“The Death Issue” December 2015 1

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go, and the guy will always say, rather than pay the fine he couldn't afford, or sell his guitar so he could pay the fine, or try to do the time in prison, he would go and do the picking. So at cotton picking time, anybody who was on the road mobile, could get picked up by the sheriff with a deal that was done directly with the landowners, so that – the landlord would pay the guy, the sheriff would get money – and he would get cheap labour, free labour. So, they'd be more susceptible because they weren't already tied down to something, indentured if you like. So this figure of the blues man, the badass, this was an intriguing figure for me. But this was also an outlaw of the old romantic mythos, of premedieval times OV: yeah, the rogue knight JB: the outlaw, if you think of someone who was the most prepossessing figure in Arthurian romances then it's Lancelot OV: who has no master, and chooses JB: so he's essentially an outlaw. Any story that he's in, he's left his liege, he's left his power structure that he fits into, he's looking for something better than that, and he gets into, chooses an Arthurian court, and of course then he falls into something else, a certain ideal of romantic love. You know, he, he's the knight par excellence of a knight, but has to – as it were – become a kind of outlaw at the beginning to enter into Arthur's world, because Arthur's other guys are almost always part of the court already. OV: and it's repeated so often, if you think about in Japan, the Ronin, the masterless samurai, who are subject to – star in – more films, like Kurosawa's, than the actual samurai do because they are much more attractive, powerful JB: yeah, and that plays a part of Japanese history that Kurosawa finds very interesting, which is that point at which you know Japan was - OV: Westernising JB: yeah, westernising, in a way, but certainly thinking about modernising in that disastrous way that they called the reconstruction of the labour party modernising. Modernising the new labour party i.e., not the labour party at all. That's what happens. There was even a ban on making swords. I mean, I'm very interested in Japanese art and, 23
one of the things that was very interesting was the sudden growth, people making metallic – gold and bronze and silverware – steel, that and skills that they would have used for the sword making and now they were using for making metal objects. So these guys were out there and the only thing they've got is their sword, they've got a weapon of mass destruction in their hand and they're not allowed to use it. Kurosawa's not romantic about that. If you look at the seven samurai these guys are scrambling around just to get some rice. They've, you see a mass of swordsmen, at the back somewhere. And at the end of the seven samurai, where they turn around, these people are afraid of them. OV: and when they bury them it's their swords in that scene where it looks up over the hill and their swords are in the earth JB: which isn't the sort of thing they'd done, wouldn't have thrown away the sword! [Laughs] Someone would have removed it OV: later that night JB: yeah! OV: could I ask you to read another poem? I was thinking something from Black Cat Bone, I was thinking The Fair Chase, but it's so long. JB: that's one I think of, for example, that can only really work on the page for most people who read it, as a sustained piece that you can't imagine, some of the nineteenth century poets, well, they did actually, reading out whole long poems OV: in that event, I'd wanted to talk a little bit about animals. Because I think there's something very interesting - I mean the way you're talking about these animals who are in some way unknowable. Would 'Creaturely' be okay, to draw us toward those animals? JB: sure The only gift is knowing we belong to nothing. Midsummer's night in the drunk tank, moon on the walls 24
Page 2 and 3: A LITERARY MAGAZINE OF POETRY, INTE
Page 4 and 5: CONTENTS Editorial - p. 4 HARKview
Page 6 and 7: “when I say that poetry makes not
Page 8 and 9: language and kind of professional a
Page 10 and 11: OV: and in actually writing your po
Page 12 and 13: they came from, patent shreds of Ba
Page 14 and 15: do you see the role of those, of th
Page 16 and 17: going along a street in Berlin, you
Page 18 and 19: - do you find that's where your pol
Page 20 and 21: If you can get someone like that to
Page 22 and 23: different from that solitary experi
Page 26 and 27: and something like a fox scouting f
Page 28 and 29: And I don't care what anybody says,
Page 30 and 31: things, pursuing sex, pleasure all
Page 32 and 33: sudoku, can be done in seconds”,
Page 34 and 35: alloon, and it -it's a boy actually
Page 36 and 37: pool, as “a moon affected by the
Page 38 and 39: All Kinds of Old Feeling John Burns
Page 40 and 41: Exile Nels Hanson My farming life i
Page 42 and 43: Island Ryan Van Winkle when the wat
Page 44 and 45: Catcher Hugh McMillan (In his log,
Page 46 and 47: Inherent Vice Constantin Preda When
Page 48 and 49: Mother Roux Katarina Boudreaux Five
Page 50 and 51: Encore Bacchus descends from the st
Page 52 and 53: Minnows’ Ladder James Reidel Minn
Page 54 and 55: Not that I saw Him arrive or leave,
Page 56 and 57: factory, lights a cigarette. “I'm
Page 58 and 59: at 1406 today. Northwest gale 8 to
Page 60 and 61: The Organ Recital Simon Ward They d
Page 62 and 63: church's décor. Between the organ
Page 64 and 65: “Michelle,” he whispers, ”did
Page 66 and 67: Contributors KATARINA BOUDREAUX is
Page 68: RYAN VAN WINKLE is a poet, live art

“The Death Issue” December 2015 1

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