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Topic: James McConalogue published (Read 1213 times)
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Al Facinha
Full Member
Posts: 15
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Fine poetry indeed. Loved the whole collection - particularly the Săo Jorge piece AND the one about Tchernobyl. Much more convincing as a work of art and as a reference to Syrota than Pollock's long expatiation. I mean it convinced ME, which is not meaning much.  Good job!
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Estill Pollock
Full Member
Posts: 6
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I was interested and pleased to read J.P. McConalogue’s recent contributions. Unbelievably, for many contemporary readers, the incident at Chernobyl is as remote (and unfamiliar) as a cavalry skirmish in 12thc Mongolia.
In the case of “Resurrection Suite”, it was necessary to allow both the coldly historical threads, and those of Sirota’s own personal series of poems, to meet in a longer poetic form, to re-establish, or somehow to re-invent, the ground rules of Ground Zero.
That they can appreciate the enormity of the issues through McConalogue’s referentially succinct writing, readers unfamiliar with the wider events may find an opportunity to experience the events through summations of the particular, rather than through the more cumbersome oeuvre.
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Gregor Milne
Administrator
Poster Monkey
Posts: 72
The best friend I ever had
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Nicely put everyone. I want to stress that McConalogue's work was a tribute to Sirota, and not about Chernobyl per se - but the author's depiction of it. It's an homage much in the vein of Keats's tribute to Chapman's Homer.
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Al Facinha
Full Member
Posts: 15
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Ekphrasis, heh?!!! 
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howareyoujames
Member
Posts: 1
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Hi All – sorry for commenting so late in the day, but I am truly grateful for your comments. I think that the Estill Pollock translation of Sirota clearly conveys the disastrous aesthetic, chemistry, colour and personal loss of this unworldly catastrophe. A respected commentator on translation poetry in Britain, David Constantine, describes the basic importance of the democratic poetic tradition in terms of providing a voice where there may not be one, particularly with reference to his work on ‘Casper Hauser’ (see his interviews/commentary in the UK journals ‘Dreamcatcher’ and ‘Magma’). As he also wrote for one journal: “I have a view of poetry which is wholly democratic in that I want it to dignify ordinary life. ... It seems to me the chief moral drive of poetry lies in giving readers the opportunity of sympathising with experiences beyond their real selves, of entering into other existences, so that on reading they are enlarged.” Perhaps you can overplay those issues when taken to extremes, but nonetheless, it is a good point that I like to use in writing.
It’s interesting that Gregor writes “I want to stress that McConalogue's work was a tribute to Sirota, and not about Chernobyl per se - but the author's depiction of it.” That seems important because the poem is as much about distance from the horror than the event itself. Yet, if someone like myself is to write a short piece on Chernobyl, why should poetry even concern itself with this event? Certainly, I can sympathise, empathise and theorise on this sense of pity, but how do I really connect with the subject matter that is not of, or related to, my own life? I don’t answer that question but simply appreciate that in as much there is an importance of generating an unseen picture (and perhaps like Sirota and Pollock, I’m more interested in “pictures” than “voices”) from a horrific event, there remains an irresolvable tension and distance between the event and the author. Of course, in real historical terms, I know almost nothing of this personal suffering as a close reality, which is why I describe the poem in terms of a mimetic reproduction and distance from a horror, which has nonetheless, been very real.
On a separate matter, I do like the faces on these messages - a smiley face now follows: 
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