BARRY MACSWEENEY
WOLF TONGUE:
POEMS 1965-2000
Barry MacSweeney’s last book, The Book of Demons, recorded his fierce fight against alcoholism as well as the great love of those who helped save his life – though only for three more years. When he died in 2000, he had just assembled a retrospective of his work. Wolf Tongue is his own selection, with the addition of the two late books which many regard as his finest work, Pearl and The Book of Demons. Most of his poetry was out-of-print, and much had never been widely published. The title is his. The cover picture, he hunted down himself. Wolf Tongue is how he wanted to be known and remembered.
‘Barry MacSweeney was a contrary, lone wolf. For 25 years his work was marginalised and was absent from official records of poetry… MacSweeney’s ear for a soaring, lyric melody was unmatched…his poetry became dark as blue steel, edging towards what became his domain: the lament’ – Nicholas Johnson, Independent.
‘His notion of the artist was formed around a myth of exemplary failure and belated recognition: Rimbaud was an early model for this… Such Identifications were the basis for a poetics of direct utterance in which MacSweeney’s voice mixed with others to inveigh, to celebrate or entreat… Pearl, a work of redemptive pathos, evoking the figure of a childhood sweetheart as a presence in nature, on the confines of social existence, was reprinted in The Book of Demons, where he projects himself as maimed and abject, hapless yet percipient victim of the demon drink, in writing that is both comic and terrifying’ – Andrew Crozier, Guardian.
‘MacSweeney’s poetry places a radical, critical energy, unsparing of illusions, and bitter and comic in its self-appraisal, at the disposal of a clear-eyed celebration of the world. In lyrical and experimental forms the poet bears outraged witness to a culture in decline…as battered prophet, demonic wanderer and clown of misspent desire’ – Clive Bush.
Barry MacSweeney
WOLF TONGUE
SELECTED POEMS 1965-2000
CONTENTS
Title Page
Note on the text
Early Poems [1965–1973]
For Andrei Voznesensky, for her
On the Burning Down of the Salvation Army Men’s Palace, Dogs Bank, Newcastle
The Last Bud
Just Twenty Two – And I Don’t Mind Dying
Brother Wolf
Homage to John Everett, Marine Painter, 1876–1949
Odes (1971–1978)
Flame Ode
Wing Ode
New Ode
Chatterton Ode
Jim Morrison Ode
Swedenborg Ode
Beulah
Moon Ode
Chatterton Ode
Ode Long Kesh
Flame Ode
Ode
Ode to the Unborn
Snake Paint Sky
Ode Grey Rose
Dunce Ode
Ode Stem Hair
Panther Freckles
Ode Peace Fog
Disease Ode Carrot Hair
Fox Brain Apple Ode
Lash Ode
Vixen Head / What Small Hands
Beak Ode
Ode:Resolution
Flame Ode
Torpedo
Ode White Sail
Ode Black Spur
Mia Farrow
Viper Suck Ode
Real Ode
Blossom Ode:Eltham Palace
Dream Graffiti
Wolf Tongue
Longer poems [1977–1986]
Black Torch Sunrise
Far Cliff Babylon
Blackbird
Colonel B
Liz Hard
Liz Hard II
Jury Vet
Wild Knitting
Ranter (1985)
Ranter
Snipe Drumming
Ranter’s Reel
Flamebearer
Finnbar’s Lament
Hellhound Memos (1993)
[1] ‘Sunk in my darkness at daylight’
[2] ‘Sunk at my crossroads, hellhounds baying’
[3] ‘Me the multiplex moron, multigenerational’
[4] ‘The very low odour tough acrylic formula’
[8] ‘Now that the vast furtherance of widespread publicity’
[9] ‘God bless you little girl the lean dry hand’
[10] ‘Trouble on all side today up and down’
[11] Linda Manning Is a Whore
[13] Shaking Minds with Robespierre
[18] Wringing the Shingle
[19] ‘Vapour rises from the ducts and flues, ashen and feathered’
Pearl (1995/1997)
Looking Down From The West Window
Sweet Jesus: Pearl’s Prayer
Pearl’s Utter Brilliance
Pearl Says
No Such Thing
Mony Ryal Ray
No Buses To Damascus
Pearl Suddenly Awake
Fever
The Shells Her Auburn Hair Did Show
Pearl Alone
Cavalry At Calvary
From The Land Of Tumblestones
Dark Was The Night And Cold Was The Ground
Pearl And Barry Pick Rosehips For The Good Of The Country
Those Sandmartin Tails
Woe, Woe, Woe
Blizzard: So Much Bad Fortune
Lost Pearl
Pearl’s Poem Of Joy And Treasure
Pearl At 4am
Pearl’s Final Say-So
The Book of Demons (1997)
Ode To Beauty Strength And Joy And In Memory Of The Demons
Free Pet With Every Cage
Buying Christmas Wrapping Paper On January 12
We Offer You One Third Off Plenitude
Daddy Wants To Murder Me
Angel Showing Lead Shot Damage
Shreds Of Mercy/The Merest Shame
In With The Stasi
Pasolini Demon Memo
