It's an old trick - Auschwitz, Mauthausen: Cafe Oevvi Japan’s “Westernized, civilized army, which ment order. His disciple Masakatsu Morita then was so close to Fascism and Nazism.” Yet performed the rite known as Ksithaku. He stood Order the dying to dig their own graves. despite his reverence for his country’s samurai behind the dying Mishima and beheaded him Sunday heritage, Mishima adopted a Western manner of with his sword. Morita then committed suicide Many hanejs make light work. living which astounded and dismayed his asso­ in the same manner, one of the other students in 10-2 ciates. He told the press that his ideal was “to turn severing his head from his shoulders. Still live in a house where I sit on a rococo chair tied to his chair, and horrified by what he saw, wearing an aloha shirt and blue jeans.” The General Mashida shouted, “Stop it!” and The easy part is filling the hole; • Pumpkin Waffles house he built in Tokyo was far from traditional, “What are you doing?” After the beheading of • Smoked meats being Western in style and furnished with Vic­ Morita, the three remaining students came out it's already half full — you just add water torian bric-a-brac. of the room, bringing Mashida with them. They • Garlic Roasted Although he had been a practicing homosex­ surrendered quietly to the police. Undoubtedly, then peat moss and spade by spade Potatoes ual since adolescence, in 1958, informed that his Mishima thought his suicide both beautiful and mother had terminal cancer, Mishima acceded honorable. He had died as a martyr for a cause, fill the gap you have made in the earth. • Homemade breads to his family’s wishes and entered into an believing that his death would cause a spiritual • Lemon pancakes arranged marriage with Yoko Sugiyama. He awakening among his people. The rest is done by the sun and the rain. etc... took an active part in the upbringing of their two children, and proved to be a courteous and solic­ Mark Seinfeli studied fiction-writing with Paul itous husband. Flaunting Japanese custom, he West and William H. Gass, and is working on a permitted Yoko to travel abroad with him, and book-length study o f literary suicides. He lives —Gail Holst-Warhaft Dewitt Mall Ithaca granted her many non-traditional liberties in on top of Black Moshannon Mountain in cen­ 273-3473 their daily life. All the while, Mishima contin­ tral Pennsylvania. ______T he ROOKPRESS page 6 September 1996 September 1996 T he I page 7 Seamus Heaney’s Balancing Act

What is the purpose of this style? What kind John Bowers an eye and a tooth for a tooth, is itself a model of awn he has just coughed up. Again, the transi­ Like inmates liberated in that yard. Troy, told from the viewpoint of a sentry. of a poetics does it encode? It seems to me that a balance in its structure, consisting of four equal tion between these images seems to be purely Like the disregarded ones we turned against Bloody and despairing, the poem seems to hold The Spirit Level syntax of this sort is particularly conducive to a sections of four tercets each, written in impecca­ associative: “My breathing came dawn-cold, so Because we’d failed them by our disregard. out little hope of ever ending the endless cycle of by Seamus Heaney poetry dominated by description, elegy and ble iambic pentameter (with a few shorter lines clear and sudden/I might have been inhaling airs fratricide and civil war. Though the writing is memory. It is a timeless poetry, a form of pas­ thrown in for spice). In short, the structure of the Farrar, Straus, and Giroux from heaven/Where healed and martyred Once again, it seems to me that an unjustified somber and powerful, it nevertheless seems toral, in which balance and moderation take poem embodies precisely that which it argues 92 pages, $20 doth Agatha...etc.” Presumably, the sharp point of leap has been taken, based on a dubious person­ imaginatively removed from the actuality of precedence over action and force. Each nominal against. The resolution of this apparent contra­ the awn sticking in the boy’s throat corresponds ification of the smells of mint that he would let conditions in Northern Ireland. One of the cardinal rules of thumb of the early chunk represents a timeless piece of description diction can only lie in the fact that the purpose of to the relic knife that was used to kill Saint “go heady and defenceless/Like inmates liberat­ A more direct confrontation with political or an element of memory that has to be brought the poem is not primarily to promote Old Testa­ modernist period, repeated like a mantra in all Agatha, while both in turn relate somehow to the ed in that yard.” From there it is only a step to a reality is the horrific description of the murder of contemporary writing handbooks, was the ruth­ into balance with other such elements. It is a ment morality, but rather, as indicated already, rye design on the butter-print that scored the moral both sententious and confusing: “Like the an Ulster reservist, embedded in the poem less elimination of unnecessary descriptive style that facilitates elegy rather than tragedy, to express regret at having failed to react in that breast of the soft butter like slivered glass, thus disregarded ones we turned against/Because “Keeping On,” dedicated to Heaney’s brother adjectives. In general, adjectives were to be balance rather than conflict, the discursive rather way on a particular occasion. Like most of the setting up a deep correspondence between the we’d failed them by our disregard.” Applied to Hugh. Beginning with a clinical description of made use of only as a last resort, when no better than the analytic. It is both airy and concrete, poems in this volume, “Weighing Up” is in the boy with the awn stuck in his throat, the mar­ human beings, there is a psychological insight in the wall the reservist was leaning back against: means of expression was available. Verbs, it calmly arranging and rearranging realia in com­ end elegiac and pastoral. The driving force tyred Saint Agatha and the scored breast of the these final lines which, however, is simply not “Grey matter like gruel flecked with blood/In was felt, were cleaner and stronger, closer to plete imaginative freedom. The biggest dangers behind most of them is description and evoca­ butter. At the risk of sounding like a latter-day supported by the implied analogy with the over­ spatters on the whitewash. A clean spot/Where direct action and clear thought—and therefore of this style are a tendency toward inflated, tion of the past. There are memories of child­ Yvor Winters, I have to confess that all of this looked mint plant in the back yard with which his head had been...,” it ends laconically with more modem—than adjectives. Seamus empty rhetoric and a drift into nostalgia and sen­ hood, of family and friends, of past events of strikes me as nothing more than fanciful non­ the poem began. him “feeding the gutter with his copious blood.” Heaney, in contrast, has never been averse to timent. Avoiding these dangers requires a firm particular personal significance; there is an effort sense. The supposed analogies, when examined What these examples show, I think, is that At the conclusion of the poem he addresses his employing an adjective—even an unnecessary guiding hand and an exquisite sense of balance. to sum up, to celebrate. Despite the occasional critically, make no imaginative sense whatsoev­ Heaney tends to go off the rails when he aban­ brother eloquently as follows: one— if it sounded good. But in this new vol­ In the poem “Weighing In”, it looks at first as intrusion of the darker side of human existence, er. Despite the undoubted competence of the dons straightforward narrative or physical ume, his first since winning the Nobel Prize, the if Heaney intends to propose an explicit poetics most notably in the allusions to sectarian vio­ writing on a purely technical level, the poem description and goes for grand conclusions, pro­ M y dear brother, you have good stamina. modernist injunction is massively, even radical­ of balance corresponding to his stylistic prac­ lence in Northern Ireland in the poems ‘The must ultimately be judged to consist of little found comparisons, or deep analogical connec­ You stay on where it happens. Your big tractor ly, violated. The poems in this volume are laden tice: Flight Path” and “Keeping Going” and, more more than inflated rhetoric. tions. His strength does not lie in the abstract, Pidls up at the Diamond, you wave at people, with descriptive adjectives—frequently with abstractly perhaps, in the long poem “Mycenae The most successful poems in this volume are and his forays into such territory tend to produce You shout and laugh about the revs, you keep strings of them—as in the first three tercets of Gravity's black box, the immovable Lookout” (an account of the fall of Troy and its those that stick to a clear narrative line and resist strained comparisons and overblown rhetoric Old roads open by driving on the new ones. Section 1 o f‘To a Dutch Potter in Ireland”: Stamp and squat and square-root of dead weight. aftermath, told from the viewpoint of a sentry), the temptation to depart too far from naturalistic rather than real poetic thought. In his earlier You called the piper's sporrans whitewash Yet balance it the volume as a whole is positive rather than description. Poems such as “A Sofa in the For­ poetry, such tendencies were kept in check by brushes The soils l knew ran dirty. River sand negative in its outlook, optimistic rather than ties”, “A Call”, "The Errand”, and “Damson” stricter rhyme schemes and a sharp eye for natu­ And then dressed up and marched us through Was the one clean thing that stayed itself Against another one placed on a weighbridge— pessimistic. recount in clear, evocative language memories ralistic detail. In the best poetry of his middle the kitchen, In that slabbery, clabbery, wintry, puddled On a well-adjusted, freshly greased weigh­ Seamus Heaney must surely be one of the of childhood, while poems such as “The Rain period, the writing is firmly anchored in the But you cannot make the dead walk or right ground. bridge— most expert contemporary writers of “tradition­ Stick” and “The Gravel Walks” exhibit short dimeter and trimeter lines that he devel­ wrong. » And everything trembled, flowed with give and al” English verse. The poems in this volume are Heaney’s undoubted phonetic gifts, used in the oped as a formal analogue of the sharp physical I see you at the end of your tether sometimes, Until lfound Bonn clay. Like wet daylight take. all written in regular iambic meters, the