Fantasies and Heroes

Publication Instance Details #3206

Publication Overview

Translation	Is Multilingual	Explicit Irish Context?	Ekphrasis	Has Paratext?	Reference to News, Media or Technology
No	No	No	No	No	Yes

Details

Human Rights Issues	War HR & Environment HR & Colonisation/Colonial Legacies Democracy/elections/public participation Racism/anti-Semitism/Sectarianism Health
Languages	English
Genre	Long (narrative) Poem
Medium	Print Collection
Notes	The intertextual poem begins and ends with the image of trains that seem like visions. The speaker refers to a wounded consciousness and to injustices while the lines take us on a journey from Mongolia and Genghis Khan to India and the US. In what reads as a dream sequence, the White House serves as the backdrop of the speaker's encounter with artists such as S.J.Perelman, Groucho Marx, Marilyn Monroe, Jelly Roll Morton, and Buster Keaton. The images of Russian political figures such as Alexei Kosygin who was a statesman during the Cold War are juxtaposed to Romantic poets of the past such as Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov. The imaginary quest continues to Mexico between the volcano Popocatepetl and the legendary figure Montezuma, the Aztec emperor of the 16th century who famously contronted the Spanish onquistador Hernan Cortes. The visions culminate in the 20th century: the last lines evoke the last mission of Captain Oates, the British explorer who died of hypothermia during the Terra Nova expedition in the Antarctic.