The Grapevine Art & Soul Salon

DUBLIN DIARY

Credit to worldfromaboveHD for this warmup video.

Welcome!

We invite all participants in the December 2015 Abroad Writers Conference and others to join us in this special chamber set up for an ongoing salon to share impressions from that time spent together in Dublin and to show and tell what we are up to now.

What we were up to last issue was proudly displaying what may be the ultimate in poet photos, this one of Noel Duffy who was very much with us in Dublin, December 2015, and who still is in communication with many of us on Facebook today. The photo comes from an earlier time, deep inside him (1997), when, while delivering posters, he paused in front of a bookcase at the Winding Stair Bookshop for Mark Curran, who worked there then, to take this shot.

Romantic Poet

The photograph of Noel Duffy from 22 years ago seems to have a life of its own, to be its own poem. We will not strive to pin down the effect, for it doesn't want to be pinned down. Each to his or her own discovery of its vibrance.

We learn from the poet that the photographer "has gone on to great things in his field." We can say with confidence that the poet has, too. See our review of his collection Summer Rain (link below).

What we are up to in Issue 22 is looking into a poem from another Duffy collection, On Light and Carbon, as a point of departure for a conversation on science and poetry and soul to be carried out at length and posted to this column from time to time in the future. First, a look at the poem.

Harmonic Resonance

In Memory of Harry O'Brien

There is a beauty in waves beyond that we see
rolling in from the ocean in cresting lines
crashing against the shoreline of our land-bound lives.

There in the old wood-panelled lecture hall
the bald-headed professor set two pendulums
in motion, each swinging at a different tempo
and joined at the top by a taut shoelace,
it allowing energy to transfer from one
to the other. At first they made a confusing dance,
each moving to a different rhythm, seemingly
separate from the other as they swayed before us.

Yet, as we watched, he drew two sine waves
on the oveerhead projector to demonstrate what
was occurring, each pendulum slightly out of step
chasing the other and sliding gradually closer
as their frequencies moved towards harmonic
resonance, till both waves finally rested upon the other
and the pendulums swung in elegant unison,
a single pure note witnessed, though silent.

Yet, such abstact demonstration in a lecture
theatre, he explained, had meaning beyond
its hallowed walls, this knowledge enough
to stop an army marching as it crossed a bridge
for fear their heavy, unified bootsteps
might hit the structure's hidden timbre
and the edifice would collapse beneath them
in a tangle of masonry and falling girders.
And so such soldiers were instructed
to walk at ease as they crossed its breadth,
their casual steps a brief respite from
the monotony of obedience and order.

And somehow I was reminded there
of my best friend's father who once too
wore the khaki uniform of his majesty's army
in far-off Palestine - and the tuning fork
he would produce from his jacket pocket
when we were kids, striking it hard on his knee,
the metal vibrating in near silence
as he held it aloft, until he rested it on
the bare wooden table in the parlour
and a pristine note was sounded
before he settled down at the piano
to play Schubert's last sonata.

Noel Duffy, On Light and Carbon (London: Ward Wood Publishing, 2013, p. 59). Reprinted with permission of the author.

Enjoy the poem now and watch for future conversation to be announced.

Rejoining Issue 21 now, we have this piece about Ireland and Heaney and a recording of Liam Neeson reading poems of Seamus Heaney.

Ireland Chooses Seamus Heaney Poem as Its Favorite

Liam Neeson Reads Seamus Heaney Poems

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A Beginning ...

It has been more than two years ago, nearing winter solstice, I found myself coming home to a place I left at least a century and a half ago, traveling in the genes of great-great grandparents from Ireland across the Atlantic. They entered the United States to the north and worked their way south, where they settled in to live as I knew their descendents, including my father and mother: as farmers and cotton mill workers, whiskey makers and sellers, who seemed to have no consciousness of having come so far, no Irish brogue, no tales from home, but whose love for storytelling was alive and well in the new world. Those genes finally made their way into education and art in my generation, genes that I passed along to my son Jonathan.

We were coming home to Ireland together in this great aircraft, a mode of travel that didn�t exist when our ancestors left Ireland in ships. Some were called coffin ships because so many of their passengers perished. The great flying machine was bringing us in through a cloudy sky until we got our first glimpses of Ireland�s green fields, a green so deeply rooted that I know it in the color of my eyes.

Maybe you have heard or said some casual thing and then remarked: I can feel it in my bones, and perhaps you meant, as I might have, that you recognize a deep affinity with what has been said. Here, I am talking about that bonedeep affinity that expresses itself in some memories. I felt it entering Dublin and going by taxi to Butler's Town House to check into the Abroad Writers Conference, and walking next door to Ariel House, climbing the stairs to unpack my American self and get her ready to clasp hands with her Irish self and have one of the great times of their life.

While working intermittently on my book manuscript over the past twenty years�the one I brought with me to Dublin for the AWC workshop in December 2015�an image once emerged from the cemetery in front of the church I was writing about, an image of laughter coming from the graves of people long dead and gone. I thought of giving the book, a work of autobiographical fiction, this title: Can These Bones Laugh? The title drifted into my file of possibilities, but the image of memory locked into bones, the longest-lasting pieces of our incarnation, stayed with me.

That notion of bone memory was with me as I began working on the introduction to our Dublin Diary feature for this issue of The Grapevine. I wanted to begin with what it feels like to be a member of the Irish diaspora coming home, of the sense of belongingness that haunted our time in Dublin and in the Irish countryside. Jonathan felt it as well, as you will see in the pieces we include here at this gathering place we are creating for those who spent last December together in Dublin, UNESCO�s City of Literature that holds so many memories of Nobel Prize winners William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney, as well as James Joyce, perhaps Ireland's most famous and esteemed writer who is not among the Nobel winners (though his Ulysses often tops lists of most important novels in the world), and the inimitable Oscar Wilde, whose home and statue are on view.

Below are links to presentations we have put here to get us started. Please join us by sending in any pieces you would like to contribute to the conversation about what it was like to be there last year in December. We are looking for impressionistic pieces of any kind, introductions and reviews of work published, poems, riffs, lasting memories, favorite moments, appreciations, praise, Irishness, food and drink, hospitality ... whatever you would like to bring to the salon chamber in conversation with others.We will put the pieces up as we get them, over a period of months, and we can all browse from time to time to see what's new. Send documents to bknott11@yahoo.com. If you have a photo you�d like others to see, send that as well.

There must be a special place in literary paradise for people who make a career of creating opportunities for others to live creatively, to fulfill potential, to express passion and insight, to contribute cultural wealth to the world we all live in and love. That would link Nancy Gerbault, conference organizer, and Leah Maines of Finishing Line Press, in an eternal cycle of individuating artists creating, recreating, and sharing what they make. A special thanks to Leah for offering me the opportunity to read in Dublin and to Nancy for making our stay in Dublin so lovely in so many ways.

Barbara Knott

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SALON SAMPLINGS

Barbara Knott: Cock on a Cathedral

Barbara Knott: Looking into Small Worlds with Theodora Ziolkowski

Delta Willis, Then and Now

Jonathan Knott: River Watching the Mighty Boinne

Barbara Knott: Review of Noel Duffy's Summer Rain

BarbaraKnott: Riffing on Molly Malone

Josip Novakovich and Delta Willis Photos with Quotation from John O'Donohue on Animals