Mary Gray Kaye's Blog

At the expense of belittling my heroine, Genny, we notice she is and always was subject to nympholeptic crushes. It is currently the basis of her problematic relationship with Jonathan. But she started early. In high school. On William Butler Yeats. Unreasonable then, unreasonable now. But if poets were reasonable, where would their art be?
So at the risk of repeating myself, to open chapter 9, where Genny begins her love story, I have given you another Irish poet, another idol, another Nobel Prize for Literature winner, another Abbey Theatre founder, another dramatist, another lyric genius – all wrapped up in William Butler Yeats. “I kissed a stone I lay stretched out in the dirt And I cried tears down.” Is his introduction to chapter 9.
He wrote some of the most beautiful poetry of modern times, a lot of it focused on the mundane. Go find the seven brash and vigorous poems in his “Crazy Jane” series for proof of the mundane. Crazy is an old peasant woman. Unglamorous but insightful:
read Crazy Jane and the Bishop where she describes his skin as “wrinkled like the foot of a goose”
read Crazy Jane on God where she observes that “men come, men go; all things remain in God”
read Crazy Jane on the Day of Judgment where she decides that love is all unsatisfied that cannot take the whole”
read Crazy Jane on the Mountain where she confesses to being tired of cursing the bishop
read Crazy Jane Reproved where she advises “never hang your heart upon a roaring, ranting journeyman”
read Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop who notes that “those breasts are flat and fallen now, those veins must soon be dry”
Glance down my list of elegant coupling of words for proof of the beauty in Yeats’ words:
“dancing to a frenzied drum”
“an image of air”
“moments of glad grace”
“the tall and the tufted reeds”
“in the deeps of my heart”
“the ravens of unresting thought”
“the mackerel-crowded seas”
“that famous harmony of leaves”
“tumult in the clouds”
“the balloon of the mind”
To top off the beauty, indulge in these words: “I carry the sun in a golden cup, The moon in a silver bag”
Yeats of course gave us “Cast a cold eye On life, on death, Horseman, pass by!” You have quoted that; I have quoted that; everyone has quoted it. We are all Yeats aficionados.
Here’s more you’ll want to quote: “There are no strangers here; only friends you haven’t yet met.” And “Was there ever a dog that praised his fleas?” And “Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.” And “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” And “The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.”
The Atlantic Monthly described Yeats as a rarified human being, tall, dark-visaged, walking the streets of Dublin and London in a poetic hat, cloak and flowing tie, intoning verses. With these verses he intended to move the peasants and the educated in Ireland, expressing primary truths about his people. His earliest poems were romantic and took his public to foreign landscapes. Later he became more lyrical and dramatic and moved to naturalness, sincerity and vigor. Always he affirmed his Irish nationality when others of his class – the Anglo-Irish – considered themselves truly Englishmen merely living in Ireland. His rhythm and the repetition of sounds paid homage to that Gaelic heritage. His preference was for rhyme and strict stanza form, unlike his contemporary poets and those who followed.
What we can all take from Yeats is his disuse of adverbs. Try writing without adverbs. It will tighten up your images. Nouns, verbs and adjectives – there’s where the power is. However, Yeats did say “Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” So there.

A Winged thing and Holy - A Great Read Rating: 3 (poetic) ***

Attending a poetry workshop once a week is the only let up Genny DuPont receives after she works 40 hour weeks for a travel agency. There is a man at the group who she calls Mountain Man, who's poetry is so amazing that Genny starts to crave him, to want to know more. There is an instant connection between Jenny and Jon (Mountain Man) but Jon himself is struggling to find his poetic inspiration. His dream of becoming a famous, printed poet is slipping away so he uses Genny as his muse. Things take an unexpected turn through the story, with love, lust and betrayal.


I have to admit poetry isn't really my thing and I wouldn't have looked at this book twice, but from the first page I was hooked. Genny & Jon were amazing characters to read and I got fully dragged into their relationship - especially as their connection appears to be on a higher level. The ending shocked me and I don't want to give to much away but I was angry for her, angry at what happened. This is a great read for anyone and a MUST READ for poetry fans.

