Cracked Marys & Crazy Janes

"A woman can be proud and stiff
When on love intent;
But Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent."

from "Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop"
W.B. Yeats, Words for Music Perhaps (1932)

After a brief hiatus for vision-seeking and spirit-talking (and, let's face it, craft-beer-drinking in Michigan), Biblioasis's daily poems are back. And because walking in downtown Detroit is sometimes enough to put the best of us in the mood for crazy, I thought I'd take a minute to talk about Cracked Marys (the several homeless women said to have inspired one of Yeats's most well-known personae), and Crazy Janes (the poems in turn that inspired our own Wayne Clifford's Jane Again).


Yeats had been contemplating the persona of Cracked Mary for almost 30 years before he published Words for Music Perhaps. A 1904 note to The Pot of Broth mentions having borrowed a tune from "an old woman known as Cracked Mary, who wanders about the plain of Aidhne, and who sometimes sees unearthly riders on white horses coming through stony fields to her hovel door in the night time." There was another Cracked Mary, furthermore, with whom George Yeats had many conversations: "she was a bit touched in the head," George wrote. "But it was a head full of amusing, often obscene stories about things she'd see on her rambles. I used to seek her out and get her to tell them to me. Then I'd go home and tell W.B. ... He loved them. He asked me to get as many as I could for him. And so I saw a good deal of Cracked Mary at that time." The phrase Cracked Mary, as Clifford observes, "might translate today into 'street person', one of the homeless that the system has dispossessed." There were likely a few Cracked Marys in Yeats's acquaintance.

Yeats wrote several poems on Cracked Mary before he changed the name to Crazy Jane: the most famous of the latter are, as above, "Crazy Jane talks with the Bishop," and "Crazy Jane on God," but others include "Crazy Jane grown old looks at the Dancers," "Crazy Jane Reproved," and "Crazy Jane and Jack the Journeyman." As the stanza from "Crazy Jane talks with the Bishop" indicates, Jane's obscenity and contrary spirit was frequently used by Yeats to point out--quirkily but not cruelly--institutional and social hypocrisies. (The bishop Jane meets tries to persuade her to contemplate the afterlife by observing that her tits are flat and fallen, poor lass. What's the point of earthly life without those?)

Anyhow. Below are a few of my favourites from Clifford's work, which (in his words) is an imagining of "what might have given her the sauce" to flip the bird to the bishop like that. Lovely lovely lovely. The image above I thought nifty if only because it points to a gentling of the critique Yeats levels when he changed the name.


Crazy Jane Contends with Gravity

I caught you thinking of black holes
in which the all of something falls
to point so mootly singular,
this girl with God must mingle her,
so that it never be denied
there in the straitness of that Now,
I held my newborn dead and cried
but None replied, for None cared how.

Jane’s Eighth Sea Song

I bore a daughter dead
and set her in the sea
on wracky, makeshift bed,
not to come back to me.

The dear that men contrive
to land up on the shore
cheats thus her face alive,
if still I ask no more,

but they, their cargoes, catch,
their wreckage, grief and ghosts
together will not match
my wealth the sea-greed boasts.

Crazy Jane is in the World

Wayne Clifford's Jane Again should begin hitting bookstores across this land sometime this week, so, in anticipation, another SCRIBD sneak peak.

Jane Again by Wayne Clifford

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Non-fiction Books poetry literature

Crazy Jane Curses Her ReMaker

Wayne Clifford's Jane Again arrived yesterday, and she looks fabulous. Though she's not at all courtly, and evidenced in this second poem from the collection CrazyJane Curses her Remaker.

Crazy Jane Curses her Remaker

Who thinks he knows a self
that never was but song
a man once used for shelf
to rest his pretense on

has doubled breadth to Her
Who Measures out the Fire
thru which you call me here,
so intent on answer.

You fail to see I’m bait
the question’s set aslant.
If you can’t see the back,
my face convince you yet,

as Helen took in Faust,
and, succubal temptress,
so usered him the cost
embalmed in each caress,

that once belief had spread
through every of his senses,
desire turned to dread
to pinch his own pretenses.