Nil By Mouth: The Tongue Poem
Demons In My Pocket
The Horror
Demons Swarm Upon Our Man And Tell The World He’s Lost
Hooray Demons Salute The Forever Lost Parliament Of Barry And Jacqueline
When The Candles Were Lit
Pearl Against The Barbed Wire
Nothing Are These Times
Dead Man’s Handle
Himself Bright Starre Northern Within
Anne Sexton Blues
Your Love Is A Swarm And An Unbeguiled Swanne
Strap Down In Snowville
Sweeno, Sweeno
Up a Height And Raining
Tom In The Market Square Outside Boots
John Bunyan To Johnny Rotten
Uncollected Poems [1983/1997–1998]
La Rage
Don’t Leave Me
When The Lights Went Out A Cheer Rose in the Air
Sweet Advocate
Postcards from Hitler [1998]
The Final Bavarian Hilltop Postcard
The Amazing Eagle Has Landed
Blitzkrieg Homage
Let the Thunder Roll
Whatever Madness There Is Is
Brown stamps forever
Uncollected Poems [1998–1999]
I Looked Down On a Child Today
Totem Banking
Here We Go
Pearl in the Silver Morning (1999)
Cushy Number
Bare Feet In Marigolds
Daft Patter
Pearl In The Silver Morning
We Are Not Stones
INDEX OF TITLES AND FIRST LINES
Barry MacSweeney: Bibliography
Copyright
NOTE ON THE TEXT
Barry MacSweeney made his selection for this book in May 1999, intending to add some work in progres
s, so that Wolf Tongue could be subtitled Selected Poems 1965–2000. Some aspects of the selection were left undecided at the time of his death in 2000.
The arrangement of the poems is his, except for the order of later work, which reflects when those poems were written, as well as his wish to end the book with Pearl in the Silver Morning (Poetical Histories no.49, Cambridge, 1999). The Book of Demons (Bloodaxe Books, 1997) would have formed a companion volume to Wolf Tongue: the whole of that book (including all of Pearl) has been added to the selection Barry made from his other work.
The selection covering the period 1965 to 1986 reprints all the work (except ‘Fools Gold’) included in the ill-fated three-poet volume The Tempers of Hazard (Paladin, 1993), withdrawn shortly after “publication” by HarperCollins and immediately pulped when Iain Sinclair’s poetry list was axed. The early work includes ‘The Last Bud’, from Our Mutual Scarlet Boulevard (Fulcrum Press, 1971), and Barry also wanted two poems from his first collection, The Boy from the Green Cabaret Tells of His Mother (Hutchinson, 1968), to be added to this grouping, ‘For Andrei Voznesensky, for her’ and ‘On the Burning Down of the Salvation Army Men’s Palace, Dogs Bank, Newcastle’, as well as ‘Homage to John Everett, Marine Painter’, whose only previous publication was in Poetry Review (64/2, Summer 1973), then edited by Eric Mottram. Finnbar’s Lament is placed later as the ‘comet’s tail’ to Ranter (Slow Dancer Press, 1985).
Barry did not intend to include all the poems from Odes (Trigram 1978), but left no notes regarding cuts. His only instructions concerned a small number of poems which were definitely to be included, as well as his wish to move ‘Just Twenty Two – And I Don’t Mind Dying’ and ‘Far Cliff Babylon’ to their new positions in this selection. Several of his friends and past editors were consulted for their opinions as to which poems from Odes might be cut, and we have followed the consensus view that the sequence should be made available to readers again in its entirety. The Six Odes (1973) selected from Odes (1978) for The Tempers of Hazard (1993) follow the later published texts.
Barry only wanted ‘Black Torch Sunrise’ included from Black Torch (New London Pride Editions, 1977), followed by ‘Far Cliff Babylon’ from Odes, and then ‘Blackbird’ (Pig Press, 1980) as ‘Book 2 of Black Torch’. Five other long pieces from the ‘Work’ section of The Tempers of Hazard complete the selection of longer poems from the period 1977–1986.
Eight to ten (unspecified) poems were to be included from Hellhound Memos (Many Press, 1993). The eleven poems selected here are those he chose to include in several readings.
The six poems selected from Postcards from Hitler were all written or finished over two days in March 1998, and later published by Writers Forum in 1999. The earlier poem ‘La Rage’ appeared in Slow Dancer (erroneously as ‘Le Rage’) in 1983, and was placed before other later uncollected poems. ‘Sweet Advocate’ was published by Equipage in 1999. ‘Totem Banking’ was accepted for publication by Salt and will appear in Vanishing Points in 2003.
