Page 67 - The Gonzaga Record 1988
P. 67
THE PROGRESS OF THE GONZAGA LITERARY
SOCIETY (1984-8)
The Gonzaga Literary Society, then just the more loosely bound 'Second
year poetry club', was officially founded on the Ides of March 1984 by
Ciaran Twomey and myself. From then on, the writing of virtually
anything was encouraged by the club's presidents, the best of which -
ranging from poems about rugby victories to the ominous spread of
'shadowy mists' - were pinned extravagantly on the class notice board.
For a club whose nucleus was nothing greater than one shoddy red folder,
meticulously managed by Mr Twomey, our ideas were swiftly adopted,
with subscriptions and pseudonyms pouring in, and subgroups such as
the Anti Literary club, and the Anti Anti Literary club breeding
exponentially. Literary pieces of every form were carved: plays, short
stories, but predominately poems. In many ways, the course adopted by
the presidents became the general course of the club as a whole. Thus
when ministerial interest waned, contributions invariably slackened. And
those trends followed included brief flirtations with premeditative
surrealism, quasi inertia, l'ecrit noire, pseudo-carnalism, Romantic
perceptions of mortality, our latest undertaking, examples of which
follow (I breathe Byron and Sarcophagic Sonnet), and the compendious
Annals, Chronicles and Versions Pruned, and Doctrines of My Ramrod
Self, both written by the epic convention. The greatest achievement of the
club was not its support, which was too harnessed on the fickle winds
of fancy to achieve any degree of constancy, but its ability to link
different propensities and objectives under the all-embracing medium of
literature, whose marked absence of morals and rules, that necessarily
constitutes art, ensured that all had complete and abiding freedom of
expressiOn.
John Healy (S.6)
A SARCOPHAGIC SONNET
I gaze upon thy paled face
Soon to be entombed in somnolence divine.
0 that the knobbed fingers of Death did ever embrace thy soule
And caress thy beauteous form to nature!
I cannot strew thy grave with fragrant petals,
0 my love.
For thou encoffin'd and embalmed
In satin shrouds are not to me beloved
65
SOCIETY (1984-8)
The Gonzaga Literary Society, then just the more loosely bound 'Second
year poetry club', was officially founded on the Ides of March 1984 by
Ciaran Twomey and myself. From then on, the writing of virtually
anything was encouraged by the club's presidents, the best of which -
ranging from poems about rugby victories to the ominous spread of
'shadowy mists' - were pinned extravagantly on the class notice board.
For a club whose nucleus was nothing greater than one shoddy red folder,
meticulously managed by Mr Twomey, our ideas were swiftly adopted,
with subscriptions and pseudonyms pouring in, and subgroups such as
the Anti Literary club, and the Anti Anti Literary club breeding
exponentially. Literary pieces of every form were carved: plays, short
stories, but predominately poems. In many ways, the course adopted by
the presidents became the general course of the club as a whole. Thus
when ministerial interest waned, contributions invariably slackened. And
those trends followed included brief flirtations with premeditative
surrealism, quasi inertia, l'ecrit noire, pseudo-carnalism, Romantic
perceptions of mortality, our latest undertaking, examples of which
follow (I breathe Byron and Sarcophagic Sonnet), and the compendious
Annals, Chronicles and Versions Pruned, and Doctrines of My Ramrod
Self, both written by the epic convention. The greatest achievement of the
club was not its support, which was too harnessed on the fickle winds
of fancy to achieve any degree of constancy, but its ability to link
different propensities and objectives under the all-embracing medium of
literature, whose marked absence of morals and rules, that necessarily
constitutes art, ensured that all had complete and abiding freedom of
expressiOn.
John Healy (S.6)
A SARCOPHAGIC SONNET
I gaze upon thy paled face
Soon to be entombed in somnolence divine.
0 that the knobbed fingers of Death did ever embrace thy soule
And caress thy beauteous form to nature!
I cannot strew thy grave with fragrant petals,
0 my love.
For thou encoffin'd and embalmed
In satin shrouds are not to me beloved
65