WERE WE NOT MADE FOR SEAMUS HEANEY?

Seamus Heaney died late in August, was buried in early September. Dublin is a little greyer for his leaving. Ireland is blacker. The world is harsher.

I met his poetry for the first time when I was creating my Genny who was discovering poets and the joy of their words. We found him together.
His lines – "Were we not made for summer, shade and coolness / And gazing through an open door at sunlight?" – open my chapter 8 in which she breezes through a Sunday and dives deeper into her dedication to become a poet. It was a fortuitous discovery.

Seamus Heaney, another Nobel Prize for Literature awardee (Genny and I have such good taste in poets), was a lyrical, ethical storyteller. The oldest of nine kids, the son of a cattleman, he discovered his poetic creativity at age 18. Five years later, now a published poet, the public discovered him. He began writing like a man possessed by demons and wonders as an older poet “what sort of demon he has become himself,” according to Poetry contributor William Logan. An Irish poet, a Northern Irish poet, a Belfast poet. The British Observer once named him one of Britain’s top three hundred intellectuals but later had to correct itself after “several individuals who would not claim to be British” raised a little flurry. Heaney was one such. “Be advised, my passport’s green / No glass of ours was ever raised / To toast the Queen.” As I said, he was a Belfast poet.

His Belfast beginnings exposed him to the horrors of the sectarian differences around him – the unrest, violence, assassinations, lynchings, bombings and civil strife of Northern Ireland. He found an alternative world in poetry and wrote with a reverence toward Ireland’s past, its customs and crafts. He created poetry out of rural experiences, was an apolitical commentator of Ireland’s “Troubles.” He gave hope to his troubled land. A kinder man you’ll not meet; a kinder face you’ll not find. I love to look at his face – his young face, his old face.

Vastly popular, he gathered a following dubbed the Heaney-Boppers, poetry fanatics who populated the venues where he read. I have visions of saddle-shoed, pleated skirted adolescents swaying, sighing and screaming to Frank Sinatra rhythms – really not what they were but doesn’t that give you a clue to my age? He was the heart throb of poetry.

With such a following, it is fitting Queen’s University in Belfast created a Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry to honor him. It contains all the Heaney you can digest, and more.

A writer of prose and poetry, criticism, a translator, a professor, editor, Heaney primarily is hope: "If poetry and the arts do anything, they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness."

If you want to swing along with Seamus, crack open his "The Rattle Bag," a 496-page panorama of poetry he edited with Ted Hughes. It will introduce you to all the poets he revered, poems not overly studied. The pages include nonsense rhymes, riddles, folk songs, rhythmic jingles and ballads. The poets: G.M.Hopkins, W.B.Yeats, G. Brooks, W. Blake, D. Thomas, W.C.Williams, A.L.Tennyson, E. Dickinson, ee cummings, W. Shakespeare, W. Wordsworth, O. Nash, R. Frost, J. Joyce, T.S. Eliot, and on and on. It is a frolicsome counter-culture collection, designed for those of us at a first stage of reading poetry. Before we feel it. Before we know it. Try The Rattle Bag. You’ll like it.

The poems: “A Narrow Fellow in the Grass” (about a snake), “nobody loses all the time” (by ee cummings and proceeds thusly – chickens ate the vegetables, skunks ate the chickens, skunks caught cold and died. I told you it was fun), “The Nose” and “Of Poor Old B.B.” – Bertolt Brecht who says “They’ve got their feet on my tables / And say: things are getting better and I don’t ask: when?” (you figure that one out), “Cocaine Lil and Morphine Sue” and “The Germ”.

After you have had your fun, tackle "Beowulf," Heaney’s acclaimed translation from the original Anglo-Saxon that stunned the world of literature. It begins: “So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by…” Not so difficult, no? Take it from there. (A secret I share – you can download Heaney’s Beowulf in its entirety – free.) Come back to me when you are done and we can discuss.