‘When The Lights Went Out A Cheer Rose in the Air’ was first published with a page missing in Fragmente, and then complete in Fat City and corrected in Fragmente. The text here incorporates some later manuscript alterations and other changes included in a reading Barry recorded in October 1997, when he glossed the title as from a comment made by country musician and onetime State Penitentiary inmate Steve Earle, who ‘had a line which says “When the lights go out a cheer rose in the air” in the prisons because when they turned on the power to the electric chair it meant that all of the electricity in the rest of the systems drained and all of the prisoners cheered the soul of the dead man to Valhalla’.
Barry also specified that this selection should not include ‘any of the other 150 unpublished poems in mss’, nor any of the mostly unpublished ‘Mary Bell Sonnets’, and ‘no translations’. The Barry MacSweeney Archive, generously donated to Newcastle University by his family, includes all the poet’s manuscripts of published and unpublished work, together with his personal collection of books including copies of all his publications.
The convention used in this book for dating poems is that round brackets indicate publication and square brackets show when work was written. Italicised dates and other details printed at the end of certain poems are the poet’s own annotations. Idiosyncratic spellings, from cavalier to mock medieval, are faithful to Barry MacSweeney’s fancies or flourishes.
EARLY POEMS
[1965��1973]
For Andrei Voznesensky, for her
I am irregular as poker chips.
Her body is mine,
12-string guitar,
Medieval flute.
(a Matryoshki doll, I find you,
peel you like a tangerine)
She glows in ballet
of the life she leads,
firebirding me.
Ice on the river
river flows deep,
never seen the icicle eyes
of those three dead
Three bullets,
three neat death holes
ladybirds on the brow)
two duels, a suicide.
Burning cannon of loins
blasts me like eggshell.
Clay fires birds eyes.
Water, stone,
tungsten wings beat a shadow
over the lives of three dead Russians.
You make up for their loss –
Russia doesn’t know.
You make me forget turbulence,
the North Sea in me,
touch me with your fingers
look to me for love
Bored with bad poetry
I’m off to Russia,
drink vodka with poets there.
Ball-points and bayonets
are singular in Moscow!
– gallop through the Caucasus
with Lermontov’s ghost.
My love mis-understands,
but her name is sweeter
than bells of funerals,
her tongue quicker than
a beam,
pelvis moist as moss. lips to blood
I am yours,
more than a swallow to
the sky, my love,
more than a swallow to
the clouds.
Tell me you will lie with no other.
In case I should topple,
Like a clown
do
crazy
acrobatics,
Steady my heart with yours
put away old scenes.
On The Burning Down of the Salvation Army Men’s Palace, Dogs Bank, Newcastle
They stood smoking damp and salvaged
cigarettes mourning their lost bundles,
each man tagged OF NO FIXED ABODE.
Mattresses dried in the early sunshine
blankets hung over railings and gravestones
water and ashes floated across the cobbled hill.
A tinker who wouldn’t give his name
bemoaned his spanner, scissors and knife-grinder,
which lay under 30 tons of debris.
Water on the steps in the dining-room
but none to make a cup of tea
Tangled pallet frames smoked still,
men lounged around mostly in ill-fitting
borrowed clothes other naked in only
a blanket or soaked mac.
We looked at the scorched wood and remarked
how much it resembled a burnt body later we
heard it was charred corpse
we remarked how much it resembled burnt-out timber
The Last Bud
(for Vivienne)
Here is my thorn, my hate is a bud.
MICHAEL McCLURE
1
Last night tells me today what went
before. That cruelty, your nagging
sobs, your body rocking and heaving against
me, a huge planet pulsating thunderously
in my weak arms, weak with
the feeling
in my belly, knowing I hurt you much.
Grasping at thin things for support, but
finding nothing but books, devices,
verbal chicanery, & cosmological range,
which no man can see, but writes about
and cannot feel. What’s the use of feeling
intangible things, like some bad actor,
hamming up, hamming life, meaning nothing,
valued less than that. Country to me
means nothing. Politics, entry into
Europe, which I read everyday as my trade,
means little, save that for sustenance,
means of carrying from Monday to Friday
my flagging body and head.
All that fails to the acid test. I am no
chemist, nor writer. Once I had a friend
from my town. Now he is a fraud. Once
he was my golden calf, but now warped by
that gilt-necked stream, he twists about
the stone, and chokes the living good.
I have a friend who shelters me, and tho
beyond me in years, he is brother,
father, teacher, child to me, who has
seen him in different shades, have heard
the tensile grasp of music, which demands
much, reducing me to sleep, as some careless
rock for leverage. He is my friend, so
how will he take this, this testament,
established as he is, as I wanted to be,
to be sufficient in all ways, in that
durable fyre I was after too.
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