great service of simple, sensuous description. An details with which he etched his descriptions of In the milking parlor, holding yourself up Or viscous satin under the felt and frieze majority being pentameter lines, with fairly example of Heaney at his best is the second sec­ the prehistoric past Behveen two cows until your turn goes past, O f humus layers. The true diatomite But then, in the second part, he performs an heavy use of enjambment; they are generally tion of “Damson” in which he describes a brick­ The writing in The Spirit Level, while freer Then coming to in the smell of dung again abrupt volte-face, dismissing sardonically this arranged in more or less regular stanzas, often layer at work: and more open, runs two risks that arose less fre­ And wondering, is this all? As it was Discovered in a little sucky hole, pastoral vision of great forces in well-adjusted with symmetrical groupings of stanzas into larg­ quently in the earlier work. The first is the dan­ In the beginning, is now and shall be? Grey-blue, dull-shining, scentless, touchable— balance: er structural units; and they display a formidable Over and over, the slur, the scrape and mix ger of indulging in sound effects purely for their Then rubbing your eyes and seeing our old Like the earth's old ointment box, sticky and cool. mastery of rhyme, half-rhyme, internal rhyme, As he trowelled and retrowelled and laid down own sake without a firm basis in sense. The sec­ brush And this is all the good tidings amount to: alliteration, etc. His grasp of musicality in verse Courses of glum mortar. Then the bricks ond is the danger of indulging in flights of pure Up on the byme door, and keeping going. There are eighteen adjectives in these nine This principle of bearing, bearing up may well be unrivaled today. However, the awe­ Jiggled and settled, tocked and tapped in line. fancy, carried on a flood of unanchored rhetoric. lines, an average of two per line. Indeed there is And bearing out, just having to some technical virtuosity displayed in these I loved especially the trowel's shine, Occasionally, though not often, both occur Mixing personal memory with compassion hardly a noun in this volume that isn’t accompa­ poems sometimes creates a dazzling surf ace that Its edge and apex always coming clean together, resulting in writing that is merely self- for others and outrage at the senselessness of nied by at least one adjectival modifier, often by Balance the intolerable in others leaves me admiring, yet unmoved. The gor­ And brightening itself by mucking in. indulgent. On the other hand, when the new violence, this poem seems to me one of the two, and not infrequently by a string of three or Against our own, having to abide geous and sensuous description does not always It looked light but felt heavy as a weapon, mode works, there is a degree of spontaneity and strongest in the volume, as well as the closest more. Heaney is particularly fond of compound Whatever we settled for and settled into lead to revelation. Writing that on first glance Yet when he lifted it there was no strain. freedom less often met with in the earlier work. that Heaney comes to direct reflection on the adjectives and complex deverbal adjective seemed brilliant turns out on closer inspection to It was all point and skim andfloat and glisten Inevitably, the question of the relation consequences of the civil war in Northern Ire­ phrases: the held-at-arm ’s length dead, the Against our better judgement. Passive be rhetorical and overblown. Let me illustrate Until he washed and hpped it tight in sacking between Heaney’s poetry and the civil war in land. wine-dark taste of home; sheer, bright-shining Suffering makes the world go round. the nature of these qualms with a few concrete Like a cult blade that had to be kept hidden. Northern Ireland comes up. There is an explicit In trying to evaluate this volume as a whole, spring; silk-white ashes; cold-floored waiting- Peace on earth, men of good will, all that examples. statement of his own position in part 4 of “The it is difficult to decide whether the nagging feel­ room; the hero.../stripped to the skin, blood- In a recent, rather uncritically laudatory This is scrupulous and exact, sensuous and Flight Path.” Returning from New York in ing of dissatisfaction I am left with is due to the plastered, moaning/ and rocking, splashing, Holds good only as long as the balance holds, review of this volume in The New York Times elegant, and the final two lines delicately hint at 1979, he encounters on the train to Belfast an old intrinsic quality of the work itself or to the (per­ dozing off,/ accommodated as if he were a The scales ride steady and the angels' strain Book Review, Richard Tillinghast singles out the deeper mysteries without bludgeoning the read­ school friend “as if he were some film noir bor­ haps unfair) expectation that a poet with stranger, my tongue/.../trampled and rattled, Prolongs itself at an unearthly pitch. short poem ‘The Poplar” for praise, to illustrate er over the head with pompous rhetoric. In con­ der guard” who “goes for me head on/W hen, Heaney’s gifts ought to be able to do even bet­ running piss and muck fall swimmy-trembly as his claim that “Mr. Heaney never merely trast, the first part of the poem, which begins for fuck’s sake, are you going to write/Some- ter. If his natural impulse is toward the pastoral the lick o f fire; a wall-eyed, hard-baked seagull; Pursuing this line of thought a step further, the describes.” The poem, he says, “records a well with the memory of a wound suffered by thing for us?”’ Heaney replies: .. ‘If I do write and the elegiac, is it reasonable to expect him to that blirul-from-birth, sweet-voiced, withdrawn third part of the poem argues vehemently moment of beauty—and questions what natural the bricklayer fifty years ago, ends as follows: something,/Whatever it is, I’ll be writing for produce poetry that is more muscular, more musician; etc. Or consider the characteristic against the Christian principle of turning the balance might have been upset to produce it”: Scott Wercler myself.’” He goes on to liken his position to that engaged, more tragic? On the other hand, can opening stanzas of “Weighing In”: other cheek, concluding with the plea: justifies this personification and sexualization of Wound that I saw ■ of Dante walking behind “the righteous Virgil” our judgement of poetry ever be separated Wind shakes the big poplar, quicksilvering When 1 was small l swallowed an awn of rye. the surface of the butter as its “breast,” or the In glutinous colorfifty years ago— through hell. Fair enough: hue poetry can’t be completely from the circumstances in which it The 56 lb. weight. A solid iron Still, for Jesus' sake, The whole tree in a single sweep. M y throat was like standing crop probed by a implicit violence contained in the phrase Damson as omen, weird, a dream to read— made out of propaganda. Yet I wonder how is produced? While agreeing completely that Unit of negation. Stamped and cast Do me a favor, would you, just this once? What bright scale fell and left this needle quiver­ scythe. “scored with slivered glass”? Furthermore, how Is weeping with the held-at-arm's-length dead valid it is to compare the literal hell-on-earth of a artists must be granted the right to aesthetic With an inset, rung-thick, molded, short cross­ Prophesy, give scandal, cast the stone. ing? I felt the edge slide and the point stick deep does this fit with the earlier characterization of From everywhere and nowhere, here and now. civil war with Dante’s journey through the infer­ autonomy, I also believe that the greatest art bar What loaded balances have come to grief? Until, when 1 coughed and coughed and the butter-print’s “round open face?” Is the *» no of his imagination. I couldn’t help being arises, directly or indirectly, out of the artist’s The fourth part begins by testily summing up coughed it up, round open face of the butter-print meant to The last two lines seem to me to dissolve into struck by the irony of the fact that the New York confrontation with the political and cultural For a handle. Squared-offand harmless-looking the poem’s argument as follows: This is lovely writing. The image in the first inflict this grievous wound on the soft butter’s pure melodrama. The description of the wound Times review, titled “Poems Into Ploughshares,” conditions of his or her time. Am I correct in Until you tried to lift it, then a socket-ripping, two lines is beautiful. The third line too is very M y breathing came daum-cold, so clear and sud­ breast? And if so, why? Is the innocent-looking and its identification with “the damson in which no mention at all is made of the politi­ suspecting that Heaney’s art has not quite suc­ Life-belittling force— Two sides to every question, yes, yes, yes... good, the image of a quivering needle on a scale den butter-print a sadist, or sexual predator, in dis­ stain/That steeped through his packed lunch” is cal situation in Northern Ireland, appeared ceeded in reaching the highest moral and spiri­ But every now and then, just weighing in corresponding nicely to the shaking poplar, I might have been inhaling airs from heaven guise? It strikes me that this entire stanza is a effective enough on its own, while the supernat­ directly opposite a review, titled “A Reporter in tual level that poetry is capable of because of a with no less than eleven adjectives, half of them Is what it must come down to, and without while the brilliant half-rhyme quicksilvering/ Where healed and martyred Agatha stares down prime product of the intellectual function that ural overtones are conveyed simply and eco­ Hell,” of a British journalist’s account of the sort of failure of nerve, a profound reluctance to compound. This great outpouring of adjectival quivering mirrors the images perfectly. But the At the relic knife as l stared at the awn. Coleridge termed ‘fancy’, .as opposed to ‘imag­ nomically by the phrases “Damson as omen, slaughter in Rwanda in 1994— essentially the engage fully and directly with the ethical and modifiers, combined with a marked partiality for Any exculpation or self-pity. sentiment expressed in the final line, despite the ination’. The images are actually quite lurid and weird, a dream to read— ”, The final two lines, in same situation as in Northern Ireland, only a spiritual dilemmas that daily confront the citi­ compound nouns and extended nominal elegant half-rhyme sweep/grief is in my view a Interestingly, James Fenton declared recently melodramatic; they don’t fit together to form an which the wound