Jack & Adelle Foley

IRISH I's

IRISH/IRISH-AMERICAN

What does it mean to be Irish? Or, more specifically, what does it mean to be Irish-American?

To get from my house to Cornell University where I was a freshman in 1958, you drove up the hypotenuse of a right triangle. My father, who had been born in New York State farm country in 1895 and who grew up with the automobile, drove up the two sides of the triangle, thinking they were the hypotenuse. He never quite trusted that machine to get him where he wanted to go, and before any trip of consequence he would fortify himself with a few drops of the craythur.

As we neared Cornell, there were several small towns which regularly made money at this time of year by giving tickets to students blazing through them on their way back to school. My father never blazed anywhere, but he did accidentally turn left through a red light as we slowly made our way to our goal. Suddenly a motorcycle policeman was upon us. The policeman saidand I dont exaggerate his brogueHO WHERE YA GOIN? My father pulled over to the side of the road and said very politely, Gee, officer, did I go through that red light? Im sorry. I wont do it again. Say, he said, are you Irish? The policeman flushed and said, rather testily, Well, Im Irish, what of it? Well, said my father, were Irish too. Meet the boy. Were taking him up to his freshman year at Cornell University.

My mother, who was Italian, said not a word.

By the time the conversation between my father and the policeman was over there was no longer any question of a ticket. The policeman was inviting us to his home for coffee and to meet the wife. My father politely declined and said he would drop by on his way back.

I have no idea whether my father even knew the name of the town whose laws he was violating, and I certainly do not. But when he heard that accent, he knew exactly how to behave. He acknowledged the policemans authority: Gee, officer, did I go through that red light? Im sorry. I wont do it again. But he then invoked a higher authority: Are you Irish?

There was a joke my father liked to tell, and perhaps its moral figured in that Irish cops reaction to us. The Irish maid is about to leave for the day when the master says to her, Mary, this is terrible. Look at the dust on this table. I can write my name in the dust. Oh, sir, she says, misunderstanding, aint education grand! Perhaps the thought of education, and particularly education for the Irish, was grand for that Irish cop too. Meet the boy, said my father proudly, were taking him up to his freshman year at Cornell University.

What does it mean to be Irish? What does it mean to be Irish-American?

__________________________________________________________

SWEENEY ADRIFT

for Ivan Arguelles

welcome to the house of failure

see these are the structural bases of the house its beams and arteries

its artificial light its hands its vast appendices

who is

not here?

the range of things

delights us welcome welcome

see there is the door it opens for us

welcome

what sweeney what

have you done and

where have you done it?

sweeney clubbed the man

not once but twice; bashed his head in, hurt

him badly. Oh,

Sweeney theyll

not stand for that surely cf. Buille Suibhne

surely thats trans. J.G. OKeefe, 1913

no way to behave trans. Seamus Heaney, 1984

Sweeney

ended his tirade

his wild life then

They all said, Enough, enough, Sweeney,

surely thats

no way

for a man to behave

Sweeney

kicked his eyes out hurt him broke his ribs twisted the tongue not once but twice

bones broke, brittle for Sweeney, his trophy, taken, the life taken, the balls

bashed

the life

ended

oh Sweeney

she bespoke him sorely oh

and Sweeney repented then

turned churchman spoke vows made retreats novenas bled holy water ended his wild life

told tales made miracles believed end-

ed his wild life turned goodman churchman died of age and

soul

now surely turned

to

heavn.

sweeney.

SUN-

the slow turn of resolving

moved (as ever) us (as ever) if

(stay)

I go out again with

money in my pockets

click!

how many times have I

asked youspoken your

namein this darkness

I have nothing to offer

in the airendless

variationsspeech!

Bear

turns

open to the

light

She stopped for a moment and looked back. It is not easy to tell. They saw each other only momentarily. It was not easy to tell.

Your book is

a big crazy delicious effort, fundamentally great, highly interesting, jocular, kinky, lovely, magnificently nice, opulent, pretty, quick, redolent, snazzy, tricky, undoubtedly very whimsical Xmas yummy. Zounds!

