one night in london I took the Major to a friend’s poetry reading at the Coronet Theater in Notting Hill. It was his late October, and despite the still raging pandemic, there were signs of autumn in the city. The mellow green-and-gold-striped river meanders past Twickenham’s upscale southwest pocket, where swans, rugby bars and picturesque little boats pass by. When I confronted Majors about his poetry — he often writes in the early morning hours when he’s up, and sometimes when he’s preparing his characters — he really withdrew It was my first time. He knew that I had published several books of poetry and was teaching at a university. I wore a gray suit with a striped tie. He wears his trusty red wool beanie, his T in navy, black over his shirt, his light overcoat, calf-length moth color wide-leg pants, his ankles, his highs, his lace-ups was doing.Entering the red-carpeted late-Victorian space, he came across a lone acoustic guitar in the corner and began picking up its opening notes. Jay-Z’s “Official Notice (Interlude)” With a sullen smile on his face. After the reading, we drifted into the reception area where he chatted freely and briefly about poetry, naming his favorite poets. Jack Gilbert, Mary Oliver, Anne Sexton, etc. When his editor introduced him as a “breakout star,” he frowned and replied, “Breakout stars don’t last very long.”
He then caused havoc among the assembled poets and editors when he declared “Richard II” to be his favorite Shakespearean play. They didn’t want to believe him because they were fed a constant diet of Americans who professed their love for “The Tempest”. claimed to be. The monologue “No one talks about consolation” and the fact that the whole play is poetry makes it strange. Everyone in the play speaks poetry, regardless of social status. Coincidentally or not, there are no jesters unless you count Richard, the king.
I met him a few days later at his home in Twickenham. Inside, a picture of Muhammad Ali hangs on the staircase. The living room window overlooked the garden and the Thames beyond. Books of poetry, philosophy and photography were piled up everywhere, with the occasional libretto intermingled. On one side of the living room was a treadmill, and on his other two rows were his five Balinese theater masks, neatly aligned, with sculpted faces spanning the color spectrum. Though cryptic, they were full of meaning.
I was used to playing his guitar and reading the scattered books while killing time in this riverside rental house in the neighborhood where “Loki” star Tom Hiddleston tipped him off. . The book The Poetics of Relations by the great Martinica philosopher and poet Edouard Glissant particularly caught my attention. “There’s some kang energy in there,” Majors told me. Glissan’s beautifully complex book is a masterpiece of Caribbean thought. And while its focus is on that part of the world, its central idea is more universal. So, basically, Western culture has championed linear progress, finding legitimacy through the linearity of time and a direct connection to the mythologized past. advocating radical change. In other words, he wants to push simultaneous pluralism beyond Western ideals of hierarchy and linearity. He couldn’t help but think of the Major when he got to a passage near the end of the book. And a wealth for the imagination—there are so many open and closed places in the world, but look at him.