From David C. McLean's personal blog:
The book reviewed below, 205 pages of poems, & including a version of the new posthuman poetry manifesto, is on sale at this link. This link is to the book on Amazon UK, &, of course, this link is to Amazon USA.
As always, i would prefer that you buy it from Lulu direct, but, if you
hate trade unions or just need free shipping from Prime, you can use
goddam Amazon.
Very grateful for this review of my (very soon) forthcoming everything essential
by Carolyn Srygley-Moore. Delighted by this, I preserve her formatting
as well as possible, given the exigencies of blogging. I would simply
point out that I am not a philosopher, & am not sure what that would
even mean (thus alluding, & without a trace of embarrassment, to
Derrida), & I would add that memory, fairly obviously, is
confabulation, telling stories. But still it's real, for, like all
illusory constructs, time is perfectly real on its own terms.
Review of everything
essential
A book by David
C. McLean.
By Carolyn Srygley-Moore, author of ‘miracles of the BloG: a series & Ode to Horatio and Other Saviors & other books, also with one forthcoming in the future from Posthuman Poetry & Prose.
Review of
everything
essential
A book by David
C. McLean.
“”
I am no
philosopher.
However I’ve been a reader
And appreciator
of David’s poetry for over a decade. (He is a writer of prose and a
fine photographer as well.) We have also become friends. For a few
years we lost contact. In those years David discovered &
embraced
The Goddess.
When, via social
media,
We first began exchanging writings
David professed a
stern atheism; yet he
Arrived to my work (I then
expressed
Myself as a Christian) without a derisive
Attitude;
he was not contemptuous, and
Was able to read my work without
derision.
That’s where I approach his new book.
With a
blank slate attempted if not completely possible.
“”
McLean is a
philosopher.
I arrive to this book with some cognizance
Of
his prior work, and the tangentiality
That work has to this
book.
“Ghosts.”
That is
My echo. From my sense of his past work & the echo I
cannot shake while reading.
“”
This book ,
Emma, & the poet, fuse into an amazement, a carnal revival
occurring
On the head of a pin. There is no time.
Memory
exists in the sensate, the beast,
A celebration that cannot be
named
For language would corrupt that celebration.
“”
David, the
person, tells me that we — humans, beings, sentient —; have no
past.
Maybe all beings, in fact.
Yet memory, in
these poems, is acknowledged. Remember that language
By no fault
—: corrupts.
This is not the
pop psychology of so called “false memory.” For memory in
these
Poems is. Present carnal sacred.
“”
Is Emma (by the
perspective of one who feels constrained by time as construct) a way
of erasing
History per-say ( which David calls to my attention
as “not mentioned” in the book)
Of radically traveling via
Emma & goddess
Into the past, bringing back with him
The
ghosts that riddled his early
Books with a kind of stasis
however
Appreciative of the absurd //; returning
In Emma’s
skirt pockets ghosts that
Have heartbeats without degeneration,
For time, and the past, are not
To be acknowledged. The
Goddess is.
Without time;
with the circularity, the
Regeneration exigent to the
Goddess
Paradigm:
Emma exists past the perversion by
A
language that McLean crafts
Flawlessly, intensely, even
effortlessly.
As the reader I felt
Gratification that
any
Person could experience love
With the transgressive
intensity
Embodied in these poems.
The blaze, the beauty,
and the
Resultant affirmation of what
Truth can be //:
this is what I take
Away. & I am
Happy, especially for
my friend.
“”
Foucault &
Kafka, the incarceration &
The prisoner of the Penal Colony
::
Are crashed into, crushed as shell to
Grit. & we are
freed. We are
Liberated by a manipulator of
Language//
through
Language. We are left without
Corruption &
the
Feeling Is marvelous.
Hence: even to
those who find history
A weight, a presumptive cargo -/:
To
whom trying to see time as not only irrelevant but nonexistent-:
What is
remembering?
“”
What is sacred?
Not time. Not the past.
But the dance on the head of a pin,
Beyond carnal, love, all consuming.
Emma is a means
of liberation for
Those who devour these poems.
Where decay
& death are acknowledged,
Even death —: endings are
not.
All is infinite. A comforting, and uncomfortable,
insinuation.
“Here we are
memory” is a poem title
That gives me permission to read
These
poems, & my personhood,
As a dialogue & confrontation &
challenge
To /: my history my past. My ghosts
My memory. It
is a profound
Permission coming from David
McLean, grab it.
Writer. Philosopher.
Hold on.
Prepare
yourself for a festival.
Dark & bright,
Carolyn
Srygley-Moore
