Bleeding Poets: Poetic Off-Licence

Tis the bells of Shandon that sound so grand on,
The pleasant waters of the river Lee.'
-Fr. Prout

The bell sounds
Funereal song.
Gravely, her grieving peals accompany
A wanderer on his last journey.
- Fredrich Schiller as translated by James Clarence Mangan

Bells, bells, bells —
-E.A. Poe

The evening began with an Amstel at Demarchelier on E. 86th Street. I had to go with a cold beer because it was 86 degrees @ 7 p.m. despite autumn at the end of the week. I sat at the bar with a bunch of depressed looking businessmen: "for every storm, a calm and every thirst, a beer."

And speaking of storms, Bleeding Poets by Daniel Reardon is an imaginative supposition of a perfect storm: the meeting between Irish poet James Clarence Mangan (1803-1849) and Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849). The place is the Bleeding Horse pub  in 1847, the worst year of the Irish famine and  two years before the two poets' deaths in '49. The moderator of the meeting is Francis Sylvester Mahony, otherwise known as Father Prout. The priest had been a young Jesuit who left the Society of Jesus and became a Diocesan priest but who never left the aura of sch0larship and philosphy that the Jesuits fostered. He arrives at the Bleeding Horse in search of Mangan who favors the pub. He meets Mangan and to his delight, Poe as well.

Mr. Reardon  tackles a huge subject here to uneven success. At times, the play felt overlong, but Mangan as a fascinating subject paradoxically deserves much more time than the play afforded. Mangan's poetry is known here in the US for his popular rendition of "Kathleen Ni Houlihan" and his brilliant "Roisin Dubh" or "My Dark Rosaleen." That he, "the greatest Irish poet before Yeats" is not more well-known is probably best explained in words other than my own!

"For this Mangan was not only an Irishman, - not only an Irish papist, - not only an Irish papist rebel; - but throughout his whole literary life of twenty years, he never deigned to attorn to English criticism, never published a line in any English periodical, or through any English bookseller, never seemed to be aware that there was a British public to please. He was a rebel politically, and a rebel intellectually and spiritually, - a rebel with his whole heart and soul against the whole British spirt of the age. The consequence was sure, and not unexpected. Hardly anybody in England knew the name of such a person...."

This is from Poems by James Clarence Mangan introduced by John Mitchell. The 1859 publication can be found on Google Books. I noticed with pride that the stereotypers are Rennie, Shea and Lindsay. Relation?

Was Poe indeed  influenced by Mangan's translation of Frederich Schiller's "The Lay of the Bell" to write his own "The Bells"? This I do not know, but I do know that Mr. Reardon was influenced by his days at the Jesuit University of New York, Fordham U. Having the overeducated Fr. Prout - once a Jesuit, always a Jesuit - in the house was a wonderful conceit. And knowing that Poe moved to the rural village of Fordham in 1846 and possibly composed "The Bells" near the University Church belltower helps in decoding the alignment of these literary stars. This is a homage to two countries: Ireland and the Bronx.

This ambitious play was staged as a reading at the newly renovated American Irish Historical Society. The Fifth Ave. building is beautiful and an appropriate site for a period piece, albeit a fanciful one. 19th century echoes still sound through the mansion. Colin Lane, Tom Murphy 

and Rod Brogan were Fr. Prout, Mangan, and Poe,
respectively and reputably. The female actors, Laoise Sexton as the bar maid Mary Malone and Rosemary Fine as Mangan's Maud Gonne, Margaret Stacpool were less lucky in their roles. Poor Mary Malone was simply a straight woman for the blazing personalities at her bar. Margaret Stacpool came into the play very late and needed far too much exposition to establish her character and her reason for being on scene. The actresses were excellent but were limited by the playwright.

Bleeding Poets does a great job straddling the US and Ireland's arts culture but pays nothing but lip service to the horrors surrounding the pub. 1847 was Black 47, a year of transition in the history of Ireland. One question I would have liked the 3 poets to discuss was "is literature relevant during a catastrophe" or "can poems feed people." At times, the sheer erudition in the play could be wearying. The translation of Horace's Odes comes to mind.

But overall the reading, as directed by M. Burke Walker, was hugely enjoyable. The poetry slam when the men recited their "bell" poems had great wit. I look forward to Bleeding Poets coming back in full production in 2009.

Speaking of Edgar Allan Poe, The Living Theatre  is in rehearsals for Eureka, a play based upon Poe's essay on the Creation of the Universe. Rehearsals are free and open to the public: 9/18 7-10 p.m., 9/19 7 - 10 p.m., 9/22 7 - 10 p.m., 9/24 - 9/30 7 - 10 p.m.

After the show, I stepped out onto Fifth Ave. and who is darting past me? Marlo Thomas. I gave full chase to see if it really was that girl, but she was too quick for me. She had a real New Yorker's gait.