is personified and described thousand times more gruesome. zens of Northern Ireland, a deep desire to sequences (as in the six lines above, which con­ But then, at the very end, the real reason for failure: it says both too much and too little. It in The New York Review o f Books that this poem imaginative whole; and there is no context pre­ rather too histrionically as “weeping with the What responsibilities do artists and intellectu­ assuage and reconcile rather than to confront tain only a single main verb, and that one in this revolt against moderation and balance is says too much because it suggests in a porten­ “went straight into my personal anthology of the sented that could conceivably justify such held-at-arm’s-length dead/From everywhere als bear in such tragic political situations? As a and protest? Or am I merely wishing that dependent clause), gives the verse a feel that is revealed: it seems that on some occasion, the tous way that the shaking of the poplar is the best of Heaney.” My view is quite different. The hyperactive rhetoric. and nowhere, here and now,” are unnecessary public figure of note— particularly since being Heaney was a different kind of poet than he is? dense, lush, and exuberant—almost exotic—yet details of which are left obscure, “when follow- result of some momentous event, some first stanza begins with a pair of rhetorical ques­ The second stanza moves immediately, by and unjustified. awarded the Nobel Prize— Heaney is certainly Is it bad manners on my part to insist that the at the same time oddly static, as huge nominal through was called for/And a quick hit would unnamed tragedy; it says too little because it tions, both of which seem to me to come dan­ pure association of ideas, to a straightforward Another poem that starts out strongly but ends in a position to exert some influence in Northern poems in this volume, while exhibiting flashes chunks are plunked down like concrete objects have fairly rankled,/.../I held back when I fails to explain precisely why the image in the gerously close to running aground on the shoals description of a childhood memory of swallow­ in confusion is “Mint.” It begins straightfor­ Ireland, yet his primary impulse seems to be to of brilliance, are generally less rigorous and and left to float in delicate equilibrium around a should have drawn blood/And that way (mea first two lines has the effect it does on the human of the bathetic. Certainly one might wonder why ing an awn of rye. Presumably, the pain and the wardly, with a description of an unnoticed keep a low profile. Perhaps it is not an entirely intense than those in his earlier volumes? Or few modest, hardworking verbs. culpa) lost an edge.” The poem concludes with spirit Without further elaboration, the final line a butter-print should bear the design of a head of panic induced by the sharp point of the rye awn clump of mint in the back yard that “also spelled fair comparison, but it is difficult to refrain from should I be grateful that Heaney is as good as he This heavy drift toward the nominal is by no the line: At this stage only foul play cleans the is simply too vague and too grandiose to match rye, but what justifies, particularly in the open­ is meant to justify retrospectively in some way promise/And newness in the back yard of our contrasting Heaney’s public stance with that of is, and join in the chorus of hosannas that have means unique to Heaney’s writing: it is in fact a slate. In other words, the real subject of the the delicacy and precision of the natural event it ing line, personifying the surface of the butter- the violence of the description of the design on life,” continues on into the third stanza with a Yeats who, for better or for worse, entered fully followed in the wake of his Nobel prize? In the general feature of contemporary writing that has poem is the poet’s keen regret at having failed to purports to explain. In short, it is mere rhetoric. print as its “round, open face?” Still, suspending the butter-print in the first stanza, but the imagi­ memory of the mint being snipped with scissors and passionately into the politics of his day, and long run, the answers to these questions can been developing for some time, not only in poet­ lash out, to “cast the stone,” on some occasion Consider next ‘The Butter-Print”, a poem disbelief, we move on to the next two lines, native connection between the two seems on Sunday mornings, leading to the elegant con­ many of whose most famous poems engage only come from a detailed critical examination ry but in prose as well. What is surprising is the when swift retaliation (“to refuse the other reminiscent in its taut, well-constructed qua­ which ask us why this sharp device should be severely strained at best. clusion: “My last things will be first things slip­ with Irish politics without surrendering his artis­ of Heaney’s entire oeuvre. In the meantime, extreme to which he takes the technique. There cheek”) would have been the appropriate trains of the best of Heaney’s earlier work: used on soft butter, setting up a nice contrast The awn finally having been coughed up, the ping from me.” Rather than ending here, howev­ tic integrity. It has frequently been suggested what I do feel sure of is that while the poems in are entire poems in this volume that have barely response, rather than “a deep mistaken chival­ between the sharp “jags and bristles” of the final stanza is meant to produce a resolution of er, Heaney attempts to resolve the poem as fol­ that certain of Heaney’s earlier poems, most this volume are without question the work of an a complete sentence in them, in which all the ry ” Who carved on the butter-print's round open cross-hatched rye design and the smooth, soft the various images and ideas introduced in the lows: notably the bog poems in North constitute indi­ excellent poet, one of the best writing today, action takes place in adjectives, extended adjec­ So much for the explicit message. But now face surface of the butter to be marked with the but­ first two. Instead, an entirely new image is intro­ rect commentary on the political situation in they are not clearly the work of a great poet. tival modifiers, and prepositional phrase com­ we must come to terms with the final irony that A cross-hatched head of rye, all jags and thistles? ter-print. But surely it is poetic overkill to con­ duced, that of Saint Agatha—in heaven, no Yet let all things go free that have survived. Northern Ireland. The same is doubtless true of plements piled up like defensive bulwarks this poem, which argues eloquently against Why should soft butter bear that sharp device tinue, as Heaney does, with the final line “as if less—staring down at the relic knife that was “Mycenae Lookout,” a five-part poem con­ John Bowers is a professor of Linguistics at around the nouns. moderation and balance, in favor of an eye for As if its breast ivere scored with slivered glass? its breast were scored with slivered glass.” What used to martyr her, while the boy stares at the Let the smells of mint go heady and defenceless cerned with the peace that followed the fall of Cornell University. p a g e 8 The R OOKPRESS September 1996 Fenton’s Wooden Horse

continued from page 1 poem (the other being that its versification is indicts the admiration which many British everyone would now agree that British and atrocious).” Still, Fenton adds with a burst of critics have for Heaney’s poetry as an indi­ Irish poetry are separate. Whether Heaney’s To do so, however, Fenton finds it neces­ generosity, ‘“ An Open Letter’ was a poor cation of what is wrong with British culture. poetry, in 1980 or 1996, has any literary sary to rehearse every literary and political poem, but an important event.” Given Fen­ Heaney’s poetry (at least back in 1980) illus­ merit is pushed to the margin, if not off the objection raised against Heaney’s poetry ton’s unwillingness to get the joke, one is trated a preference on the part of the British entire page, and Fenton can, at last, proclaim since the publication of North in 1975, the left with the feeling that he might object to reading public for “safety, sweetness, and what he sees as closure to the controversy volume which rocketed Heaney to interna­ the contrived versification of a limerick. light” as opposed to the “whole, troubled started with Heaney’s “Open Letter” back in tional attention. In each case, Fenton takes This kind of commentary is puzzling in at exploratory thrust of modern poetry.” The 1983. the posture of the exasperated critic who, in least two respects. First, Fenton, of all peo­ implication for Fenton from these passages Fenton cites the last of Heaney’s Oxford the name of righting an obvious wrong, is ple, should have been able to pick up on the (which must “have stuck in Heaney’s craw,” lectures, given in 1993, in which Heaney forced to examine and almost refute each political ironies and genial satire informing says Fenton) is that Heaney is simply “an expands on the poem’s implications. Heaney allegation, showing how the allegations, the poem. After all, a good portion of his Irish entertainer on the British cultural explains that he spoke about the greenness of while having some merit in and of them­ own poetry is filled with irony and satire scene,” (Fenton’s phrase, not Alvarez’s) and his passport in “An Open Letter” “not in selves, may even contradict one another. By that, at times, starts out as high-camp high again Fenton speculates: “It must have been order to expunge the British connection in essay’s end, Fenton has recorded, as o f jinks only to turn into cutting ridicule. Con­ exasperating to Heaney.” Britain’s Ireland but to maintain the right to course in all fairness he must, a great more sider this stanza from “Poem Against What’s going on here? Why is Fenton diversity within the border, to be understood about what is wrong with Heaney’s poetry Catholics” which he co-authored with John dealing with A. Alvarez and his comments as having full freedom to the enjoyment of and politics than what is right with it. Fenton, Fuller: on Heaney’s Field Work 16 years ago in an an Irish name and identity within that north­ however, finishes with a faint flourish for one essay which Fenton is supposedly devoting ern jurisdiction.” For Fenton, this ecumeni- of the poems in the new volume. Even here, “Not now," cries Mrs. Macnamara, “later!" to Heaney’s recent publications? I guess it calism constitutes a “considerable rewriting” alas, the eloquence expended on the single When leapt on by her husband (what a would help to know that Fenton’s never of the