Arie Galles & Jerome Rothenberg: Graffite (Complete)

A few years ago I began to engage with the artist Arie Galles in a series of poems  to accompany three �suites� of his drawings (twenty drawings in each suite).  Now, under the title �Graffite: Three Suites after Images by Arie Galles� he has posted all sixty poems & drawings on his web site, sidestepping or postponing publication by any more traditional means. 

        My own pre-face to the work reads as follows: �For some time now I�ve been working with Arie Galles on Graffite, a three-part series of graphite drawings with poem accompaniments: MoonFields, CloudPoems & PepperTree, in that order. Here, with the exception of MoonFields (abstract circles & lines), Galles�s images begin as black & white photographs that he then translates, as with his monumental 14 Stations, into three sets of twenty graphite drawings each, to which are added twenty poems of mine as linkages. My own procedures, after the fact, are largely improvisational, speaking to his images while maintaining a sense of distance & independence. To borrow from the medieval Japanese, the principle here is not one of direct comment or illustration but of something like juxtaposition &/or collage �wherein it does not matter that the upper and lower part are put together in a seemingly unnatural & arbitrary way so long as they cohere in the mind.� In the dance between us, it is he who leads and I who follow, hopefully always in synch.�

        The whole work is now freely available, for any & all who want to see & read, at http://www.ariegalles.com/pdf/Graffiti.pdf

Cloudpoems XI

                                         look down

                                           & see

                                           what

                                           to the eye

                                           are only

                                           clouds

                                           the earth below

                                           forgotten

                                           (almost)

                                           in the mind

                                           is only

                                           earth

Moonfields II

                                          life has spirit, death

                                            has only chalk

                                            with chalk a word

                                            is written

                                            but not by you

Peppertree III

                                         ferns & rind

                                          the black a distance

                                          deeper than a star

Michael Palmer: New Poems from �The Laughter of the Sphinx,� for Mac Low, Tcherepnin & Artaud

Light Moves 1

Mineral light and whale light,

light of memory, light of the eye,

memory�s eye, shaded amber light

coating the page, fretted

light of anarchy, flare of bent

time, firelight and first light,

lake light and forest light,

arcing harbor light,

spirit light and light of the blaze,

enveloping blaze,

century�s fading light,

light of cello, voice, drum,

figures billowing along

horizon, aligned, outlined.

Light Moves 2

Bright light of sleep, its

shortness of breath, its

thousand sexual suns, curved

and fretted light, lies of that light,

dark, inner light, its

whispered words:

Now beyond, now below,

this to left, this to right,

scarecrow in stubble field,

nighthawk on wire,

these to cleanse your sight.

Light Moves 3

Light through the Paper House

rippling across floors and walls,

across the words of the walls,

its paper tables, paper chairs,

its corners,

pale light by which it reads itself,

fills and empties itself,

and speaks.

Light Moves 4

Watcher on the cliff-head

in afternoon light, aqueous light,

watcher being watched

in the salt-silver light

amidst the darting of terns,

beach swallows and gulls,

between the snow of sand

and the transit of clouds,

keeper of thought or prisoner of thought,

watcher being watched,

snowman of sand,

anonymous man.

Light Moves 5

Night-sun and day-sun

twinned and intertwined,

light by a bedside,

cat�s eye by night,

owl light and crystal light,

endless motion of the light,

the rise and the fall,

the splintered flare,

churning northern lights,

phosphor, tip of iris,

gunmetal moon�s

far, reflected light,

oil sheen

on pelican�s wing.

Light Moves 6

And yet what have we done

where have we gone

sometimes in light sometimes not

traveling

we say the great world the small world

the fields

patched with yellow the sudden crows

the city�s streets

alone among others

the billowing streets

bodies crowding past

outlined by light.

What have we done

among the roads and fields

in the theater�s shadows and the theater�s light

so bright you cannot see

those watching beyond

in perfect rows in the dark.

(in homage to Jackson MacLow)

In Memory of Ivan Tcherepnin

So many sounds flower but they are not flowers.

They are mangled girders in a field,

a field of flowers, echo of hooves, 

heavy-metal of tanks,

music�s lost memory.

In the enveloping mist

our shoes squealing

upon the paving stones

while winding through

your Paris streets,

which one of us said,

The absolute

secret of art 

lies in the tongue

of a shoe?

Who said, The true

secret of art

resides in the gaze

of a cat,

and that�s that?

Which one of us asked,

Is this the buried sound

of the future-past?

Do electrons still sing

when no one is listening?