May what fame be sudden
as grass kindling;
all you guess, hidden,
endless riddling;
may trust be rotten;
vows piddling.

May beggar ghosts wheedle
what god you surmise
to bless your eye by needle
camel-wise.

30 in 30: Poetry in April

Back from Toronto, a quick stop to tie up what loose ends I can before heading down tomorrow to the Magic Kingdom. Over at Julie Wilson's magnificent Seen Reading she's started her 30 in 30 celebrations, and the archive is up, which promises to be at least as good as the official program.

The whole archive is worth taking a look at, but I'll highlight two: Wayne Clifford, reading from Crazy Jane, and from W.B. Yeats, and Zach Wells's Winter from this fall's Track & Trace, a collection I've just finished reading in ms form, and a damn fine one it'll be.

More to follow over the course of April. But if I were you I'd be bookmarking this one, and checking back daily for what looks set to be a wonderful, wonderful series. My thanks to Julie for doing it.

Crazy Jane Talks With the Bishop

Crazy Jane, the heroine of Wayne Clifford's forthcoming collection Jane Again, was originally a creation of W. B. Yeats, who based her on a vagrant woman known by the name of Cracked Mary. Clifford gives his own Jane much more elbow room in this collection than Yeats did in his own work -- there's not many more than half-a-dozen Crazy Jane poems in the Yeatsian repertoire. In an interview with press intern Laurie Smith we'll be posting here closer to the book's launch, Clifford recalls first coming across Jane while reading as a teen in his local library. It was in a poem entitled Crazy Jane Talks With the Bishop, and it's been lingering with me for many a week since I first read it.

Crazy Jane Talks With The Bishop

I met the Bishop on the road
And much said he and I.
'Those breasts are flat and fallen now,
Those veins must soon be dry;
Live in a heavenly mansion,
Not in some foul sty.'

'Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul,' I cried.
'My friends are gone, but that's a truth
Nor grave nor bed denied,
Learned in bodily lowliness
And in the heart's pride.

'A woman can be proud and stiff
When on love intent;
But Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.'

One more thing...

Julie Wilson's 30 in 30, for National Poetry Month, which will include poetry from two Biblioasis poets, Zach Wells and Wayne Clifford. I've heard Wayne's recordings, from his forthcoming Jane again and some of the Yea's's poems that inspired him, and they are absolutely fabulous. the whole project will be as well, I'm certain.


30 in 30 from Seen Reading on Vimeo.

(Just learned this embed thing. Pretty neat: you can teach a luddite publisher new tricks, at least if they are simple enough.)

Introducing Wayne Clifford's Jane Again

The proofs to Wayne Clifford's wonderful collection Jane Again arrived in the post today, so it seemed a good time to introduce you to her. Yes, as this first poem in the collection indicates, you may have met her before: W. B. Yeats made use of her in a rather self-serving fashion in a handful of poems a few years back. She's given much more elbow room here, and has been given close to a century to stew in her juices, resulting in an irreverent, bawdy, humourous, thoughtful and moving collection, our only poetry title this spring. Jane has agreed to make a few appearances here between now and the time of publication, so do check back.

Crazy Jane Gets Born Again

Yeats drew her old so she’d agree
with what his doubt of age declined
to credit to mortality
the moment body’s left behind.
Her scoffing was his guarantee.
He knew the game whereby skull grinned.

Ask her, then, what she remembers
breath-robbed in that old man’s mind.
Have her count back gyral numbers
ruffling on his pinioned wind.
She’ll cite his vulgate to pretenders
her heart’s pentecosts rescind.

Allow she satisfy your fright;
take her passion yours for free;
tell her she must quench the night
no less than stairs down to the sea.
Chant her porous as the light
shades may write on, that you see.

As you bunk alone down by her,
try, with angel-wrestling might,
to mix some pity with your hunger.
Make your purpose angel’s plight,
that no trite hope be her torture,
no sane, considered love, her flight.