Wolf Tongue

BARRY M
AC
SWEENEY

WOLF TONGUE:
POEMS 1965-2000

Barry MacSweeney’s last book,
The Book of Demons
, recorded his fierce fight against alcoholism as well as the great love of those
who helped save his life – though only for three more years. When he died in 2000,
he had just assembled a retrospective of his work.
Wolf Tongue
is his own selection, with the addition of the two late books which many regard as
his finest work,
Pearl
and
The Book of Demons
. Most of his poetry was out-of-print, and much had never been widely published. The
title is his. The cover picture, he hunted down himself.
Wolf Tongue
is how he wanted to be known and remembered.

‘Barry MacSweeney was a contrary, lone wolf. For 25 years his work was marginalised
and was absent from official records of poetry… MacSweeney’s ear for a soaring, lyric
melody was unmatched…his poetry became dark as blue steel, edging towards what became
his domain: the lament’ – Nicholas Johnson,
Independent
.

‘His notion of the artist was formed around a myth of exemplary failure and belated
recognition: Rimbaud was an early model for this… Such Identifications were the basis
for a poetics of direct utterance in which MacSweeney’s voice mixed with others to
inveigh, to celebrate or entreat…
Pearl
, a work of redemptive pathos, evoking the figure of a childhood sweetheart as a presence
in nature, on the confines of social existence, was reprinted in
The Book of Demons
, where he projects himself as maimed and abject, hapless yet percipient victim of
the demon drink, in writing that is both comic and terrifying’ – Andrew Crozier,
Guardian
.

‘MacSweeney’s poetry places a radical, critical energy, unsparing of illusions, and
bitter and comic in its self-appraisal, at the disposal of a clear-eyed celebration
of the world. In lyrical and experimental forms the poet bears outraged witness to
a culture in decline…as battered prophet, demonic wanderer and clown of misspent desire’
– Clive Bush.

Barry MacSweeney made his selection for this book in May 1999, intending to add some
work in progress, so that
Wolf Tongue
could be subtitled
Selected Poems
1965–2000
. Some aspects of the selection were left undecided at the time of his death in 2000.

The arrangement of the poems is his, except for the order of later work, which reflects
when those poems were written, as well as his wish to end the book with
Pearl in the Silver Morning
(Poetical Histories no.49, Cambridge, 1999).
The Book of Demons
(Bloodaxe Books, 1997) would have formed a companion volume to
Wolf Tongue
: the whole of that book (including all of
Pearl
) has been added to the selection Barry made from his other work.

The selection covering the period 1965 to 1986 reprints all the work (except ‘Fools
Gold’) included in the ill-fated three-poet volume
The
Tempers of Hazard
(Paladin, 1993), withdrawn shortly after “
publication
” by HarperCollins and immediately pulped when Iain Sinclair’s poetry list was axed.
The early work includes ‘The Last Bud’, from
Our Mutual Scarlet Boulevard
(Fulcrum Press, 1971), and Barry also wanted two poems from his first collection,
The Boy from the Green Cabaret Tells of His Mother
(Hutchinson, 1968), to be added to this grouping, ‘For Andrei Voznesensky, for her’
and ‘On the Burning Down of the Salvation Army Men’s Palace, Dogs Bank, Newcastle’,
as well as ‘Homage to John Everett, Marine Painter’, whose only previous publication
was in
Poetry Review
(64/2, Summer 1973), then edited by Eric Mottram.
Finnbar’s Lament
is placed later as the ‘comet’s tail’ to
Ranter
(Slow Dancer Press, 1985).

Barry did not intend to include all the poems from
Odes
(Trigram 1978), but left no notes regarding cuts. His only instructions concerned
a small number of poems which were definitely to be included, as well as his wish
to move ‘Just Twenty Two – And I Don’t Mind Dying’ and ‘Far Cliff Babylon’ to their
new positions in this selection. Several of his friends and past editors were consulted
for their opinions as to which poems from
Odes
might be cut, and we have followed the
consensus
view that the sequence should be made available to readers again in its entirety.
The
Six Odes
(1973) selected from
Odes
(1978) for
The Tempers of Hazard
(1993) follow the later published texts.

Barry only wanted ‘Black Torch Sunrise’ included from
Black Torch
(New London Pride Editions, 1977), followed by ‘Far Cliff Babylon’ from
Odes
, and then ‘Blackbird’ (Pig Press, 1980) as ‘Book 2 of
Black Torch’
. Five other long pieces from the ‘Work’ section of
The Tempers of Hazard
complete the selection of longer poems from the period
1977–1986
.

Eight to ten (unspecified) poems were to be included from
Hellhound
Memos
(Many Press, 1993). The eleven poems selected here are those he chose to include
in several readings.

The six poems selected from
Postcards from Hitler
were all written or finished over two days in March 1998, and later published by
Writers Forum in 1999. The earlier poem ‘La Rage’ appeared in
Slow
Dancer
(erroneously as ‘Le Rage’) in 1983, and was placed before other later uncollected
poems. ‘Sweet Advocate’ was published by Equipage in 1999. ‘Totem Banking’ was accepted
for publication by Salt and will appear in
Vanishing Points
in 2003.

‘When The Lights Went Out A Cheer Rose in the Air’ was first published with a page
missing in
Fragmente
, and then complete in
Fat City
and corrected in
Fragmente
. The text here incorporates some later manuscript alterations and other changes included
in a reading Barry recorded in October 1997, when he glossed the title as from a comment
made by country musician and onetime State Penitentiary inmate Steve Earle, who ‘had
a line which says “When the lights go out a cheer rose in the air” in the prisons
because when they turned on the power to the electric chair it meant that all of the
electricity in the rest of the systems drained and all of the prisoners cheered the
soul of the dead man to Valhalla’.

Barry also specified that this selection should not include ‘any of the other 150
unpublished poems in mss’, nor any of the mostly
unpublished
‘Mary Bell Sonnets’, and ‘no translations’. The Barry
MacSweeney
Archive, generously donated to Newcastle University by his family, includes all the
poet’s manuscripts of published and
unpublished
work, together with his personal collection of books including copies of all his
publications.

The convention used in this book for dating poems is that round brackets indicate
publication and square brackets show when work was written. Italicised dates and other
details printed at the end of certain poems are the poet’s own annotations. Idiosyncratic
spellings, from cavalier to mock medieval, are faithful to Barry MacSweeney’s fancies
or flourishes.