The night came, and a storm, and Sweeneys misery and mania were so great that he cried out:

I who have neither another nor now

in the dim light (love)

possibly

frame (make) this (how) (love) quick

I wrow rowe wrote chu

yesterday

Sweeney returns, and the lies about his sons death have caused him to

All day, all night,

Sweeney clings

to the branch, and opens

(spreads his)

wings

He is now

adrift

(spoken to

uneasy in the night

pressure)

Remember this, friend

hand extended

is the problem presence?

what does it matter if we love each other?

is the problem presence?

what does it matter if we love each other?

is the problem presence?

what does it matter if we love each other?

is the problem presence?

what does it matter if we love each other?

bear

the bear-son

opes

his eyes

the master of the mountain is of special interest to us as he is the master of the bears. On the one hand he is a man, on the other, a real bear, only of unusually large size. All other bears are his fellow tribesmenThe slaughter of a bear represents the departure of the soul of the animal to its master and a subsequent return to earth is expectedIt is not to the beasts themselves that offerings and prayers are made but to their masters or owners

grandfather old man heTaking the skin off a slain bear they say, Grandfather, owner of the earth, dont think ill of us. we did not do this to you. The Yakut did it. Your silver bones we shall put in a special house.

fish-dragon

blind and eyeless

naked as a

human finger

Sweeney

pueblobridgecreek

cameras

clickingold womanlooking

eyes: thinking

Were going to have lunch with the guy who published Nailed to the Coffin of Life. His name is Loss Glazier.

His name is Loss?

Yes.Lunch With Loss

Were going to have lunch with Loss?

Yes.

Ive been having Lunch with Loss for most of my life.

the bear has always been the weather prophet because he presages by his emergence the

return of spring

to the

wintry

world

Juan, Juan el Oso, Juan del Oso, Ivanko the Bears son

Since matter itself is in a state of flux and is deprived of that form through which it takes shape and is made manifest, they took the dampness and humidity of caves, their darkness, and, as the poet says, their murkiness, as an appropriate symbol for the properties of the cosmos

the Persian mystagogues initiate their candidate by explaining to him the downward journey of souls and their subsequent return, and they call the place where this occurs a cave

descending paralysis

bull

lord of genesis

sun

shadow

there is

blood on my face

fuck it you know that fuckin cocksucker you know what that fucker said to me

Sweeney picked himself up off the hardbitterdesolatefrozen ground.

Again.

Mother, would you please answer the door. Ive been standing here for fifteen minutes.
Couldnt be helped. I was on the shitter. neighborhood music

what does it mean to use the word fuck?

Sleep a little, love,

for thou needst nor fear the least

I am Sweeney alas!

my wretched body is utterly dead

A year have I been on the mountain

without music, without sleep

Madman

am I

John Anson wrote a hundred rounds

As I have written only one.

O listen as his name resounds:

John Anson.

My little round might be the sun.

The planets in their daily rounds around the roundel

Must circle it in unison.

His trope might be the separate gowns

Of long-dead ladies now at one.

These separated, joining sounds:

John

Anns son.

how many times have I

asked youspoken your

namein this darkness

I have nothing to offer

in the airendless

variationsspeech

It was night. The heat was still glutinous and no wind stirred. The whirling deedees died away to the east as the glowing orange orb of the sun drifted to the west in a purple miasma. (A narrative of ideas not of events.)

And, Orpheus, will you bring your mother with you?

field piece violence cob decoration porcupine brogan finch zeppelin permeate convent artifact behemoth climax ranger pin mens rea brand convent jitter own as bell man scatter which saddle strange blend peace orphan spatch poll boing infant such enter hone savor claim once ping

Rhea

Why have you followed me here? (Here the Hag speaketh with Sweeney

Yes. and telleth him

What have you come to tell me? nothing.)

Yes.

THE DEEP AND ABIDING MISERY OF THE MAD!

it was all sorrows loves seeking

in a bloodless ending still steeping

Sorrow, be neither stow(n)e nor still

it was blunt weeping

The fly

Augusta

, the little imp

teases your nose and your forehead.

When one is a fly one is not an eagle

but one knows how to walk on the ceiling.

Pierre FebvreYes, Pierre Febvre. Why should I think of him, and wonder what my spirit will

make of him, feeling as I now do. His face

O obstinate mysteries

innocent animality!

