Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2004. Vol. 4. Eger Journal of English Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 30)

ISTVÁN D. RÁCZ Memory, Writing, Politics: the Poetry of Peter Reading

Memory, Writing, Politics: the Poetry of Peter Reading 9 CIRCUS STRONG-WOMAN CONVICTED OF MANSLAUGHTER. STUDENT 'GOES MISSING' IN AFRICAN MYSTERY. SKINHEAD SETS FIRE TO CAGE-BIRD In what's now Dorset one hundred and eighty-five million years ago, Megalosaurus et al flenched, flensed these bastards to mince. (Collected Poems 231) The scientist, who read his newspaper in the break, returns to his job with his mind still full with the indignation caused by what he has read. As a symbolic wish fulfillment, he plays with the fantasy of villains eaten by the dinosaurs he investigates as a part of his job. Remembering, however, is a complex process, and it creates a basis for more than just emotional fantasising. Archeology itself is also a rationalized form of remembering and a construction of the past, but it cannot be independent from the 'remembering' constructor: the archeologist. The scientist becomes identical "with the implied poet at the end of the poem, since a misprint reminds him of the Japanese meter called tanka

, and his association immediately determines the form of the poem: 'SUPER-TANKA SINKS' (the misprint suggests Baroque, fugal, cumbersome development of the FiveSeven-Five-Seven-Seven. ..) The typo that the persona has so fortunately found (tanka instead of its homophone, tanker

) is a part of a five-syllable headline, which for this very reason could be the first line of a real tanka. This coincidence forms the basis of the stanza, which reflects on itself; a stanza whose theme, in the strict sense, is its own form. It is constructed as accidentally and arbitrarily as the past is in the hands of the archeologist. This is suggested in the next two stanzas, also written in tanka form: What one enjoys most is the manipulation of these hapless things at such impartial distance to fit an imposed order.