Skip to main content

Poem by Michael S. Begnal

Eyewear is very glad to welcome Michael S. Begnal (pictured) this week - a week in which I returned from Galway, Ireland, where for so long he worked and wrote and was such a a poetic influence. This is something of a milestone, as he is also our 151st featured poet!

Begnal is the author of three poetry collections - in reverse chronological order: Ancestor Worship (Salmon, 2007), Mercury, the Dime (Six Gallery Press, 2005), and The Lakes of Coma (Six Gallery Press, 2003).

He is included in the anthologies Breaking the Skin: New Irish Poetry (Black Mountain Press, 2002) and, in the Irish language, Go Nuige Seo (Coiscéim, 2004, 2005). He is also included in the essay collection, Avant-Post: The Avant-Garde under “Post-” Conditions (Litteraria Pragensia, 2006), and edited Honeysuckle, Honeyjuice: A Tribute to James Liddy (Arlen House, 2006). Begnal was also formerly the editor of the Galway, Ireland-based literary magazine, The Burning Bush (1998-2004).


The Fluctuations

THE FLUCTUATIONS are real,
they warp you sere & black,
they sear you from the inside
that part of the body

the FLUCTUATIONS,
a transmigration of soul,
lost genealogies, rocky estuary, the Iron Language,
rain, a structuring gloom — GONE

the fluctuations/
(running through the trenches)
a torrent in a dark room, breath pouring through,
alone in that room don’t know how again

(it’s the fluctuations)
the zephyrs in the night,
the curtains blowing in somebody else’s window,
the charry dry alleys

death & loss dripping from eyes,
death & loss seeping from lungs,
death & loss in your twisted black guts like shit,
in the stark stochastic scald


poem by Michael S. Begnal

Comments

Anonymous said…
A great poem and a great site.Thanks for guiding me here. Liam MacS.
Sheila said…
I was at a dinner party last night and the talk turned to poetry. Someone asked why the Irish had so many great poets and an Irishman answered that it was because the Irish have nothing but their language. I'm thinking about this. Meanwhile, Thank you for directing me to Michael Begnal.

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".