You, simple house-fly

and youfoxes, crows, panthers,

creatures in whom the impulse to bite exuberates

But I understand now how it is possible to muse upon the outline of a nostril

or the curve of a lip for hour upon hour and never be satisfied.

Ha! Ha! Ha! Difference of sex makes for clear-sightedness, eh?

The street was dark; the Square was deserted;

the morning sun was still

and did not rise. Sweeney?

Nevertheless I spent less time on the opening caresses in order to get to the concluding ones with which we had just become acquainted.

I lie upon the grass and see the sky. Her dress

billowed in the wind.

He sits for hours staring at the sea.

The way your breasts move as you movethe strangeness of it

It is the womans part

to touch the

hand

to let you know she wishes to be touched

August-

a thrives in the summers carrion

The relationship

between the self-discovering mind and the world, between the self-discovering mind and others, is one of analogy. I can find myself not by looking inward but by looking outward (invidia, envy, mania)

He stared upon the table on which a knife a fork and a spoon had been carefully arranged

There are, uh, times I forget

I meant to

to forget

times I do not want to

to

remember

Its possible he has another reason for acting as he does. Its possible he genuinely has something to hide.

Dawn light

mechanical and

human figures

catch the light

Think not, revolted Spirit, thy shape the same,

Or undiminisht brightness, to be known

As when thou stoodst in Heavn upright and pure (thrives in the summers carrion)

sunlight? here? through a single

shaft

What are the names of the Seven Dwarfs? loneliness at the

Slothful, Envious, Lustful, Wrathful, Shameless shopping mall

contradictions explanations

you who turn the wheel

an immense Being who alone remains eternal amidst the continual change and ceaseless transformation of all that constitutes him

are you as good at sex as you are at literature?

For he whose mind is fixed upon true being has surely no time to look down upon the affairs of earth or to be filled with malice and envy, contending against men; his eye is ever directed towards things fixed and immutable, which he sees neither injuring nor injured by one another, but all in order moving according to reason; these he imitates, and to these he will, as far as he can, conform himself.

you complain about obscurity

and assert that my poetry

is overly intellectual.

You assume in saying this

that however complicated

intellectual

matters may be, in matters of

emotion

you stand with the poet

on common ground.

But is it not possible

that the poet has

felt something which you have not yet

felt

or have not yet recognized as

feeling

that it is an emotional

not an intellectual

obscurity

to which you object?

And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened. Imagine mankind living in a cave with a long entrance open to the light; in this they have been since childhood.

A friend is a relative. To have right expresses an obligation. About half the families have horse-drawn mowing machines. Those who have them mow their own meadows, working from earliest morning as long as light holds. They work with the aid of their sons and of boys from the families which have no machines. At each stage of the process a boy not a member of the family gives his labour and takes his place at meals during the day.

I am patriotic and it may be a bad thing to say but I think that the school system they have now is bad and that the teaching of Irish is bad. In my day and before, a man might go to school when he couldmaybe for only three months in the year. But he would know more then than they get now when they go to school all the time. The old people learned more then too. When a child finished school he would be expected to read a newspaper to the old people or to write a letter for them or to do sums. And he would do it well. a system which to his mind makes no provision for the mutuality between young and old

and when one of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of what in his former state he had seen only as shadows

Things are cast adrift, more or less like one another without any of them being able to claim the privileged status of model for all the rest

Sweeney moved amongst the branches making a tremendous sound in the / head which listens

