BLOODAXE BLOGS: LOUIS SIMPSON (1923-2012):‘The American Chekhov’ by Neil Astley
Excerpt:
One night I dreamed that I was walking with other shadowy figures along what seemed to be the bank of a canal, when bullets slashed the trees and shells were falling. I woke and wrote out the dream, and as I wrote remembered… it wasn’t a dream, it has actually happened. For one of the symptoms of the mental disorder that came after the war was amnesis… there were bright patches with darkness all around. How this scene came back clearly.
I wrote it as a poem. I had been reading Heine’s ballads, and the poem took the form of a ballad. As it was a poem, not just memory, I was free to invent.
[The King My Father’s Wreck, pp. 56-57]
No comments:
Post a Comment