Day 1: "Durer: Innsbruck, 1495" by "Ern Malley" aka, James McAuley

Of course, everyone knows the story of Ern Malley by now, the fake Australian modernist poet created by James McAuley and Harold Stewart to mess with Max Harris.  However, "Durer: Innsbruck, 1495" was a poem McAuley had written and not published that he used as part of the hoax.  Maybe the other poetry was not up to par, but "Durer: Innsbruck, 1495" is sheer genius.  The word choice is exquisite (see: "slumbrous heavy air"), and McAuley conveys a very post-modern sense of detachment and loneliness.  The last line, too, is one of my favorites. Read it now, and never forget it.

DURER: INNSBURCK, 1495
I had often, cowled in the slumbrous heavy air,
Closed my inanimate lids to find it real,
As I knew it would be, the colourful spires
And painted roofs, the high snows glimpsed at the back
All reversed in the quiet reflecting waters –
Not knowing than that Durer perceived it too.
Now I find that once more I have shrunk
To an interloper, robber of dead men’s dreams,
I had read in books that art is not easy
But no one warned that the mind repeats
In its ignorance the vision of others. I am still
The black swan of trespass on alien waters.

Tomorrow: Bei Dao.