What I used to do before painting... Moortown Errata* In line 10 of “Night Arrival of Seatrout”, for “rape”, read “nape” – as though you might believe it possible to plunge yourself into a trout and have her turn away from love forever. The men of Moortown have never read a poem, but know love, her body and shine slashing through the almost frozen Moortown river. Each morning they abandon wife and lover to wait in a silence that wraps their bones as tin foil wraps a baked potato. They know she will arrive, the woman they cannot enter, breaking the river’s smoking surface, too hungry for words. * I used to cook in a little lunch/pub deal for many years—where, even though I was not needed until 10AM I’d be there by 6, books of poetry and paper in hand, to write at a little table in the back. The owner, Sam, would often cook me eggs—wondering what the hell I was up to. One morning I’d brought a book of Ted Hughes’, where Night Arrival of Seatrout was one of the poems. Now who was Ted Hughes? Poet Laureate of England at one point, but more famously he was Sylvia Plath’s husband—played by Daniel Craig in the film Sylvia. Sylvia Plath was of course a rather famous American poet--who, one day, put down a plate of sandwiches and milk for the kids and stuck her head in the gas oven. Her book, The Bell Jar, is a marvel. Glued inside this book, put there by the publisher, was a note that read, well, ‘In line 10 of Night Arrival of Seatrout for “Rape” read “Nape.” The line in question was supposed to read ‘Summer dripping stars, biting at the nape’ where this fishing comes swiping up from the river. Instead it happily (for me who loves this sort of absurdist, entirely post-modern occurrence) ‘Summer dripping stars, biting at the rape’ That started it. The rest of the day, while peeling, boiling, etc—I wrote this thing in my head.
Posted on: Sat, 08 Mar 2014 19:13:37 +0000
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