earlier poem, and Fenton’s impatience poem, placed in the context of the essay at beast). taken kindly to Alvarez’s advocation of the with Heaney’s conciliatory description of large, smacks of a condescension which, "It says so on my Catholic calculator. confessional/on the verge/intensely personal Irish and British multiculturalism in North­ given the national antagonisms he sets at It also says so on my Catholic priest." poetry associated with Robert Lowell, Ted ern Ireland momentarily flares, “as if,’*he play throughout the essay, one is tempted to She'd do much better with a mortal coil Hughes, and Sylvia Plath (Fenton’s 1972 says, “for the Northern Irish Catholic, his describe as quintessentially English. To spoil the child and spare the husband's “Letter to John Fuller” is a merciless verse- Irishness were a kind of wheat germ which For openers, Fenton recalls the publication rod. letter mockery of Alavarez’s criticism). And he sprinkled every morning on his—what of Heaney’s “An Open Letter,” the 198-line Why don't they put a bill through in the so one might assume that anything Alvarez would it be? on his Britishness?” verse letter (Field Day Pamphlet #2, 1983) Ddil? rails against might find some favor with Fen­ Fenton’s intrusive habit of placing himself objecting to his being labeled a British, as God we hate Catholics and their Catholic ton (and vice versa). But even here, Fenton inside Heaney’s head to imagine what might opposed to an Irish poet in the Blake Morri­ God. gets it wrong. In light of the kind of poetry have, or must have, been Heaney’s intention son and Andrew Motion Penguin Book of Alvarez had called for, Fenton says queru­ or reaction to a variety of literary acts here Contemporary British Poetry, published the The poem goes on to send up psychotic lously, rather than dismiss Heaney as an reaches its culmination. For Fenton, year before. The verse letter, reprinted in saints, Catholic confession, Anglicans entertainer, “One might have predicted that Heaney’s final Oxford lecture should be seen H arper's (March 1987), is something of a (“High Anglo-Catholics”), and communion North would appeal to him.” As it happened, as nothing short of an embarrassing repudia­ good-natured and good-humored reminder as cannibalism, all with undaunted irrever­ though, North did appeal to Alvarez, and tion of the earlier, unjustified outburst in “An that Heaney considered himself Irish, not ence and elaborately contorted rhyme. Fen­ appealed to him in the same essay review Open Letter.” As Fenton says: British. At its most offensive, it might be ton, the son of an Anglican vicar, can doubt­ which Fenton cites to Heaney’s disadvan­ seen as a reverse Irish joke, a funny reminder less claim some kind of hereditary expertise tage. The embarrassment behind the rewrite, so to those in power (at least in publishing) to in these matters. Still, while English critics Here’s what Alvarez says on that volume many years later, of a poem which he pub­ review their premises. were amused by the wit and irreverence (Ian in the essay: lished only in pamphlet form, is indicative per­ Fenton, on the other hand, insists on a Parker characterizes the collaborative poems haps of a lingering sense that, though he had no much more serious and literal reading. The as “rather donnish whimsical verse”), it’s The exception is North, his fourth and best alternative but to make his stand, the stand poem is, he claims, a long-overdue righting easy to imagine an Irish literary critic, such book, which opened with an imposing itself was some kind of betrayal, or some kind of a terrible wrong. As he says, “Seamus as Seamus Deane, reaching for a different set sequence of poems linking the grim Irish pre­ of slap in the face of people to whom he was, Heaney exploded. He had had enough. He of adjectives. In any event, one would think sent with its even grimmer past of Norse inva­ in various ways, obliged. was not British, and he was fed up with being that the strategies of “An Open Letter” sions and ancient feuding. The tone was appro­ called British, or anything other than Irish.” would be right up Fenton’s alley. priately stern, but also distanced, the language “Embarrassment”? “Betrayal”? Just as it Still, while apparently applauding Heaney’s The second question that this commentary spare, as though stripped back to its Anglo- would be difficult to detect the explosive, principled stance in this now solemnly prin­ raises is its relevancy to Fenton’s task at Saxon skeleton. For the space of these dozen nationalistic outrage Fenton ascribes to “An cipled poem, Fenton slips in a few razor hand. Why would Fenton, in a review which and a half poems Heaney seemed to have Open Letter,” anyone reading Heaney’s final slashes on the side, as in this explication of a sets out to address the recent publications of found a theme so absorbing that charm and Oxford lecture would be hard pressed to dis­ passage he cites: Heaney, spend over a third of his essay rhetoric were irrelevant. The poems were as cover some trace of the chagrin Fenton selectively explicating a verse letter written simple, demanding, and irreducible as the plants there. The lecture instead concludes Heaney was unhappy with the Burns stanza he 13 years ago and never collected in a vol­ archaic trophies from the bog which they cele­ on a note of tolerance, advocating a multi­ had chosen, which leads him into many awk­ ume? What American readers saw as a brated. And like an archeologist, he pared cultural flexibility in matters of national wardness, as here where he seems to overlook genial but well-deserved rejoinder to the away the extraneous matter and kept himself identity, especially as concerns Northern Ire­ the fact that there were also Gaels who made condescending assumptions of British pub­ decently in the background. land. Using his own formation as a case in their last stand in Scotland. And do we imagine lishers, has apparently simmered inside Fen­ (77* New York Review of Books, March 6, 1980, 16) point, Heaney draws both a literary and that, writing in prose, he would have distin­ ton’s head these past thirteen years (With political lesson for all sides to learn: guished Catholic from Protestant by calling Dante in the air, one is reminded of If anything, Alvarez faults Heaney for one lot native and the other cotonl It seems Heaney’s version of the Ugolino section of turning away from the kind of poetry he sees There is nothing extraordinary about the chal­ unlikely. The Inferno, in which the Count gnaws away in North to what Alvarez considers the more lenge to be in two minds. If, for example, there at the skull of the Archbishop as he recounts rhetorical and ornamental poetry he finds in was something exacerbating, there was still Again, while stoutly defending Heaney’s his tale). Field Work. In short, Alvarez’s commentary nothing deleterious to my sense of Irishness in right to speak as an individual, Fenton adds Initially, it seems Fenton wishes to unsul­ and criticism focuses on questions of literary the fact that I grew up in the minority in that the poem comes “close to flag-waving” ly the reputations of Blake Morrison and style. Northern Ireland and was educated within the (and that’s a nationalist as opposed to a Andrew Motion, the two editors of the Toward the end of the essay, Fenton will dominant British culture. My identity was unionist flag) when Heaney reminds his anthology, to whom the verse letter was parenthetically admit that he didn’t like the emphasized rather than eroded by being main­ reader that his passport is green and that “No addressed, and whom Heaney’s poem made first part of North (“I don’t care much for tained in such circumstances. The British glass of ours was ever raised/ To toast The “look a little foolish.” Blake Morrison, in what he fishes out of bogs”), but at this point dimension, in other words, while it is some­ Queen." For Fenton, the “vehemence of this particular, was one of Fenton’s avid support­ Fenton’s empathy with what he imagines to thing that will be resisted by the minority if it is refusal” has “an aggressive Republican tone” ers in his election to the Oxford Professor­ be Heaney’s exasperation and outrage with felt to be coercive, has nevertheless been a which, he notes with some relief, Heaney ship, comparing Fenton’s poetry with that of Alvarez’s review takes another, somewhat given of our history and even of our geogra­ modified considerably in his final lecture as Wilfred Owen and W. H. Auden. In addi­ convoluted, twist: “Most exasperating of all, phy, one of the places where we all live, willy- Oxford professor three years ago. tion, last year Penguin brought out a com­ though, would be to feel that these misap­ nilly. It’s in the language. One wonders why Fenton did not cite the bined selection of poetry by Fenton, Morri­ prehensions about your nationality [my ital­ (The Red-ess o f Poetry, 202) stanza which follows the so-called vehement son, and Kit Wright in their Modem Poets ics] were, in part, your fault. For it would refusal, one which should have put his polit­ series, further linking the two. never have been so easy for the British to What Fenton would have us understand, ical and literary misgivings at ease: As it happens, though, Fenton’s defense of take whatever they liked from Ireland and though, is that Heaney’s final Oxford lecture Morrison leads him to introduce a lengthy call it British if a protest had been lodged a brings to the fore a motif of betrayal which, No harm to her nor you who deign objection to Heaney’s poetry which was little earlier.” Fenton will claim in the remainder of the To God Bless her as sovereign, lodged by A. Alvarez two years earlier than Something odd occurs in the thinking essay, has dogged Heaney’s entire poetic of crown and rose either the Motion/Morrison anthology or here: Heaney writes “An Open Letter” in career. Defied, displaced, would not combine Heaney’s subsequent verse-letter response. 1983, which embarrasses Andrew Motion ***** What I'd espouse. Morrison and Motion, in compiling their and Blake Morrison. Three years earlier, A. So who is this James Fenton, and why ("An Open Letter," 85-90) anthology, were hoping to indicate that Alvarez had criticized Seamus Heaney’s does he wish to recast Seamus Heaney’s British poetry had taken forms other than Field Work (but not North) on matters of lit­ career from this volatile, nationalistic point Be that as it may, Fenton, not letting the those Alvarez had promoted in his 1962 erary style and content, which Fenton sees as of view? point or the poem go, flogs the expiring horse anthology The New Poetry. Morrison/ having primarily to do with Heaney’s being In many respects, James Fenton is a privi­ at several other points in the ostensibly Motion had held up Heaney as an example of Irish. Now if only Heaney had written “An leged, if somewhat typical, product of the laudatory essay. As he says, “Heaney was in these new forms. Fenton goes on to quote at Open Letter” a few years earlier than he did, English educational system. He was bom in a weak position, and knew it, which is one length from an 1980 Alvarez review of Alvarez would not have been able to criti­ Lincoln in the north of England in 1949. His reason why ‘An Open Letter’ is not a good H ean ey 's Field Work, in which Alvarez cize Heaney’s poetry as British, because father, as mentioned above, was an Anglican ^ l * K O j’.'t I I K ' u d V U t l t V l G . September 1996 T he R OOKFRESS page 9

