Goodbye to All That

"It is a conversation between angels now
Or between who remain when all are gone..."

So wrote Laura Riding - or Laura (Riding) Jackson as she later chose to be known - American poet, critic, lover of Robert Graves and inspiration for his The White Goddess. Her life spanned the 20th century; she died in its last decade, aged 90. She was one of the first 'Moderns' along with Eliot, Stevens, and Joyce, and was spoken of with the same respect.

About 1941, she turned away from poetry. This, not in the way one might otherwise recognise, where the poet reattunes to a finer key, but as one who recognises the depth of emotional experience within language, and poetry simply as a representative of that depth, but not exclusively so.

To that end, she gave instructions that her poems were not to be republished. For a writer who had achieved recognition in her generation, and whom with Graves had explored further, experimental tracts of language, this was decisive, and not merely a pose.

The lines above were used by me as an epigraph for Available Light, the second volume in Relic Environments Trilogy. At the time, I was unaware of the moratorium on the republication of her poems, and only became aware when I contacted representatives of her estate. In the event, they granted permission for the use of the lines.

Laura's ghost has yet to make an appearance, to chide me for my presumption. Perhaps her lines themselves serve as talisman, "between who remain when all are gone."