{"id":59739,"date":"2024-03-25T11:54:33","date_gmt":"2024-03-25T15:54:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/?p=59739"},"modified":"2024-03-27T14:37:44","modified_gmt":"2024-03-27T18:37:44","slug":"selected-catastrophes-from-sinclair-beiless-sacred-fix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2024\/03\/selected-catastrophes-from-sinclair-beiless-sacred-fix.html","title":{"rendered":"‘Selected Catastrophies’ from Beiles’s Sacred Fix<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

“Selected Catastrophies” \u2014 subtitled “In the Cavern of the Damned” \u2014 is the fourth section of a book of poems by the incandescent South African poet Sinclair Beiles<\/a>, entitled Sacred Fix<\/a><\/strong>. It was edited by Gerard Bellaart and published in 1975 by Cold Turkey Press<\/a> in a limited first edition of 250 copies. This poem comes fifth in the section. Its prescience and despair are striking, don’t you think? <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

society!\nI will not support you\nwhen you shed your hideous electronic disguises\nand stagger through the alleyways of oblivion\nlooking for shelter. \no society you betrayed me\nwith your promises of paradise\nand then I found you out and kept to myself,\nand now the whole world has found you out\nand is banging at your deserted edifices\ndemanding new lives.\nsociety! you have left a wake of perplexity behind you.\nyour experts, disillusioned, are casting themselves into the sea.\nthe whole damned pantomime has come to an end\nand people are searching for themselves\nin the rubbish dumps . . . \nsociety\nwhich destroyed souls\nand implanted a supersoul\nan inferior mass soul\nhas lost all its energy\nand fled. society, if you stagger by me\ncarrying your disguises under your arm\nI will trip you up and laugh.  <\/strong><\/pre>\n\n\n
\n
\"Sinclair<\/a>
Sinclair Beiles (1930-2000)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Here is the fourth poem in that section. It illuminates Beiles’s desperate state of mind when he was writing these poems.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
there is a way of committing suicide\ncalled poetry\nthere is a way of taking a knife\nand carving from the infinite nothingness of the sky\na solitary cell\nin which one spends a lifetime pacing about\noccasionally shouting messages\nthrough the barred cell window\nat different passers by.\nthere is a way of trying to create a universe\nwith all its constellations\nfrom the view of people scurrying by\nin the rain with their umbrellas up,\na way of ruling a nation of shadows.\nthere is a way of imagining\none possesses all the secrets of the soul\nand this gift will provide one with freedom,\na way of imagining all the sights\nnot yet photographed by the travel agencies\nthere is a way of believing\none has special dreams . . .<\/strong><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
With thanks to Gerard Bellaart who sent me images of the original mimeographed version of “Selected Catastrophes.”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
‘Sacred Fix’ was published in 1975. ‘Selected Catastrophies’ is the fourth section of the book. The author is an incandescent South African poet, who died in 2000. The poem begins:<\/p>\n
“society!
\nI will not support you
\nwhen you shed your hideous electronic disguises
\nand stagger through the alleyways of oblivion
\nlooking for shelter.
\no society you betrayed me
\nwith your promises of paradise . . .”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":59741,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26,18,4,23,17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-59739","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"category-literature","9":"category-main","10":"category-news","11":"category-political-culture","12":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/SACRED-FIX.jpeg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-fxx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59739"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59828,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59739\/revisions\/59828"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}