Reconfiguring Romanticism (51): Maggie O'Sullivan's John Clare, with accompanying note (original) (raw)

[1] via John Clare (1793-1864)

Consider

sung

scalding of the Heart burred under

Green dark lay

of breast & lungs

from which there is No Other

Green

water of Endive, eye gaping mint.

A chamber, churred pill seed/Wheat,

it driveth inward bleeding

Blue Marks by Blows,

rib Jeeping Soil of it, laid open

a running

of the head bringing thorough flesh

set

upon quivering stalk.

All of them.

Spittle Singings of the Ear:

Esteem it as

jewel,

Flag, Elding

slice of morning, closen

Water that Cleanses & Cuts Common, Wild, upon the lip:

deep colour very gently

Bellied, properly resembling

bold mattering/warm flight of the

Heart.

[2] via John Clare (1793-1864)

Yellow Flag. We Came By: black dog cupping arrow.
Much branched tie of the kidney:
Fool’s page, first upon
The Drake’s Flight, it riseth
gently

Then. Slipped Silk was that & Shaded
(of a sort fishes delighteth in)

quickly

& very many the thready headings
were no less an inward honey
chosen always:
& the heart’s good flare
beat
w/full stem,
w/Great Water
drawn
under

(Both,

crayon Bareth gypsies) – Lieth
bunching
voilet’s Green

divide &

SINGINGS

on wheaten wing Rare &

Graceful coming that way:

arc in the shell, Sea

Awash.

Clacked Wing dulsing w/pewter-steal,

& healed w/it.

(note to accompany my two Clare poems)

These two poems (via John Clare (1793-1864) (1) and (2) were made around the late 1970s/early 1980s in homage to Clare. They are included in ALTO (2009). John Clare was one of the poets I began reading in the early 1970s.
Of vital sustenance and continuing inspiration to me, are his unfettered, courageous uncompromiSingings.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

in my own practice of weaving or assembling, making or doing or unmaking language’s VISIBLE PHYSICAL mattering on the sight/sight of the salvaging body of the page in the ear on the tongue in composition - in performance ---

how to draw from silence --- breakings up and breakings apart within utterances and hearings, deconstructing/re-constituting-as-(being)-heard --- this bodily work by which i breathe by – in process – in always searching for poetic form - No Twas No From The Although No Twas Of To No Seemed So Made Untill A Each Made I Sing I Seemed - & Beside & To & To The Each & She’d - - - in stuttering - - in pushing into not knowing --- i don’t know -

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

how to achieve by not achieving? how to make by not making?
it's all in that.
it's not the new. it is what is yet not known,
thought, seen, touched but really what is not.
and that is_._ (Eva Hesse)

[Lucy Lippard, Eva Hesse (New York: New York UP, 1976) 165.]

Maggie O'Sullivan / November 2011