(A little stoned perhaps?)

We spoke of corpses

waving batons, hierophants

professing poems,

as the mist cloaked our words

and mid-summer night

measure by measure

finally arrived.

Ivan Alexandrovich,

is it only the fugitive things

that ravel the cells

and ring through the air,

le va et le vient as you put it,

the slow rise of a half-step,

followed by falling semi-tones,

in a day of one birth and one death?

So many sounds flower but they are not flowers.

They are street calls and cries

and the promises of bone,

and the bright sightless eye

at the flower�s brief heart.

At the Tomb of Artaud

At the tomb of Artaud

wherever it may be

we hear a howl, unmistakable,

the howl of a wounded wolf

gnawing at its foreleg

caught in the teeth

of a hunter�s steel trap

At the tomb of Artaud

wherever it may be

a sleeper and his double

throw dice made of bone

Should the dice fall

just so, they explain

it will snow

on the tomb of Artaud

Should they fall

otherwise

the earth will be dry

A dancer and her double

make love

on the bright stones

the light bringers

by the tomb of Artaud

that has become a book

of stone

they care not to read

whatever it may mean

as the fitful

iridescent

dragonflies alight

on the wet heat

of their bodies

Only later

will they piss on his grave

as a clock without hands

applauds in the dark

[NOTE> Michael Palmer is an internationally celebrated poet with numerous publications, translations into multiple languages, & active collaborations with dancers & artists over a span of more than forty years.  His latest book, The Laughter of the Sphinx, from which these poems are taken, is scheduled for publication by New Directions later this year.  The dedicatory nature of the poems shown here � to two poets & the French composer Ivan Tcherepnin �  indicates Palmer�s sense of presence within �that company I always hear as I work, and for whom I write, and to whom I write.�  The lyric force of his later poetry is a turning that illuminates the power of the work that came before.

     n.b.�At the Tomb of Artaud� first appeared in an issue of The American Reader, volume 2, number 2, some months back, and the poem for Ivan Tcherepnin is scheduled for the next issue of Nathaniel Mackey�s magazine Hambone.]

Outside & Subterranean Poetry (64): Ludwig Wittgenstein, �Philosophy As Poetry� or �Thinking While Talking�

 

[The following is yet another excerpt from Barbaric Vast & Wild: A Gathering of Outside & Subterranean Poetry from Origins to Present, edited with commentaries by myself & John Bloomberg-Rissman, and published by Black Widow Press as the fifth volume of Poems for the Millennium.  Earlier excerpts have been posted on Poems and Poetics over the last several years, referring to the work as �a mini-anthology in progress,� but the completed work will now appear as a 450 page assemblage to join the other volumes in the Poems for the Millennium series.  Wittgenstein�s presence here points to a sub-theme of the assemblage, to reconsider the rift between poetry and philosophy from the time that Plato broke the two asunder. (J.R.)]


Ludwig Wittgenstein (Austrian, 1889-1951)

from PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS

257. �What would it be like if human beings did not manifest their pains (did not groan, grimace, etc.)? Then it would be impossible to teach a child the use of the word �tooth-ache�.� � Well, let�s assume the child is a genius and invents a name for the sensation by himself! � But then, of course, he couldn�t make himself understood when he used the word. � So does he understand the name, without being able to explain its meaning to anyone? � But what does it mean to say that he has �named his pain�? � How has he managed this naming of pain? And whatever he did, what was its purpose? � When one says �He gave a name to his sensation,� one forgets that much must be prepared in the language for mere naming to make sense. And if we speak of someone�s giving a name to a pain, the grammar of the word �pain� is what has been prepared here; it indicates the post where the new word is stationed.

[�]

284. Look at a stone and imagine it having sensations. � One says to oneself: How could one so much as get the idea of ascribing a sensation to a thing? One might as well ascribe it to a number! � And now look at a wriggling fly, and at once these difficulties vanish, and pain seems able to get a foothold here, where before everything was, so to speak, too smoothfor it.

            And so, too, a corpse seems to us quite inaccessible to pain. � Our attitude to what is alive and to what is dead is not the same. All our reactions are different. � If someone says: �That cannot simply come from the fact that living beings move in such-and-such ways and dead ones don�t�, then I want to suggest to him that this is a case of the transition �from quantity to quality.�

285. Think of the recognition of facial expressions. Or of the description of facial expressions � which does not consist in giving the measurements of the face! Think, too, how one can imitate a man�s face without seeing one�s own in a mirror.

