Maureen McLane: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Laura M. Slatkin, 2016 Paris

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Belfast

 

Your velvet hills came to me

last night in the pool

how they hugged the fraught city

the pubs filled and buzzing

the Europa unbombed now for years.

Your political murals are kitsch

and history’s a ditch

for lying if we let                                                                   

the gravediggers

name us. Let’s bury

our pseudonyms                     

all undisclosed.

Was Scarlett O’Hara’s father

a blustering Ulsterman

or was he a peasant                                       

like granddad from Wicklow

tender and fond amidst the riot                    

and kind to his slaves

but for the obvious?               

White people are weird

with their vitamin D

and sunravaged skin.

So far from an equator

it’s hard to walk the line        

in a cleaved world.                                        

Orange, green, navy blue

the colors are weapons

as were some horses                                     

in the 19^th century.                             

Freed by machines

see how they race

on fragile ankles—

beauty a late flower

of disuse. Your storefronts

were boarded, your university

Victorian, the linen quarter

defunct. The solid brick

that shelters us unmortared

smashed a window.

Your sky hung low your beer

rode high your visiting Masons

sober and punctual.

A Days Inn here

is a Days Inn anywhere

but for the marchers gathering

their ribbons’ gaud at odds                                        

with their drawn gaunt faces

shut like a purse

around an old watch

that still keeps time

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Maureen N. McLane is a poet, memoirist, critic, and educator. She has published seven books of poetry, including This Blue, Finalist for the National Book Award. She is also the author of an experimental hybrid of memoir and criticism (My Poets), two monographs on British romantic poetics, and numerous essays on romantic-era and contemporary literature and culture. Her poems have been translated into Italian, French, Greek, Spanish, and Czech. Her most recent book is More Anon: Selected Poems (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2021); her next book, What You Want: poems, will be out in spring 2023 from FSG. She is the Henry James Professor in English and American Letters at New York University.  [“Belfast” is from This Blue, FSG 2014]

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     Belfast mural

Comments

[Bill Nevins]

Brilliant witty and most important poem and grand mural illustration. Thanks a million!

[Grace Cavalieri]

shut like a purse

around an old watch

that still keeps time
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

YAY for that!
And I tune in every Sunday for "that" and my ART FIX from curator Winch.

[Terence Winch]

Thanks, Grace. Always good to see you here.

[Richard Vargas]

"White people are weird

with their vitamin D

and sunravaged skin.

So far from an equator

it’s hard to walk the line

in a cleaved world."

She hooked me with those lines, made me read the poem again because of those lines. The poem's images are haunting and keep pulling me in.

[David Lehman]

Maureen McLane is an outstanding talent, and this is a good example of her intelligence and ambition. But though I share Richard Vargas's enthusiasm, I have this reservation. If the passage he quoted began with "Black people are weird," you may be sure that, regardless of what follows, people would object.

[Don Berger]

"the Europa unbombed now for years," "drawn gaunt faces / shut like a purse / around an old watch," the images of this poem keep steadily adding to such a vivid picture of a people's shared life. Nice choice by a fine poet of one equally strong.

[Geoffrey Himes]

I too like my history with wordplay: kitsch/ditch, hung low/rode high, gaud/gaunt.

[Eileen]

This wonderful poem and the accompanying art sends a powerful message.

[Maureen Owen]

Thanks to Maureen and Terence for another terrific poem to steer by!

[Clarinda]

Omg I relate to this entirely. And it is wise and ripe without being pedantic. Slainte, lass, and the grand lad Terence

[Terence Winch]

You can't have too many Maureens.

[Terence Winch]

Thanks, Clarinda!

[Peter Kearney]

The poet portrays a Belfast that is active and peaceful and she wants Belfastians to continue that way by burying the pseudonyms that bespeak conflict. Her fellow citizens needn't be determined by their past, any more than Scarlett was or even horses are. But obstacles remain, typified by too much sun, unclear paths, a smashed window or marchers who gather even now with hidden hostility.