How is talk measured, love Beyond the obvious

stained words

restrained

hearts clue

spoken

Continual changesareevery instantoccurringto everyman

*

epi-logos

I would never have by myself undertaken the task of establishing such a collection and, grateful as I am to Bill Germano for his initiative, I confess that I still look back upon it with some misgivings. Such massive evidence of the failure to make the various individual readings coalesce is a somewhat melancholy spectacle. The fragmentary aspect of the whole is made more obvious still by the hypotactic manner that prevails in each of the essays taken in isolation, by the continued attempt, however ironized, to present a closed and linear argument. This apparent coherence within each essay is not matched by a corresponding coherence between them. Laid out diachronically in a roughly chronological sequence, they do not evolve in a manner that easily allows for dialectical progression or, ultimately, for historical totalization. Rather, it seems that they always start again from scratch and that their conclusions fail to add up to anything. If some secret principle of summation is at work here, I do not feel qualified to articulate it and, as far as the general question of romanticism is concerned, I must leave the task of its historical definition to others. I have myself taken refuge in more theoretical inquiries into the problems of figural language. Not that I believe that such a historical enterprise, in the case of romanticism, is doomed from the start: one is all too easily tempted to rationalize personal shortcoming as theoretical impossibility and, especially among younger scholars, there is ample evidence that the historical study of romanticism is being successfully pursued. But it certainly has become a far from easy task. One feels at times envious of those who can continue to do literary history as if nothing had happened in the sphere of theory, but one cannot help but feel somewhat suspicious of their optimism. The Rhetoric of Romanticism should at least help to document some of the difficulties it fails to resolve. (Paul de Man, 1983)

Los Angeles,

by its absence

dominates everything

Sharp-eyed lynxes

watch us: Goyim?

How can one

begin

To think of you I

move

Hello, Tiny

In the evening, in the rain

of birds

a harvest-

wealth-

NOTES

This poem is a fantasia based on a medieval Irish poem called Buile Suibhne. Buile Suibhne was translated first by J.G. OKeefe in 1913 as Sweeney the Mad and then by Seamus Heaney in 1984 as Sweeney Astray. My poem is not a translation, but I do use the Irish poem as the basis for themes and variations of my own. John Anson is a friend of mine who published a sequence of a hundred roundels, Sessions and Surroundings: A Centuriy of Roundels. I responded to his sequence with my one. My proper name is "John," and my mother's name was a variant of "Ann," so I am in a sense "John, Ann's son."

__________________________________________________________________

BRIDGET, PRONOUNCED "BREED"

from the look of her not too good but I expect shell recover

it was like walking with the sun

who are you

to tell me

what to do?

(night falling)

strange aims

strangeness

nothing

to speak of

hot

night

endless

it was

hard

it was

hard

for a very

long

time

feelings which are

settled

no longer

settled

why dont you just

take the car?

I wish I could

speak

I no longer feel

as though my feelings

Much past experience convinces me that my capacity for self-delusion in these matters

is strictly speaking: boundless

When I took her home she stayed very close to me as we walked as we walked.

Her sheer presence was dazzling, wonderful. It was like walking with the sun.

What do we read

as we read

books unreadbarely regarded

Thinking is still contained in perceiving. Perceiving is still a thinking of the senses.

Thinking isThinking

To overcome the world means to behold the world as it was before it became dead in us

During the months before the first menstruation, and for some time immediately afterwards,

girls are often passive, seem sleepy, and withdraw into themselves

I guess the aleatory look of the spattered paper is supposed to play off the rigid deliberation

of the ruled lines, but the results are consistently boring.

Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the age

of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance on human promises?

lotus-bearer

lord of the world

lord of what we

see

is also a timid man, this violence is never expressed physically but only verbally

in the manner of certain painters who paint the same painting over and over

again, writes the same poem over and over again. Form is not at /

issue

The beloved

speaks, softly, out of a

machine, her voice

broken with

sorrow

I can barely

listen to y-

ou I

fall in love

whenever

I hear

you

speak

She is: beautiful blue-eyed red-haired self-destructive

She is: dark, with gray in her hair

what does it mean to love

it is a kind of fiction

an agreement to be deceived

it is a

word, spoken, in haste,

powerful with

fiction

The link in my mind between self-consciousness and religion. Religion is a

mode of self-consciousness which doesnt admit to its own bases. A mode of

self-remembering which continually manifests itself in an effort to forget. But

imagination = self-consciousness

that guiding point to which we can

re-

turn (thoughts tower)

There are all these women. Which of them do you want?

You.

Thanks for the drink and the conversation. Id like more of both.

secret lookscharms

words meant only for

With his thing out.

With his thing out.

With cum on his thing.

With cum on his thing.

And the cum is soiled.