286. But isn�t it absurd to say of a body that it has pain? � And why does one feel an absurdity in that? In what sense does my hand not feel pain, but I in my hand?

            What sort of issue is: Is it the body that feels pain? � How is it to be decided? How does it become clear that it is not the body? � Well, something like this: if someone has a pain in his hand, then the hand does not say so (unless it writes it) and one does not comfort the hand, but the sufferer: one looks into his eyes.

287. How am I filled with pity for this human being? How does it come out what the object of my pity is? (Pity, one may say, is one form of being convinced that someone else is in pain.)

288. I turn to stone, and my pain goes on. � What if I were mistaken, and it was no longer pain? � But surely I can�t be mistaken here; it means nothing to doubt whether I am in pain! � That is: if someone said �I don�t know if what I have is a pain or something else�, we should think, perhaps, that he does not know what the English word �pain� means; and we�d explain it to him. � How? Perhaps by means of gestures, or by pricking him with a pin and saying: �See, that�s pain!� This explanation of a word, like any other, he might understand rightly, wrongly, or not at all. And he will show which by his use of the word, in this as in other cases.

            If he now said, for example: �Oh, I know what �pain� means; what I don�t know is whether this, that I have now, is pain� � we�d merely shake our heads and have to regard his words as a strange reaction which we can�t make anything of. (It would be rather as if we heard someone say seriously: �I distinctly remember that sometime before I was born I believed. ...�)
            That expression of doubt has no place in the language-game; but if expressions of sensation � human behavior � are excluded, it looks as if I might then legitimately begin to doubt. My temptation to say that one might take a sensation for something other than what it is arises from this: if I assume the abrogation of the normal language-game with the expression of a sensation, I need a criterion of identity for the sensation; and then the possibility of error also exists.

289. �When I say �I am in pain� I am at any rate justified before myself � � What does that mean? Does it mean: �If someone else could know what I am calling �pain,� he would admit that I was using the word correctly�?

            To use a word without a justification does not mean to use it wrongfully.

290. It is not, of course, that I identify my sensation by means of criteria: it is, rather, that I use the same expression. But it is not as if the language-game endswith this: it begins with it. [�]

 Translation from German by G.E.M. Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte

commentary

source: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Revised 4th edition, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.

I think I summed up my position on philosophy when I said: One should really only do philosophy as poetry. From this it seems to me it must be clear to what extent my thought belongs to the present, to the future, or to the past. For with this I have also revealed myself to be someone who cannot quite do what he wishes he could do. (L.W.)

(1)  It is with this self-declaration & with the force of his own �investigations� that Wittgenstein brings us back to a situation before the divide in thought that pulled poetry & philosophy asunder.  Still working outside of poetry he followed a path like that of a range of practitioners who would put poetry & art �once more at the service of mind� (M. Duchamp), enlarging in that sense the territory in which poetry could be an operating force.  The division of so much of his work into short prose blocks, often numbered in what seems at first an erratic (non)system & the curious, sometimes unexpected movement therein of thought to thought may now be read as a form-of-meditation that bears many of the marks of a form-of-poetry.  Writes Marjorie Perloff of Wittgenstein�s mode of writing & thinking: �Perhaps it is this curious mix of mysticism and common-sense, of radical thought to which the �egg-shells� of one�s old views continue to �stick,� that has made Wittgenstein, who had no interest at all in the �poetry� of his own time, paradoxically a kind of patron saint for poets and artists.�  But it is the poet David Antin who most clearly captures for some of us the improvisational & experimental nature of Wittgenstein�s practice of philosophy as a form of poetry outside of poetry that Antin cites & himself practices as �thinking while talking.�  Or as Antin writes further in appraisal: �Wittgenstein is not a poet of the German language or the English language; he is a poet of thinking through language � a poet of nearly pure cognition.�

            For this, what Wittgenstein writes of philosophy might also hold for poetry in the work of a range of contemporary poets: �Philosophy, as we use the word, is a fight against the fascination which forms of expression exert on us� (Wittgenstein, Blue Book, 27).

(2) Additionally, as Elaine Scarry notes, in her The Body in Pain, �Whatever pain achieves, it achieves through its unsharability, and it ensures this unsharability through its resistance to language.� To a significant extent, then, in the passage above, Wittgenstein chews on the same problematic that confronts a tremendous number of twentieth- and twenty-first-century poets: how to make language go beyond itself, how to make it express / represent / etc. what it was not made to express or represent. This, in contrast to an Alexander Pope, say, for whom poetry (�True Wit�), is that which is �Nature to advantage dress�d, / What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd� (�Essay on Criticism�). In that sense, then, Wittgenstein not only engages in the �fight against the fascination which forms of expression exert on us�, he engages in the fight against their limitations, in perhaps unwitting solidarity with much of what is called here the outside & the subterranean.

