Mary Ellen Bute’s Finnegans Wake
Mary Ellen Bute made Passages from Finnegans Wake in the early 1960′s. We link to it below. Additional information and a larger format version is available from ubu web.
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Archive Feature: Fire
Fire dates from 1989 and is one of the most viewed pages in the archive. It first appeared in The Quarterly.
Fire
The fire was started by a spark
igniting coconut husk
fiber in a cushion maker’s house.
Several people die each year on country roads.
Returning inebriated from taverns,
body heat depleted by alcohol,
they are drawn to warm macadam.
They lie down.
Four out of five drivers stop.
Some are run over more than once.
The fire was started by a spark
igniting coconut husk
fiber in a cushion maker’s house.
They applaud as the hearse drives by.
Victim’s father witnesses the execution,
fulfilling the promise of the day
his son was buried.
The fire was started by a spark
igniting coconut husk
fiber in a cushion maker’s house.
Archbishop orders fiftyfour Templars
burned at the stake
for retracting confessions.
Bearded man stops at the center of the bridge.
He is assigned to the work crews.
He watches two infants and a woman
placed on a grill
over a firey pit.
The fire was started by a spark
igniting coconut husk
fiber in a cushion maker’s house.
First published in The Quarterly
C 1989
Spider
It was a small nervous spider dependent on his web worried about the sound emanating from the braches overhead. They were too loud to be insects, to be food, but they grew louder hence were coming closer. He feared for his web, his days work, coming to ruin. As had happened yesterday, and the day before. Both times, the previous times, the ruin had come silently. He had no warning when the object whatever it was sliced across the center of the web, collapsing it into itself taking his home and store of food with it. When was that? Yesterday, or the day before. Both times it had happened, both without warning. But the details of the one other time he could not recall. Just that it had happened. He knew it had happened because he saw the traces, the ruins, the remains of the previous web dangling from the tree just below him.
But this new sound. This new threat. Was it a threat? Can a spider hear? If a spider cannot hear, then what is the sound? A threat. What will happen?
PROJECT Finnegans Wake: New Reading In Preparation
Based on the response to our October 2009 reading of Finnegans Wake, a new performance is being planned. If you or your organization would like to participate or just stay informed, just leave a comment on this page. (Comments are read, but not made public).
More information for readers.
More on PROJECT: Finnegans Wake
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From Striking 12, GrooveLily’s musical take on New Year’s Eve and The Little Match Girl.
