Word: poem
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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There was also a poetry recital of sorts including the "shortest poem ever written on what it's like to be as great as Ali." "Me? Whee...
...Catholic upbringing and what he called his "little acts of curiosity about myself and others which had been set down by Freud"--led him into exile from Ireland and in and out of institutions for the rest of his life. In 1936, after returning to Ireland, Clarke wrote a poem called "Six Sanichles," and here we can see, in the rejection of his earlier life, the renewal of his craft: TO JAMES STEPHENS Now that the iron shoe hangs by the nail Once more and nobody has cared a damn. Stick to the last of the leprechaun--I, too, Have...
...mind. Hot in the smithy of Irish poetry, he began a new mode heavily influenced by modernist poets. His elongated narrative lines turned to the crisp, dry style of poets like Auden--nouns are used as verbs, sentences are elipsed and inverted. In the very earliest of these poems, Clarke subtly reveals a kind of tormented agnosticism, as in this poem about the crucifixion of Christ: An open mind disturbs the soul, And in disdain I turn my back Upon the sun that makes a show Of half the world, yet still deny The pain that lives within the past...
...poem, a bitter satire on the suppression in Irish newspapers of a Vatican study on dangers for missionaries in the remoter regions of the world, there are glimpses of an extremely clever man who must hide in too narrow topics: These scholars are modestly selective, Who say our nuns in Africa, Fearful of blackmen yelling 'Ya!', Tearing off starches, heavy drape, Can take an oral contraceptive, An hour or two before the rape, How will they know dread time or place. That leaves the soul still full of grace? Better to wear Dutch cap or wad And after their debauching...
Toward the end of his life Clarke once again wrote a long narrative poem based on old Irish myths and legends. In "The Healing of Mis" he turns an 18th century tale of a wild woman tamed by music and sex into a more graphic love poem of seduction. But no longer content with the ancient ways. Clarke adds the woman's dreams to reveal the hot flames of her mind...