Ed Friedman: Four New Poems (�Ideal Boy�) from Two Towns

Good Habits 

The ideal boy

gets up early.
Light is dim outside,
not so bright inside either.
Salutes parents
bare feet knees together,
proud posture with no sassy upturns.
Goes for morning walk.
Does not wander from path.
Until sun has fully risen
it�s hard to avoid ditches and
fast-moving wild predators.
Brushes up the teeth.
Special red chili pepper toothpaste
not recommended.
Bathes daily.
Wears underwear in shower if
swimming trunks not available.
Prays
to local deities and major godheads.
Takes meals on time.
Hand to mouth,
no metal utensils.
Helps others
to second helpings.
Crossing busy access roads,
avoids careening vehicles.
Takes part in games
amicable and rancorous.
Hard wooden balls
bruise the shins and cheekbones.
Taking lost children to the police post
is ill-advised during rebellion,
tribal unrest, or slave trade.
Joins National Junior Army
only as last resort.
Pink recruitment tents
dot the green spring flood plains.
Joins in social gatherings.
Boys and boys boys and girls
button and unbutton
their bright cloth shirts,
sing many times over
anthems and hymns.
Define laxness.
Go to school and read attentively.
Blazing, all fired up,
head home, incite the family.

Bad Behaviors

The ideal boy

never sketches costume jewelry
during homework time or
pilfers baubles to draw.
Must avoid spitting near breakfast,
lunch, dinner, festival meals.
Even rotten wormy food
is politely contained.
Kite-flying barefooted
on slanted tile roofs
is unpardonable danger.
Same for catching Father
in the act of expelling
household cat litter
over public sidewalk.
Avert eyes subtly.

Bad Habits Too

The sky is overcast and faintly blue gray.

Creamy yellow stucco walls,
salmon drapery, and mouldings.
Don�t gamble wearing native shorts and shirts.
Big bugs leap off unclean vegetables.
Toying with deadly electricity.
If you ever lie down before the rolling-forward bus,
you�ll die worse than animal teasing with sticks.
Thieves are reamed regularly
for insolent infractions.
A fine way to treat others can�t be bought.
Gummed-down dinners.

Human Stages and Duties

Ideal boys

sleep wearing little
under smooth cotton sheets,
lie awake in the charged quiet.
Preparing to lift a miniature
soccer ball from the rug,
twirl it for Daddy and
show all sides of a weird haircut.
Red tiger-print jumpsuits.
give way to swimming trunks,
three-wheeled scooters.
What�s sunset and afterglow on flood runoffs?
Henna tattoos.
Posters of our beloved pacifist presidents.
Do thoughts duel?
Looking at my portraits
I�d say so then not.
Rice ripening on time equals life or death.
For scroll inscribers and graduates
all kinds of love
pour forth among wicker furniture.
Leaning back wrist to temple
I regard the future with weariness�
now invigorated awe.

[note. Ed Friedman grew up in 1950s Los Angeles. He made his way to New York Cityin the early 70s, where he worked on magazines, collaborated with artists & composers, played in bands, & participated in the active St. Mark�s Poetry Project community. In 1987 he became the Poetry Project�s Artistic Director, a position he held until 2003. His previous books of poetry & prose include: The Telephone Book, Humans Work, Mao & Matisse, Away, & Drive Through the Blue Cylinders.  Of his new book, Two Towns from Hanging Loose Press, I�ve written elsewhere: �There is in Ed Friedman�s marvelous new book a range of voices from the mock-naive & deeply comic �Ideal Boy� to the wide-ranging & always surprising �Propulsion,� a long poem in itself with incursions into both the personal & political.   Friedman emerges in all of these as a powerful & never disappointing poet/chronicler, at the top of his form & ready to take his place among the makers & movers of our time.  The work is refreshing, absorbing, & remarkably readable; the pleasure in that reading all ours now as it must have been his in the making.� (J.R.)]

Jerome Rothenberg & John Bloomberg Rissman: Poems for the Millennium, volume 5: the Table of Contents (part two)

James Tilly Matthews, The Air-Loom Machine, c. 1810

[What follows is the second half of the table of contents for Barbaric Vast & Wild: A Gathering of Outside & Subterranean Poetry from Origins to Present, which has been announced for March publication by Black Widow Press.  The first half appeared in Poems and Poetics on February 2, & numerous excerpts from the book-in-progress have appeared there also from time to time.  The work as a whole functions de facto as the fifth volume of Poems for the Millennium.]