vicar (and is currently Honorary Canon Anderson, the Southeast Asia scholar and A Mess a e Emeritus of Christ Church, Oxford). One of human rights activist, finds fault with this four children, Fenton was sent as a boarder subjective whimsicality. In a withering to Choristers’ School, Durham, an English analysis of Fenton’s “The Snap Revolution” from q prep-school, and later to public school at [in the Phillipines] and ‘The Fall of Saigon,” Repton, near Litchfield. Fenton went on to Anderson rebukes this posture as an example Magdalen College, Oxford, where he read of what he calls “political tourism.” As he psychology, philosophy, and physiology. He says, “What both these texts perfectly won the Newdigate poetry award as an demonstrate is that, for the Fentons of this undergraduate, and published his first book world, politics an sich are wholly unimpor­ in the of poems, Terminal Moraine, in 1972. tant and uninteresting. They become interest­ In 1973, at the age of twenty-four, he flew ing only insofar as they produce brief, torch- to Cambodia and settled in Phnom Penh, lit spectacles in exotic places.” (“James Fen­ supported partly by a poetry grant and partly ton’s Slideshow,” in New Left Review, by freelance essays he submitted to The New July/August 1986,81-90) Atomic Statesm an. He was, as he indicates in his The poetry presents a different kind of 1988 book of travel writings, All the Wrong complexity since Fenton writes, as Julian Places, an opponent of United States imperi­ Symons suggests, at least three kinds of alism in the region and therefore an idealistic poems, only one of which Symons considers a memoir supporter of both the Khmer Rouge in Cam­ significant. He says, in his 1983 review of Age bodia and the Vietcong in Vietnam. In 1975, Children of Exile, Fenton was evacuated, along with all for­ eigners, from Phnom Penh, and moved to There are three poetic Fentons, two of com­ Saigon, where he witnessed the fall of that paratively minor interest. One offers botanical, city to the North Vietnamese army. There­ psychological or medical "exempla” taken from Irene Vilar fore, in addition to the victories, as he saw books or other printed works as poems, them, of the indigenous armies over foreign rather in the whimsical manner of the surreal­ Irene Vilar is the granddaughter of the Puerto Rican nationalist Lolita imperialism, he was witness as well to the ists exhibiting ‘found objects’ as art. Another Lebron, who opened fire on the United States House of Representatives in fall of Saigon, the extermination of the South produces light verse that is always lively, some­ Vietnamese officer corps, and the systematic times funny, and often marked by a deadly top­ 1954. Vilar’s memoir, alternating between her notes from the psychiatric genocide of Cambodia under Pol Pot, the icality... The third Fenton, however, has ful­ ward and her recounting of her family history, unravels the allure of suicide leader of the Khmer Rouge. His experiences filled what ‘Our Western Furniture’ promised, that has haunted a grandmother, mother, and daughter. in Southeast Asia, as well as other journalist in a dozen magnificent poems. It is notable that assignments in Germany, were incorporated almost all of them have their origins in his “An urgent and original account of a young woman’s search for the into The Memory of War and Children of Cambodian and German experiences. truth of her past, when her estrangement from that past has brought her Exile: Poems 1968-1982 (1983), which in (TheTmes, London, November 20, 1983, 38) to the point of self-destruction. Vilar is a writer of extraordinary pas­ many ways propelled Fenton to national recognition. The book was hailed by English sion, erudition, and intelligence, and it is clear in every sentence critics as a breakthrough, and Peter Porter, Not everyone is willing to follow Symons’ that she is writing fo r her very life. ” the English poet, called Fenton “the most tal­ taxonomy and embrace of one part of Fen­ —Tobias Wolff, author o f This Boy's Life ented poet of his generation.” ton’s poetry, while dismissing the rest. Arju- He continued to work as a literary journal­ na Parakrama, in his 1994 review of Out o f $24.00, hardcover • July, 1996 ist in a number of capacities throughout the Danger, comes down hard on what he sees as late 70’s and 80’s, as a political writer for the political and cultural assumptions run­ Pa n t h e o n B o o k s , N e w Y o r k The New Statesman, as correspondent to ning through Fenton’s poetry. While he Germany for The Guardian, as theater critic applauds (and agrees with) Fenton’s criti­ for the Sunday Times, and as Southeast cism of U.S. world hegemony, he finds Fen­ Asian correspondent for the Independent, ton unable or unwilling to subject his own the newspaper for which he presently writes “maleness and cultural specificity” [that is, a column. In 1988, he co-authored, with his Englishness] to the same kind of self- John Fuller, Partingtime Hall, a collection of reflexivity and radical questioning found in poems lampooning a range of targets, among the opening personal poems. Even further, at them Catholics, literary critics, and life in the conclusion of an explication of Belfast. His most recent collection, Out o f “Jerusalem,” Fenton’s quite serious medita­ Danger, was published to mixed reviews in tion on the mutually destructive antagonisms IRacialized AND 1993. of the Middle East, Parakrama charges, ‘The In addition to poetry, journalism, and trav­ poet’s ability to literally divorce and isolate I Sexualized el writing, one other aspect of Fenton’s liter­ Jerusalem from the urgent and catastrophic ary work has turned out to be enormously political realities of the area is symptomatic ICONFLICTS profitable for him. In 1983, after Fenton of the unquestioned privilege that he enjoys translated “Rigoletto” for the English as classed-gendered-raced-regioned out­ II N THE 21 ST National Opera, Cameron Mackintosh asked sider.” (Critical Quarterly, Summer 1994, him to work on a musical version of Victor 111-114) ICentury Hugo’s Les Miserabies. Even though Mack­ At another point, Parakrama finds no intosh fired Fenton a year later, the sever­ humor whatsoever in “On a Recent Indiscre­ ance deal allowed Fenton a small percentage tion by a Certain Fulbright Fellow in Upper Zillah Eisenstein of the world-wide receipts. As it happens, Egypt,” a 36-line exercise in forced allitera­ the musical has gone on to gross over tion which Fenton presents as a light-verse £600,000,000, and it has made Fenton a mil­ send-up of the Fulbright Program and, pre­ lionaire several times over. This windfall has sumably, American foreign policy. The allowed him to purchase, among other poem’s final quatrain sums up the poem’s things, a shrimp farm in the Philippines, an method and intent: apartment in the fashionable section of cen­ tral London, and a 150-acre estate near And the moral of this episode Oxford. May be set forth forthrightly For all the enthusiastic recognition that Don't go fellating fellahin! Fenton’s war poems and travel writings have You're a Fulbright Fellow! It's unsightly! brought him in England, others have expressed sharp reservations about the prose For Parakrama, the subject matter and the H A T R E D S has all of the intellectual courage and political passion we have and poetry, as well as the point of view, if manner of presentation are “palpably guilty that’s the right term, which he presents in his of racism, homophobia, insensitivity, bad come to expect from Zillah Eisen stein. Piecing together a mosaic of writings. On the one hand, in his political taste, cultural stereotyping and so on and so racialized and sexualized hatreds 1 hat span the world from Sarajevo to reporting from Southeast Asia, Fenton, forth, but the bigger indictment is perhaps Oklahoma City, she confronts the realities of ethnic cleansing, political rather than assuming the “objective” stance that the poem is puerile, even silly.” What terrrorism, and the neo-conserva tive intolerance of difference, and of the detached reporter, much prefers to bothers Parakrama about this and other shows how all of these are played put on the bodies of women. A book embed his sense of the historical events he poems in the collection is that Fenton is will­ for the twenty-first century, full of outr age-and full of hope. witnesses in terms of his personal, and at ing to ridicule France, the U.S., Emily Dick­ times whimsical, response to the chaos and inson, and Helen Vendler, but he is not will­ violence occurring around him. Bill Buford, ing to direct his ironic barbs against his home Susan Buck-Morss, Cornell University the editor of Granta who published Fenton’s country and culture in the same way. essays on Vietnam and the Phillipines, calls Since Fenton only takes on what Parakra­ his prose “a breath of real pure oxygen” and ma calls “non-home” topics for ridicule, he $ 17.95, paperback has nothing but praise for this kind of “narra­ tive reportage.” On the other hand, Benedict see Fenton’s Wooden Horse, page 10 Ju ly , 1996 page 10 T he ROOKPRESS September 1996 Fenton’s Wooden Horse

