PAUL DURCAN B 1944 FROM ENDSVILLE 1967 TO

PAUL DURCAN (B. 1944)

FROM ENDSVILLE (1967) TO WILD, WILD ERIE (2016)

The Image of the Poet

WALT WHITMAN (1819 -92) EZRA POUND (1885 -1972)

PATRICK KAVANAGH (1904 -67) Epic I have lived in important places, times When great events were decided: who owned That half a rood of rock, a no-man’s land Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims. I heard the Duffys shouting “Damn your soul” And old Mc. Cabe stripped to the waist, seen Step the plot defying blue cast-steel – “Here is the march along these iron stones. ” That was the year of the Munich bother. Which Was most important? I inclined To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin Till Homer’s ghost came whispering to my mind. He said: I made the Iliad from such A local row. Gods make their own importance.

ALLEN GINSBERG (1926 -97) ROGER MCGOUGH (B. 1937)

SEAMUS HEANEY (1939 -2013) PAULA MEEHAN (B. 1955)

BOB DYLAN (B. 1941) LEONARD COHEN (1934 -2016)

PAUL DURCAN & VAN MORRISON, ‘IN THE DAYS BEFORE ROCK ‘N’ ROLL’ (1990)

CONFESSIONAL POETS ROBERT LOWELL (1917 -1977) SYLVIA PLATH (1932 -1963)

FROM: ‘“WINDFALL”, 8 PARNELL HILL, CORK’ ‘In swaddling clothes in Mammy’s arms on baptism day; Being a baby of nine months and not remembering it; Face-down in a pram, incarcerated in a high chair; Everybody, including strangers, wearing shopwindow smiles; With Granny in Felixstowe, with Granny in Ballymaloe; In a group photo in First Infants, on a bike at thirteen; In the back garden in London, in the back garden in Cork; Performing a headstand after First Holy Communion; Getting a kiss from the Bishop on Confirmation Day; Straw hats in the Bois de Boulogne, wearing wings at the seaside. ’ ‘Homeless in Dublin, Blown about the suburban streets at evening, Peering in the windows of other people’s homes, Wondering what it must feel like To be sitting around a fire – Apache or Cherokee or Bourgeoisie – Beholding the firelit faces of your family, Beholding their starry or their TV gaze: Windfall to Windfall -- can you hear me? Windfall to Windfall… We’re almost home, pet, don’t worry anymore, we’re almost home.

‘PAUL’ https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=KUb -k. I 6 IVz 4

En Famille, 1979 Bring me back to the dark school – to the dark school of childhood: To where tiny is tiny, and massive is massive. Ireland 2002 Do you ever take a holiday abroad? No, we always go to America.

PA UL DURCAN AS LECTURER AND CRITIC

PROFESSOR PAUL DURCAN, LITT. D (2009)

‘FATHER’S DAY, 21 JUNE 1992’ As the train slows down approaching Portarlington I overheard myself say to the passenger sitting opposite me: ‘I am feeling guilty because she does not love me As much as she used to, can you explain that? ’ The passenger’s eyes were on the axe on the seat beside me. ‘Her sister wants a loan of the axe…’ As the train threaded itself into Portarlington I nodded to the passenger ‘Cúl an t. Súdaire!’ The passenger stood up, lifted down a case from the rack, Walked out of the coach, but did not get off the train. For the remainder of the journey, we sat alone, The axe and I, All the green fields running away from us, All our daughters grown up and gone away.

‘THE GIRL WITH THE KEYS TO PEARSE’S COTTAGE’ O Cáit Killann, You have gone with your keys from your own native place. Yet here in this dark – El Greco eyes blaze back From your Connemara postman’s daughter’s proudly mortal face.

‘THE Y SA Y THE B UT TE RF LY IS THE HARDEST STR OK E’ For Richard Riordan From coves below the cliffs of the years I have dipped into Ulysses, A Vagrant, Tarry Flynn, But for no more than ten minutes or a page; For no more than to keep in touch With minds kindered in their romance with silence. I have not “met” God, I have not “read” David Gascoyne, James Joyce, or Patrick Kavanagh: I believe in them. Of the song of him with the world in his care I am content to know the air.

EKPHRASIS: POEMS IN RESPONSE TO PAINTINGS

JAN VAN EYCK, THE AR NO LFI NI M ARRI AG E (1434)

‘THE ARNOLFINI MARRIAGE’ (AFTER JAN VAN EYCK) We are the Arnolfinis. Do not think you may invade Our privacy because you may not. Our brains spill out upon the floor And the terrier at our feet sniffs The minutiae of our magnitude. We are standing to our portrait, The most erotic portrait ever made, Because we have faith in the artists The most relaxing word in our vocabulary is ‘we’. Imagine being able to say ‘we’. Most people are in no position to say ‘we’. To do justice to the pluarlity, Fertility, domesticity, barefootedness Of a man and a woman saying ‘we’: Are you? Who eat alone? Sleep alone? And at dawn cycle to work With an Alsatian shepherd dog tied to your handlebars? To do justice to our bed As being our most necessary furniture; To do justice to our life as a reflection. We will pause now for the Angelus. Here you have it. The two halves of the coconut.

ROBERT LOWELL, ‘THE MARRIAGE’ Even there, Sheridan, though unborn, was a center of symmetry; even then he was growing in hiding toward gaucheness and muscle – to be a warchronicler of vast inaccurate memory. [. . . ] The picture is too much like their life – a crisscross, too many petty facts. .