 

Gallery Three

A Book Of Extensions 

(Russian, 19th Century)

Bald Mountain Zaum

(American, 19th Century)

Shaker Sound Poem

Hildegard Of Bingen (German, 1098-1179) 

O Orzchis Ecclesia: An Antiphonal Hymn

(Central Europe, 15th/16th Century)

from The Voynich Manuscript

Dwight Mackintosh (American, 1906-1999)

Image and Unknown Script

Adolf W�lfli (Swiss/German, 1864-1930) 

Image and Text

Howard Finster (American, 1915-2001)

�Highway to Heaven� & �Guardian Angel�

Robert Walser (German, 1878-1956)

Microscripts

(Medieval Hebrew)

Masora Calligrams

Naftali Bacharach (Hebrew, 17th Century)

The 10 Sefirot as a Wheel of Light

John Clare (English, 1793-1864)

Untitled Letter (Vowelless Writing)

�Lord� Timothy Dexter (American, 1748-1806)

from A Pickle for the Knowing Ones; or Plain Truths in a Homespun Dress

(2nd Century B.C. � 5th Century A.D.)                                                           

Coptic & Greek Magical Papyri

Nakhman Of Breslov (Ukraine/Yiddish, 1772-1810)

The Burnt Book

Antonin Artaud (French, 1896-1948)

Spell for Roger Blin

Kuo-An Shih-yuan, (Chinese version, 12th Century)  

The Ten Oxherding Pictures

George Herriman (American, 1880-1944)

from Krazy Kat

Ernst Herbeck (Austrian, 1920-1991)

Golden ABCs

(Shona, Zimbabwe, 20th Century)

African Praise Names: The Monkey, The Eland

Mikhl Likht (American/Yiddish, 1893-1953)

from Processions

Hannah Weiner (American, 1928-1997)

from A Clairvoyant Journal

Larry Eigner (American, 1927-1996)

from Air The Trees

Graham Reynolds, J.A. Lindon (English, 20^th Century)

Four Palindromes

Lewis Carroll (English, 1832-1898)

10 Syllogisms

Eugene Field (American, 1850-1895)

from The Complete Tribune Primer

F�lix F�n�on (French, 1861-1944)

from Faits Divers

(U.K., Contemporary)

from The Library of Unwritten Books

Anonymous (American, 20th Century)

Schizophrenic Definitions

James Tilly Matthews (English, 1770-1815), as transcribed by John Haslam

Air-Loom Machine

Sun Ra [Herman Poole Blount] (American, 1914-1993)

The Wisdom of Ra

Shea Zellweger (American, 1925-)

Objects Toward an Outsider Logic

Ludwig Wittgenstein (Austrian, 1889�1951) 
from Philosophical Investigations

Graham Harman (American, 1968-)
On Vicarious Causation: A Latour Litany

Atlantic Spotted Dolphin (2010)

The Voice Of The Dolphin

Gallery Four

A Book Of Performances 

Diogenes Of Sinope (Greek, 412 or 404 B.C.� 323 B.C.)

Six Event Pieces

(England, 1849)

A Christmas Play, Performed by the Derbyshire Mummers

(Quich� Maya, 15th Century A.D.)

Rabinal-Ach�, Part Four

Harry Partch (American, 1901�1974)

Barstow: Eight Hitchhiker Inscriptions from a Highway Railing at Barstow, California

W. [Willis] T. Goodwin (American, 1935-2007)

from Easter Sunrise Sermon, 1971

Gilbert Eastman (American Sign Language, 1934-2006)

Epic: Gallaudet Protest

Postludes/Codas 

Armand Schwerner

Tablet VIII

John Bloomberg-Rissman

In The House of the Hangman #1731

Jerome Rothenberg

from A Further Witness, for Anselm Hollo

Gerry Loose: Three Ogham Poems from Inchmarnock

Slate with ogham inscription from Inchmarnock, circa 4^th-8^thcentury a.d.

1/ HAVING REACHED THE HOLY REWARD 

Her body fades with her hair becomes invisible her skin is a salmon.

Singing eye sings her songs together kine alpine kine grazing.
Guarded life is guarded shielded ringed with soldiers.
South from our slit ribs bees swarm north.
Now is elsewhere jealousy did this. 