continued from page 9 preferment. One was to plan a party, in his in his essay. For Simmons, Fenton duly I am the artful voyeur garden, to be held on the second, and final day, notes, Heaney had not addressed the troubles falls prey to “the tendency to oversimplify of voting. (“Of course it was a vote-rigging of Northern Ireland as forthrightly or as neu­ of your brain's exposed and distort, which is the very devil to resist exercise,” he says, “You think I don’t know trally as he should have. Instead, he “seemed and darkened combs, when one doesn't have to put one’s money how to vote-rig?”) The other was to allow to be retreating into his tribe” (i.e. identify­ your muscles' webbing where one’s mouth is.” In these poems of himself to be interviewed in the Times. The ing too closely with the Catholic minority) and all your numbered bones: political and cultural satire, Parakrama sug­ interview included this vote-winning exchange: and therefore fostering resentment in the gests, “You are never sure whether the poet North rather than addressing the issues from The poem confesses as much the guilt of is playing with you and this has its obvious Q: Les Murray, who I suppose is your main a more universal perspective, one which the artist exploiting an act of violence as the strength in complicating the reader’s rival, told another paper that he had heard that Simmons identifies with a “positive left- guilt of a partisan harboring secret resent­ response, but also its weakness because he the duties of the professor of poetry were not wing movement.” After lamenting that poets ments. But guilt it is, and Fenton clearly can always gets himself off the hook, if chal­ particularly onerous. Is that your impression? throughout this century have been accused knows the passage (John 8:P 1-11) to which lenged.” The upshot of this kind of poetry A. I saw that article....! have to say that it made of betrayal, Fenton links this charge to a Heaney alludes in his phrase “but would presents, for Parakrama, its own kind of sub­ me think that Les Murray had been very badly more specific accusation leveled by Ciaran have cast, I know,/ the stones of silence.” tle irony: “Fenton has placed himself ‘out of advised. First of all, it seems insulting to imply Carson based on a reading of “Punishment,” The compassion Jesus reminded the Phar­ danger’ from mainstream local (he’s a jolly that the job you are standing for is a doddle. one of the poems in North. isees of as they picked up their stones to kill good fellow of the Royal Society) critique. Secondly, it is very much in my mind that the The poem, in which Heaney closely iden­ the woman taken in adultery is linked here to He recuperates, therefore, in effect, a trou­ task of writing 15 worthwhile lectures on tifies with a young girl who had been pre­ the “stones of silence” the speaker imagines bling Tory English nationalism without hav­ poetry is not to be taken lightly. sumably drowned for adultery in prehistory he would have cast in the past, and has cast ing to say one word about it.” and whose body had been preserved in the by standing dumb in the face of the present Clearly, Parakrama’s objections did not It is important to know that the questions as Jutland bog, closes with the past act of retri­ outrages. But unlike Jesus, the divine moral­ carry much weight two years ago when the well as the answers were Fenton’s. The Times bution providing a commentary on the pre­ ist writing out the sins of the Pharisees in the voting was conducted at Oxford for the five- was somehow persuaded to allow Fenton, sent violence of Northern Ireland. Drawing sands, the speaker is instead the human sin­ year post of Professor of Poetry. Ian Parker, quite openly, to interview himself. This was a an analogy between the girl killed in prehis­ ner, implicated in the very sins he writes out in a New Yorkeressay (July 25, 1994 ) which “filthy trick," Fenton says merrily. He’s capable tory for adultery and the young Catholic girls on the page. reviews Fenton’s multifaceted career and the of making the display of avidity seem endearing who had been tarred and feathered for going Rather than provide this refutation, events surrounding the election, sees Fenton out with British soldiers, the speaker con­ though, Fenton, having elaborated these as “Auden’s Heir” (the title of the essay) and cludes on a note of self-revelation and accu­ accusations and agreed with them in the provides a colorful portrait of Fenton in rela­ Whether the stratagem was merry or mali­ sation: main, halts at Simmons’ excess with, “Sim­ tion to his contemporaries. cious, it proved quite effective with the elite mons knows perfectly well that Heaney is For Parker, Fenton’s elevation to the electorate (only Oxonians with M.A.’s are 1 who have stood dumb not on the side of the torturers.” He finishes Oxford post marks a shift in England’s sen­ allowed to cast ballots). In the final tally, when your betraying sisters, his defense of Heaney with a sentence that is sibility to the “New Recklessness,” a term Fenton received 228 votes, with Les Murray cauled in tar, more convoluted than exculpatory: Fenton coins in Out of Danger indicating a as runner up receiving 98). As Parker con­ wept by the railings, willingness to test established limits and cludes, “James Fenton was the chief poet of If the poems in the first part of North were conventions and to jump from genre to all England.” who would connive worrying to his genuine (as opposed to his genre. As Parker reports, ***** in civilized outrage ironical) admirers, it must be because they With these credentials in mind, let's return yet understand the exact sometimes failed to reassure the reader about In the New Recklessness, Fenton told me, to the remainder of “The Orpheus of Ulster.” and tribal, intimate revenge. the difference between understanding the poets should yodel or write sonnet sequences, Fenton, having speculated about Heaney's processes at work (understanding them, with a as they see fit. They should be suspicious of conversion from outrage to embarrassment Heaney, for Carson, is a “laureate of vio­ full sense of the terror involved) and under- the free-verse consensus and any pull toward concerning "An Open Letter,” now shifts the lence” since the poem’s ending, rather than standing-as-forgiving or even as conniving. autobiographical pathos. Poets should reserve venue of Heaney criticism from London to protesting the conditions which bring such the right to do what Fenton, for example, has Northern Ireland. Fenton first rehearses the acts into being, provides these conditions At this point one has to wonder exactly done, which is to avoid the confessional and to charge James Simmons, the Protestant with a kind of inevitability which mystifies who the “ironical” admirers of Heaney being take metre into new and marvelous places of Ulster poet, made concerning the unfair pref­ rather than resists their origins. Fenton then alluded to here are, the Ulster poets making public and private alarm while keeping an eye erence Heaney received early on from Philip suggests that Carson’s remarks “might be the charge of partisanship or “the chief poet on Byron, W. H. Auden, Lewis Carroll, eigh­ Hobsbaum. Simmons had said: “Certainly, it fair criticism”—adding that the same pas­ of all England” innocently citing one accusa­ teenth-century satire, and the music hall. began long ago. In those old gatherings sage has caused “numerous” other critics, tion after another. under the auspices of Philip Hobsbaum it such as Blake Morrison and Edna Longley, Even though Fenton points out that the As part of the droll portrait he draws of the was obvious that Seamus was being “consternation.” But when Simmons goes a extremity of these accusations about vio­ new Professor of Poetry, Parker recounts groomed for stardom.” Rushing to Heaney's step further, and here Fenton provides anoth­ lence is at the other end of the spectrum from Fenton’s patience and determination in his defense, Fenton says, “I would put this dif­ er long citation from Simmons, and accuses Alvarez’s portrait of Heaney as a safe enter­ candidacy for the post, which Fenton had ferently....The fact is that no poet gets Heaney of being “on the side of the tortur­ tainer, he does not tell his reader that the kept his eye on for over a decade. As Parker ‘groomed for stardom.’ What on earth would ers,” well, that’s just too much for Fenton. Heaney-as-extremist role, in which Fenton says, “Ten years ago, Fenton stood against that process be? But that he was tipped for The easiest way for Fenton to have dealt cast the Irish poet in the first part of the Peter Levi, who won. Five years ago, he did stardom, that he gave, somehow, warning of with these charges, of course, would be to essay, is here being played out, and rein­ not stand against the Irishman, Seamus the talent to come—that I can believe.” Even illustrate the misreading upon which they are forced, from a different perspective. But to Heaney, who won. This year, in a field with though Fenton italicizes “tipped,” the term based. When Simmons asserts in his accusa­ be sure that this train of association is not three rivals, including the Australian Les he prefers to “groomed,” both words have a tion that “He does not seem to be confessing derailed, Fenton immediately goes on to Murray, he was determined to win.” Parker clear implication of Heaney being picked out or apologizing” in this passage, he is simply quote in its entirety a ballad Heaney wrote goes on to describe the tactics the candidate of a group of poets, and of Heaney being wrong. In the two stanzas preceding the con­ early in his career, but never published, sati­ employed in his campaign for the post, and, given special preference, before his poetry troversial conclusion cited above, the speak­ rizing William Craig, the head of the Black since these tactics include Fenton’s shrewd actually warranted such distinction. Under er makes quite clear the moral circumstances & Tans. Fenton's purpose in quoting this understanding of the uses of literary journal­ the guise of defending Heaney, Fenton sim­ under which he has reached his impasse: ballad is to demonstrate that Heaney might ism, it’s worth quoting in full. Parker says: ply puts the criticism in more precise lan­ have put his poetic muse in the service of the guage. I almost love you IRA, but did not. The commentary Fenton James Fenton tells me that he made two key Fenton then goes on to the more serious but would have cast, I know, provides at the end of the ballad, though, contributions to his campaign for the Oxford charges of betrayal which Simmons sets out the stones of silence. allows the dorsal fin of his sarcasm to break the surface:

Stirring stuff. One can almost smell the rain on the Aran sweaters of the protesters who would have sung it. And I hope that when Heaney produces his collected poems he will allow us to see m ore of his work in this vein, including the song he w rote after Bloody Sun­ day in Derry, January 30, 1972, which has apparently never seen the light of day. But the point was that times changed, changed and grew worse, until to write that sort of stirring stuff was no longer an option.

