2POETRYMICHAELMCALORAN
"The Zero
Eye"
with poetry and
poets, with art, it seems a veritable probability that in the
"produce" of this art there are personal developments going on which
affect this art and making it a "developmental" "work in
progress" even if the art executed, in this instance fullblooded poetry,
is expressed in a continuous stream of perfectly formed and inherently
consistent isles of artistry, expression, expulsion even exorcism orexoticism.
this is in my opinion highly the case with michael mcaloran's poetry and the
steady produce of high quality immanently consistent collections of poems
resulting also subsequently in this striking chromatography of books.
the books share one
feature described in many styles,which alone already make michael mc aloran's
poetry a force to reckon with not only within the cusp of irish poetry but
perhaps even more so,within the modern poetry as how it is entamized now, how
it is organized around its topics now. so one thing in particular stands out:
these are not the books of "vanillapoetry" and heidi on the mountain
with her fucking granddad. this is endtime-poetry, perhaps in a tradition of
malcolm lowry, beckett, céline but set in the time now making his poetry the
answer to those eschatologist writers and ending-searching at the desolatest
fields, nonfields, destitute endworlds andinnersarcophagous' milieus,
interstitial, physical and highly visceral"nonplaces" postmortem or
roaming around and across these places of contemporary history of death or even
actual stretches of societal death hidden either or ignored, nevertheless
unoverseeable fields of dereliction, disdirection, despair and an empty
searching to what is known to be nonexistent. (as persistent and where this
doesn't matter anymore in absinthe hazes.)
the paradox now is
that there always has been developmental aspects also in michaels work. yet
within an "endpoetry" at some moment it is really "the end of
the line" which seems to be exhumed. i believe this is the case with
"The Zero Eye", michael’s latest, last, offering of intensely
stylized poems. it is the culmination of the necropolises of our endworld, but
not, as some perhaps safetywise would like to believe, a world to which we are
still heading. no it is the world here and now and formulated with such
acuitry, that it is unsettling and disturbing but also bizarrely veritable and
an astute societal portrayal of the posthuman world into which our world NOW
has grown.
what i want to do
now still, kind of concluding, is to insert two pieces of text out of "The
Zero Eye"and then come with a kind of stupefying conclusion of which i
thought i would never have the fucking analysant brains for it to reach such
lucid clustering contrivance: compression.
"the zero eye
will ever be/ shape without form/ density of rind branded by sting of
inescapable/ rots through unto/ until/ yet given to silence/ scatters breath of
nocturne/ clasp of weight/ says nothing more of I/ clean break/ subtlety of
design/ crafted in absence of voice/ here or there a nothing of/ claimed yet
ever-fading/ yet silenced ever/ still yet/ breakage upon rock of night’s
forever distance"
"in shed of
flame that was never light/ better yes never of it/ bite down upon edge-solace
of/ trade anguish for oblivion/ yet naught as ever/final as/ less or more/ ever
was/ remnants of then or nothing left to/ no/ no breaking forth/ no never
again/ let it/ decline of/ yes death of/ yet will not/ clings unto/ as if to
say/ the zero eye/un-scattered none/ falls unto or not/ utters without pause
for/"
here we have the
writing on the edge, a topic of the specific poetic genre michael excells in
yet not as "a trick" or "device" or profitist mock or
vaudeville stance. it is clear this poetry really costs blood, sweat and tears
and more modern perhaps alcohol, cocaine and cigarettes or otherwise
psychotrope substances even if it is abstinence bc there is a kind of feverish
absolvence at stake, at the stake.
then we reach the
apex really and it is as well the description of infinity or and the aggregate
of finality as a machine whirring at the surf but also in our fucking cities
and the rests of our woods, here is an antiheidicodex as what adorno would
call: "index falsii",or: the whole is unreal, as in a philosophical
treatise on the world, as he also cited somene, in "minima moralia":
"life doesn't live", here we have reached the endworld, ok possibly
(alone much much further) beckett’s "endgame". our posthuman society
as we see buster keaton hustle around in a prepostcataclysmic world in beckett’s
film "film" where all is debris, hubris, rest of nazist capitalist
communist autark islamist zelous clinical murderous afterclang of our sociuses:
it is happened. this is what we wanted.
"(…text no/
this is not a/ this is not/ not this/ is/ a text not/ not this a/this/ this is
not text/ not a text/ text not this is not/ a/ this/not a/ text no this is a/
not a text this/ this is not a/ this not a text is/ this not a/ not a this a
text is not/ not/ not this/ a text/not a/ text not this is a/ this is not a
text this is not a text this is not a text this is not a text this is not a
text this is not a text/ text no this is not a/ text no/ a text not this/ not
a/ text not this is not a…ad infinitum)."
then to recapture a
question somewhere in the beginning of this microdissertation:
"how is this
poetry going to develop?". what L'Wren Scott did today, hanging herself in
her million bucks NY home, friend of mick jagger, fashion designer, apparently
with millions in debt. she hung on a silken shawl on the doorknob. she phoned
her assistant around ten: "can you come?". and this assistant found
her...after such radical theory poetry no, rather a poetry of abnegation more
than absolvence.
michael and i had a
conversation just now where he said:
"we need
something, yes..."
--Aad de Gids
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