Thieves clean her breasts.

A bower is constructed high in the thorn.
Three fires jealousy love and death maggot us.
Under no place there are no trees there is no place.
Pulse great throbbing blooded heart harts live in her irises.

 

2/ GAMING BOARD                       (to be read in any direction)

you�re blest               you�re dead

you�re fading            concentrate
 
you�re hopeful          counting chickens               
shit shit                     shit shit

you�re hopeful          you�re hopeful                     

shit shit                     shit shit

o sweet                       o pale

you�re flying              you�re fleeing

you�re dead               a corpse

concentrate               you�re fading

you�re hopeful          o sweet

shit shit                     you�re flying

o pale                         you�re hopeful

you�re fleeing           shit shit 

you�re blest               you�re hopeful

you�re fading            shit shit

you�re hopeful          you�re hopeful                     

shit shit                     shit shit

you�re chiselling       you�re dead

will it hold                 concentrate

you�re dead               o pale

concentrate               you�re fleeing

 

3/ THE QUESTIONING

when does timber wither in oakwoods

at a flaying               

what is sweeter than ivy grasses

flesh

what is torn apart drained

ash

what dances from a corpse mouth

salmon

what is torn apart drained

vein

what is ash salmon

grasses

what is grass ivy

a flaying

when does timber wither in oakwoods

note. Ogham is the script used for inscriptions on stone during the 4^th � 8^th centuries CE, in the earliest known form of Gaelic. It comprises strokes across or to either side of a central stem line and is found on monoliths mainly in Ireland, with a few in Scotland, mostly in Gaelic but some in conjunction with Pictish symbols, which may be in that language.

            Its derivation is laid around with various myths: that the alphabet was invented to keep secrets from the Roman conquerors of nearby Britain; that it was similarly invented to keep secrets from the lands that Ireland was later to annexe as Dal Riada, the islands and mainland of western Scotland. It�s also said in some quarters that it was handed down by, or named for Ogmos, the Celtic god of eloquence.
            Ogham is also called the tree alphabet, since the name of a tree (or plant) has been ascribed to each Gaelic letter thus: beith, luis, nin � birch, herb, ash . . . & so on. An alphabet v�g�tal.
            RAS MacAlister in his Corpus Inscriptionarum Celticarum has transcribed all the stones in Ireland and most in Scotland. His reading is straightforward: he reads into the inscription just name, as for example the stone at Cloghane Carhane in Co Kerry -  Eqegni, son (or grandson) of Caratin. He makes the assertion that these are boundary marking stones.
          The 14^th century Book of Ballymote (a collection of origins and genealogies among other things) has an ogham tract (said therein to date from the 7^th century CE) in which is given more than 50 ogham types and  ways of reading them. In the word-oghams of Morainn Mac Main and Mac Ind Oic, each of these letters is actually a symbol for an entire phrase, a sort of synecdoche with hidden meaning. Thus the Eqegni on the Cloghane Carhane stone would read from Mac Ind Oic: synonym for a friend / force of the man / synonym for a friend / ivy / fight of women / most withered of wood. It would also read, in the tree alphabet as: aspen / apple / aspen / ivy / ash / yew; reading yet differently in the phrase ogham of Morainn Mac Main.

Whatever the method of reading this script, it is steeped in the secrecy of the literate over the non literate; it�s always regarded as the property of the high poets, the early medieval fili of Ireland, who would spend many years memorising 150 varieties of ogham. With the above, it�s possible to see the poetic possibilities, whatever ogham script is used.

My approach has been to base my ogham poems on readings of the phrase oghams of both Morainn Mac Main and Mac Ind Oic. I�ve also given sideways glances to the tree alphabet.

It�s clear from my transliterations that a narrative of a pastoral society is being recorded (or perhaps codified messages in pastoral phrases). The society becomes apparent as close to the earth, a transhumance society, with a keen awareness of landscape and habitat and the trees and plants which inhabit them; part and parcel of the Sweeney stories, the Tain bo Culaigne, the Annals of Ulster. A first and last recorded flowering of a culture and society dating from bronze age Ireland, perhaps much earlier.

Because the letters on the inscribed stones are sometimes doubled up, I have used this for emphasis.  Because, also, not all words in Gaelic have precise English equivalents (for example seanachas has overtones of biography and of tradition and of genealogy and of history and of language) I have moved between phrase oghams to use words I think best work in a given poem. Where these will not do, I have used other, appropriate translations of the Gaelic, the stone and the landscape itself to make a viable English poem from the ogham.

?