What makes this kind of selectivity, dis­ tortion, and guilt-by implication (that must have been some outrageous song!) so dis­ couraging and fundamentally unfair is that Heaney has written, and written powerfully, about Bloody Sunday, and Fenton knows it. “Casualty,” a poem included in Field Work (Alvarez missed that in his review), speaks directly to the killing of the 13 civil-

see.Fenton’s Wooden.Horse,.page ] 1 September 1996 T he R OOKPRFSS page 11 Fenton’s Wooden Horse

continued from page 10 it has turned out, for Heaney, that an impor­ North; my loss, no doubt, but I don’t much W hen I look at a poem like this for the first tant part of his becoming a major Irish poet care for what he fishes out of bogs). I didn’t time, I ask myself: How did it do that? How did ian protesters by the British paratroopers that took place in the environs of Harvard Yard.” like what I conceived to be writing as if living we get from the butter-print to heaven and day in 1972. But more importantly, the poem The implication is clear: Hume has done the under an Eastern European censorship. But back down to the “awn” so quickly? It’s like focuses on the counterbalancing example of work in Ulster, while Heaney has advanced 1989 seems to have put a stop to all that. watching the three-card trick in Oxford the Catholic fisherman Heaney knew from his career in Cambridge. Street. Suddenly the table is folded up under his father-in-law’s pub, the loner who defied Again and again, Fenton raises accusa­ But what appear to be modest enough the arm and the trickster vanishes into the the Catholic curfew and was blown to death tions and troublesome issues not so much to reservations about Heaney’s writing contain crowd—excepting that, when you tap your by an IRA bomb. The speaker of that poem, refute or even address them, but rather first their own acid implications. Remember it pocket, you find you have something valuable caught between the constrictive “swaddling to call attention to them, then to arrange was Fenton who chose to highlight the poem you could have sworn wasn’t there just a band” of the victimized group and the mav­ them in such a way that they present their “Punishment” (from part one of North) in moment before. erick example of the fisherman, comes down own consistency. Heaney the betrayer, rehearsing the accusations against Heaney. on the side of the alcoholic artisan who, at Heaney the equivocator, Heaney the grand- And Fenton’s defense of Heaney against the Now, from one perspective, this surely his own risk, places his need, his desire, stander all make their appearance in this most extreme of those accusations left open seems a tip of the hat to Heaney in exchange before that of his community. If anything, essay simply, Fenton purports, so that he can the possibility that Heaney did not in fact for the unexpected pleasure Fenton derives the vernacular craft and manner of the fisher­ sympathetically illustrate the difficulty atten­ make his own opposition to the nationalist from the poem. But the metaphor is very man provide the speaker with an exemplary dant to fame and notoriety, especially to one violence clear enough. Further, Fenton’s strange indeed. Having watched a street ethic and aesthetic and place him (and in the peculiar political and cultural circum­ defensiveness as an Englishman bristles trickster perform his act, you “tap your pock­ Heaney) well beyond the partisan national­ stances which Heaney has experienced. It’s a when Heaney writes about the political and et” presumably to see if you still have your ism Fenton is so loudly hinting at. strategy which drags Heaney through the literary oppression in Northern Ireland wallet. Is the “something valuable” you find Instead of pointing to this poem (or the thorns while Fenton, Heaney’s literary com­ (those poems, interestingly enough, are to be in your pocket the unexpected pleasure of many different ways the speaker plays out patriot, frowns compassionately from the found in part two of North). The last sen­ the poem, or is it simply your wallet that the same dilemma in Station Island (1984), sidelines. tence, however, seems to make no sense hasn’t been stolen? In either case, Fenton Fenton simply leaves his reader with the Having jerryrigged this rhetorical context, whatsoever. Did Heaney stop writing about obliquely casts Heaney as a street slicky, a insinuation that Heaney wrote as a partisan Fenton at long last turns to Heaney the poet. censorship in Northern Ireland because East­ role which draws a not-so-pleasant parallel nationalist early on in his career, then came First Fenton reminds us that Heaney is inter­ ern Europe as such came to its literal and between Heaney’s recent tenure as Professor to disguise that nationalism more and more ested in the figure of Orpheus, having recent­ metaphoric end in 1989 with the dissolution of Poetry at Oxford (for which he gave three when it became less expedient to write that ly translated two sections of Ovid’s M eta­ of the Soviet Union? Or did Heaney change lectures a year) and the three-card hustler kind of “stirring stu ff’ in light of his growing morphoses dealing with that mythological his tune about the conditions of being North­ who works Oxford Street. Having interpret­ audience in Britain and elsewhere. In short, character. Fenton tells us that, at a reading he ern Irish the moment (in 1989) he became ed for us Alvarez’s characterization of Heaney has tailored his poetry to the popular recently attended at which Heaney read the Professor of Poetry at Oxford? Heaney back in 1980 as “an Irish entertainer political sensibility of his expanding audi­ section dealing with Orpheus’ death, he had Whichever the case, Fenton will finally on the British cultural scene,” Fenton now ence. the odd sense that Heaney was “utterly out­ turn in the last few paragraphs of his essay to leaves us with a Heaney who, if anything, All this dredging up of accusation and raged that Orpheus (as if this had happened The Spirit Level, where Heaney “keeps up has degenerated from cultural entertainer to insinuation from 15, 20, and 25 years ago yesterday) had been tom to pieces.” Again, the provision of pleasure.” But before he sidestreet charlatan. Be that as it may, the prepares Fenton, finally, to consider briefly when one actually reads the translation in the gets to the single poem he wants to praise, Orpheus of Ulster puts on quite a show; we Heaney’s Nobel address and the last of After Ovid collection (1994) put together by Fenton lets us in on a delicious secret he dis­ have Fenton’s word on it. Heaney’s Oxford lectures. From the Nobel Michael Hoffman and James Lasdun, it turns covered when “The Errand,” the poem from ***** address, predictably enough, Fenton chooses out that Bacchus, rather than Heaney, is the which the collection takes its title, arrived in In his last year at prep school, James Fen­ to cite Heaney’s sense of shock when, for a figure outraged by Orpheus’ death. Fenton, proof form with an erratum slip. Fenton real­ ton was head boy, the senior overseer who single moment, he found himself consider­ however, has his own speculative explana­ izes that the poem originally had only its first traditionally tyrannizes the younger stu­ ing justifications for the political violence in tion for Heaney’s resentment: “Perhaps the stanza, in which the father’s command to dents. Fenton notes archly that Tony Blair, the North. Fenton responds to Heaney’s feeling is that if you possess the power, you find a bubble for the spirit level provides a M.P., the leader of the British Labour Party, repudiation of such a momentary lapse with are going to pay for it.” What first appeared metaphor for writing a poem. But when was four years his junior at the exclusive the following: “Only a moment, and if it was as rage turns out to be self-pity. Heaney adds a second stanza, because, as school and was therefore addressed by Fen­ the only such moment then Heaney was And what follows that speculation is a Fenton speculates, the “rest of us would not ton as “Blair,” or rather “Blair!” He imag­ lucky, since the situation was such as to pro­ marvelous double-take on Heaney’s power be able to intuit” Heaney’s intent with the ines that, should Blair become the next voke many such moments in many such peo­ and excitement. Fenton says, “Certainly he first stanza alone, he changes the focus of the Prime Minister, he could stand outside 10 ple.” Note the “if,” which questions rather possesses that power. I went to the reading poem from poetic inspiration to the boy’s Downing Street and say “Blair!” and the new than affirms Heaney’s statement. he gave in Oxford, with Ted Hughes, at the relation with his father. (One wonders Prime Minister would still be forced to From the final Oxford lecture, Fenton end of his professorship and thought it the whether Fenton has read Seeing Things humbly heed his grammar school superior. highlights the passage in which Heaney, most exciting reading I had heard. It was (1991), in which Heaney elaborates the com­ The editor of The New York Review of comparing himself to John Hume, finds him­ exciting before it began, and it just went on plex relation between his father and his poet­ Books, headlining what he thought was an self in the “classic bind of all Northern Ire­ from there.” But what can “before it began” ry.) Either way, one is left with the question: essay of tribute and appreciation, placed the land’s constitutional nationalists”: on the mean? The excitement of the event is very does Fenton make this observation to banner “James Fenton on the Genius of Sea­ one hand, having cultural and political ideals carefully separated from the excitement of emphasize Heaney’s genius, or to indicate mus Heaney” on the July 11 cover. But had which are fundamentally Ireland-centered; the poetry, transforming Heaney and Hughes that Heaney, in the name of reaching a wider the editor probed this horse at the gates, so to on the other, insisting on distinguishing the (whom Fenton has never thought highly of) audience, has dumbed down a good poem? speak, the banner may well have read goals of such ideals from the violent means from powerful poets into celebrity entertain­ No matter how ambiguous the essay has “James Fenton Hollers ‘Heaney!’” Even employed by the IRA. Rather than address ers. been up to this point, a reader would surely, though it’s unlikely the essay will either this political and ethical dilemma, Fenton As a reasonable critic, however, Fenton at first blush, be persuaded that the final enhance or diminish Heaney’s reputation in reminds his readers that Hume has devoted does not want to appear to be too much on paragraph is laudatory. After all, Fenton Ireland or the United States, Fenton has, with himself to shuttle diplomacy between Ulster Heaney’s side. He therefore, in a deft stroke cites the poem “The Butter Print” in its a sly wink, let the dons at high tables know and London throughout the Northern trou­ of apparent evenhandedness, concedes that entirety, and says that it “went straight into that there’s a new head boy of poetry at bles, while Heaney was making his reputa­ he had his own reservations about Heaney’s my personal anthology of the best of Oxford, and this time he’s one of England’s tion elsewhere. As he says, “And just as it writing: Heaney.” But what are we to make of the own. turned out recently that one part of the solu­ essay’s final words which sum up both the tion to the Ulster peace process (assuming I don’t feel obliged to take all Heaney (for individual poem and Heaney’s position as a Kevin Murphy teaches English at Ithaca that is what it is) lay in the United States, so instance, I like part two better than part one of poet? Here are Fenton’s closing remarks: College.

