Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Variorum \ Found: Sound Sound


Nancy:  Day after day, week after week – I’ll never know how he saw us or what memories we may have revived.
Variorum
Did Thomas Hardy sit,
sit waiting, in his last years,
for poems to happen by, an old gentleman
in his study, sitting –
– My neighbor sat
at the wheel of his car, which was parked
in tall grass.  He blew the horn
at girls.
He blew the horn at girls, in salute;
at me, big bellied with my son
and pushing a stroller;
at my landlady with her print dress,
her farmer’s arms and flat chest.
Like Hardy, perhaps, he revisited us,
clothed our lusts; as his eyes failed
he may have had a thousand second chances
at the breasts and buttocks of his memories.
One day he blew the horn at the postman
and slid forward, his head on the wheel,
and we came from the houses
all around, women, came where he sat
waiting, all day, for us to pass by.
Alan:  In the 1970s, the Poetry Society of London was housed in a once elegant but by then seedy building in Earl’s Court.  In its dusty environs I was exposed to a variety of poetrys, from the rantings of Bob Cobbing to the flinty mythology of Basil Bunting’s “Briggflats.”  It was an era of “found poetry,” “sound poetry,” “concrete poetry” and who knows what else.  Combining two genres, I wrote the following: a found sound poem.  To be read aloud, andante, with a gently rocking rhythm.
Found:  Sound Sound
Bartholomew’s Gazetteer of Britain, 1977
The Sound of Shuna
the Sound of Ulva
the Sound of Vatersay
Soundwell
The Sound of Papa
the Sound of Pladda
the Sound of Raasay
South Sound
The Sound of Shiant
the Sound of Scalpay
the Sound of Islay
North Sound
The Sound of Gigha
the Sound of Barra
the Sound of Handa
Sound Gruney
The Sound of Harris
the Sound of Hoxa
the Sound of Rum
the Voe of Sound
The Sound of Monach
the Sound of Mull
the Sound of Luing
the Ness of Sound
The Sound of Eigg
the Sound of Arisaig
the Sound of Eriskay
Upper Sound
The Sound of Jura
the Sound of Kerrera
the Sound of Iona
Sound Heath
The Sound of Insh
the Sound of Bute
the Sound of Sound
the Sound of Sound
“Variorum” first appeared in Slow Dancer magazine.

No comments:

Post a Comment