Well, said the little girl in the tree, some people call me Mother Elderberry;

others call me the dryad; but my real name is Memory. I sit in the tree that

grows and grows; I can remember everything and therefore

I tell

stories

Rs fear that if she analyzes it it will go away (the childs fear of thought; the

association of thought with death and growth); her Im a big girl now; her

fascination with/fear of deathall these suggest that she has reached a

transitional point in her life but that she lacks the resources to make the leap.

At her age (34) she is getting rather desperate. Prescription: NO love affairs,

womens groups for at least six months

Had you followed your impulses here you might have arrived at something approaching

understanding. But no, you chose to remain the critic, the judge, the expert.

What Is...remains elusive.

You cant name them because the power is too direct. But you can refer to them

indirectly.

They are called The Shining Onesones who inhabit any body.

At the

slipping (shopping)

center it is

warma warm breeze

(not

enough)

I

close

my

eyes

She looked at me the way any man wants a woman to look at him. She looked:

radiant, beautiful. She was all the women I had ever desired. She told me she

was about to throw up.

your bodyendlesstime

sweeps everything (wait and

and see) In the field the children dance. I wish.

My son

chases

the

ball.

Time fixes everythingin the sense of

affixes, immobilizes it

light

covers everything, touches it

deeply

as I

touch

you

or would

touch

you

(eyes

!) It was the good crossing guard, Mary Foley. She stood in the

path of a runaway car and pushed seven children to safety. My first thought

was that a child had been hit, said Sister Charlotte Ann, but no, it was Mary.

We heard brakes screech and children scream. The kindly granny had helped

youngsters survive the busy intersection near St. Marys Grammar School in

, for 10 years before her final act of love ended in tragedy. The

outstanding thing about Mary was her giving character, said the Rev. John Finn,

pastor of St. Marys. There was not one selfish thing about her. She gave her life

to the children.

How does love

linger in ushow does it

speakhow does it

rise

again

what is the source of this

connection?

A strong ascetic element was present in Irish monasticism from the beginning,

based on that of some of the early fathers who lived far from civilization in the

desert; so that in remote and practically inaccessible places we find not only

provisions for solitary hermits, but also small monasteries with two or three cells

that might better be called communal hermitages.

And so, just as from the Fancys image, taken from the body, there arises in the

appetite of sense a love inclined toward the senses, so from the intellects

universal species or Reason, which is entirely remote from the body, there arises

in the Will Another Sort of Love

Stunned

in this

wretchedness

of silence

im-pression ex-pression de-pression pressure

what is it, love? speech!

it is therefore supposed

the lion continues

destruction of structures

means eye and foundation

jeered at as men

superficial appearances

are transmutations

on this account

to the path of Gimel

subconscious level

was patroness,

a curve, which could,

the history of Poetry

is a History

of Loss

It is necessary

to put fresh flowers

on her grave Thin, beautiful body. Her

father photographs, loving, but there is an edge to his voice, a sharpness. Rita,

listen. Not for long now.

The abstracting by which she is able to make her points is also true of the

magazine as a whole. What McLuhan calls a galaxy or constellation of events is

absent from her work. Despite the attempt at variety among the articles. Love =

power = imagination

The gods of the North have suffered two eclipsesfirst by the advent of

Christianity, which destroyed their shrines and condemned their stories, and

then by the Classical Renaissance, which as early as the 12^th century gave

a repertoire of Greek and Roman myths which almost completely

annihilated the Germanic

seeing at once too many people and too fewhaving the wrong

relationship

to people

What I call the auditory imagination is the feeling for syllable and rhythm,

penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling, invigorating

every word; sinking to the most primitive and forgotten, returning to the origin

and bringing something back,

seeking

the beginning

and

the end

eyes

elusive

distanced polytropon voyager

(that man

that came out

of the sea)

I dont know what to do. My editor hated the book. She cut out all of the

history, all of the anthropology, and left me with just a few insights and a bunch

of sex stories.

I know what to do! Cut the insights.

Sam Spade looked up as Brigid OShaughnessy popped another pill. You dont know

what the fuck youre talking about.

I am the wind on the sea

I am a wave of the ocean

I am the roar of the sea

FIERY

BURNING

RED-HEADED

WOMAN

Bridget is the ancient Irish goddess of fire, poetry, fertility, household arts, smithcraft, etc. Christianized, she became one of the patron (in this case, matron) saints of