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I Ithaca, NY 14850 Dewitt Mall • 273-9610 I (Visa /MC/D isc o v er , check or money I r send e mail t o I o rder a c c e pt e d . P lease make checks I O - : Fine Original Cuisine | payable to The Bookpress. | Bookpress @ clarityconnect.com I------I page 12 T he R OOKPRESS September 1996 Joseph Mitchell’s Oral History sympathy and humanity. In the Author’s Jon Michaud Note to McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon, he wrote, “The people in a number of these Joseph Mitchell died on May 24 at the stories are of the kind that many writers age of 87. A few months before his death, have recently got in the habit of referring he gave his first public reading, at Books to as ‘the little people.’ I regard this & Co. in Manhattan. A large crowd phrase as patronizing and repulsive. squeezed into the narrow second floor of There are no little people in this book. the bookstore to hear him. He came, small They are as big as you are, whoever you and heavily spectacled, but still dapper are.” and recognizable from the old pho­ Mitchell’s books became more focused tographs of him that adorn the. covers of as his career progressed. They moved his books. He stood and read from Joe from being about a number of subjects Gould's Secret, his last book, which had {My Ears are Bent, McSorley’s Wonder­ just been reissued by the Modern Library. f u l S a lo o n ) to a primary subject (the His voice, a little shaky and hesitant at waterfront in The Bottom of the Harbor) first, grew stronger and more confident as or a single character (Joe Gould in Joe he read, the southern cadences of his Gould's Secret). Before Mitchell’s death, prose falling musically in the overheated there was a rumor that he was writing a room. Later he would say that he was ner­ biography of Ann Honeycutt, “a glam­ vous, but that the memories of the times orous blond about town.” But if he was, he had written about had overcome his he never published a word of it. What is nervousness and carried him away. clear is that his long silence wasn’t for The New York that Mitchell wrote lack of effort. According to The New York about is long gone. You can see glimmers Times, janitors at The New Yorker would of it now and then if you go to the places find “reams of copy” in the wastepaper he described—the Fulton Fish Market, basket in his office. the Bowery, McSorley’s Ale House—but Roy Blount speculated that Mitchell as a living, thriving entity, it was passing was undone by the discovery that Gould, out of existence even as he was watching who claimed to be writing a multi-mil- and recording it. The sense of transience, lion-word book called An Oral History of of inevitable change dominates o ur Tim e, was a charlatan and that his Mitchell’s work. So many of his charac­ H isto ry did not exist. M itchell’s first ters were the last of their kind, working at story about Gould, “Professor Sea Gull”, trades that were becoming outdated, appeared in 1942, not long after he joined telling stories about a way of life that was the staff of The New Yorker. Joe Gould’s all but forgotten. In an irony that he Secret, his last published work, appeared understood well, Mitchell himself in 1964. Gould bookends the most impor­ became the last of his kind. Interviewed tant part of Mitchell’s career. In ’’Profes­ Photo by Maryland Stuart in 1992, he said: “At the old New Yorker, sor Sea Gull”, Gould says that his aim in the people were wonderful writers. A lot Joseph Mitchell in 1959 The Oral History is to “put down the of us would go to lunch together: Liebling of summary capped with a punch line Rats on the Waterfront”, he takes pains to informal history of the shirt-sleeved mul­ and Perelman and Thurber...Now, every­ q u o te. At The New Yorker, he had the describe not only the differences between titude—what they had to say about their body goes in and out. I go to lunch at the room to pile up details. His later stories brown rats, black rats and Alexandrian jobs, love affairs, vittles, sprees, scrapes Grand Central Oyster Bar and eat by are filled with lists, lovingly compiled, rats, but also to offer a chronology of the and sorrows...” In the same story, m yself.” like this catalog of fish from the menu of bubonic plague in the United States. In Mitchell writes, “ The Oral History is a Mitchell was born in 1908 in Fairmont, Sloppy Louie’s restaurant in Up in the “The Rivermen”, he gives a capsule histo­ great hodgepodge and kitchen midden of North Carolina, a farming community. In Old Hotel which bears two trademarks of ry of Edgewater, New Jersey. “The hearsay, a repository of jabber, an omni- his 1938 collection of newspaper stories, Mitchell’s style, elegance and precision: Mohawks in High Steel”, a story about umgatherum of bushwa, gab, palaver, My Ears are Bent, he says that his child­ “...cod cheeks, salmon cheeks, cod the Indians who helped build New York’s hogwash, flapoodle, and malarkey... hood reading of James Bryce’s American tongues, sturgeon liver, blue shark steak, skyscrapers, is prefaced by an account of (containing) the biographies of hundreds Commonwealth filled him with the desire tuna steak, squid stew, and five kinds of how members of the Caughnawaga tribe of bums, accounts of the wanderings of to become a political reporter. He came to roe—shad roe, cod roe, mackerel roe, her­ came to Brooklyn. Information is includ­ seamen encountered in South Street bar­ New York in 1929, arriving in Pennsylva­ ring roe and yellow-pink roe.” ed not only to facilitate the story’s telling, rooms, grisly depictions of hospital and nia Station the day after the stock market Mitchell also became more and more but also for the sake of its preservation. clinic experiences...summaries of innu­ crash. He found work covering Police willing to let his subjects speak for them­ Mitchell wanted to record more than the merable Union Square and Columbus Cir­ Headquarters for The W orld. At night, selves. “I admire the imagery in vulgar lives of the idiosyncratic men and women cle harangues, testimonies given by con­ after he had filed his stories, he would conversation,” he wrote. The one-liners he met; he wanted to convey the knowl­ verts at Salvation Army street meetings, wander the city, “discovering what the he had cited previously often became edge they had accumulated in the course and the addled opinions of scores of park- Depression and the prurience of white pages of direct quotation recorded with­ of their lives. And what a diverse melange bench oracles and gin-mill savants...” men were doing to a people who are ‘the out any interjection from the author. His of men and women there are in his books: Mitchell said of the people he profiled, last to be hired; the first to be fired’.” He story, “The Gypsy Women”, which is gypsies, tramps, prodigal children, cave- “Just about everybody is me,” and there is says he became “so fascinated by the forty-five pages long, is made up almost dwellers, and a bearded lady, to name good reason to believe he felt a particular melodrama of the metropolis at night that entirely of a series of lectures on gypsies only a few. “The least interesting people affinity for Gould. Neither Mitchell nor I forgot my ambition to become a politi­ given by a retired police officer. Other to interview,” he wrote, “...are the ones Gould was a native New Yorker, but both cal reporter.” In 1931, he ’’got sick of the characters, from the wily Commodore who probably should be the most interest­ felt comfortable there. “In New York whole business” and went to sea on a Dutch to the Bowery “celebrity” Mazie P. ing, industrial leaders, automobile manu­ City,” said Gould, “...I have always felt at freighter that sailed for Leningrad. He Gordon, filled the pages of M itchell’s facturers, Wall Street financiers, oil and home.” Likewise Mitchell, who said he spent time in Russia and then returned, work with their rambunctious mono­ steel czars, people like that. They either was drawn to the stalls of the Fulton Fish working once more as a reporter for The logues. Mitchell spent months trailing his chew your ears off with nonsense about Market “because they reminded me of Herald Tribune and The World Telegram. subjects, taking the time to get every how they are self-made...or they sit home.” Gonld was a charlatan, and By this time, he claims, he had “long nuance of their talk into his notebook, around and look gloomy.” He said that he Mitchell once said he thought of himself since lost the ability to detect insanity.” often combining separate speeches to would rather interview a waitress than a as “half a swindler.” They were both sto­ In 1938, Mitchell joined the staff of make one long monologue. He was not society woman: “The best talk is artless, rytellers concerned with oral history, and The New Yorker. The change of working afraid to use the techniques of a novelist; the talk of people trying to reassure or while the difference between them was conditions, from the endless pressing one of his most famous characters, Mr. comfort themselves. . .” that Mitchell was not only a good talker deadlines of the newspaper to the more Flood, is a composite of several men he Mitchell admired Gogol, Brueghel and but a writer as well, in the end Mitchell’s relaxed atmosphere fostered by N ew knew from the stalls of the Fulton Fish Posada, and like them, he was attracted to inability to produce made for an uncanny Y orker editor Harold Ross allowed Market. nature’s anomalies—the misformed, the resemblance between the author and his Mitchell to transform himself from a When Mitchell did pause or interrupt benighted, the cast-aside and the untouch­ subject. reporter into an artist. His newspaper pro­ his subjects, it was usually to explain, to able. There was never pity or condescen­ files had, of necessity, been hasty works give histories and definitions. In “The sion in his treatment of them, always Jon Michaud is a writer living in Brooklyn.

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