Francis Combes tr. Alan Dent

If The Symptoms Persist

Smokestack Books/01.18

353 pages 

‘Terror’, said Arthur Rimbaud, in 1873, ‘is not French.’ And while certain events before and since may lend the line a peculiar cuteness, in this work, by Francis Combes, terror is less a historic curiosity than it is a physical presence; a sword wielded, and never unsuccessfully, in the attainment of specific goals, and at the expense of the majority. Terror, in any form, is a tool; to think we exist outside the scope of its utility, advises Combes, is a fool’s paradise.

Terror, indeed, is in the west, and western man is at bay. For against the sociopolitical onslaught, devised by unidentifiable heads – of states, of schools – what may compete? In this realm of hopelessness, angst and ire, man, poet, and man-as-poet are at odds, at sea, at wits’ end. 

Yet, for all that is absent from this world of men, of power and ideas, something remains; an urbanity, perhaps, or a delicacy of touch, that presents an image of the Medusa veiled – she whose repugnance is, by the play of light on the corrupted fabric, made terrifyingly conspicuous.

We begin in the city. Our guide leads us off the high street, and into the alleys, where, trudging through the colon of civilisation, we are introduced to a miscellany of wretches, who, besides being homeless, are voiceless, and nameless, except for the voices and names lent them by our poet-guide, as he tells of a man on on his knees, murmuring pleas, and who 

‘…isn’t praying to God

but humanity….’

A reasonable endeavour, we might assume, yet only

‘A few people give him something 

not many

(just enough to keep him going).

But most of those he appeals to

do as God 

they pay him no attention.’

The poet laments not that the man is ignored, however, rather that the act of ignoring is in some way a virtue; for in this arena, wholly animalistic and political, where a man may prostrate himself before the thoroughfare, at the mercy of foot-traffic, and receive nothing but that which will make his prostration worthwhile, nature has written and cast a play in which the majority, though bullied by the director, are nourished by the sight of an underling; this actor, the runt of the company, by his presence nurtures the vanity of his colleagues. The role he fulfils is definite, one-dimensional, and to the group, indispensable. 

In this way Combes proceeds, giving clear indication that we are in the soft hands of a humanitarian. He is more than that, however: in the ‘Beggar and the a Great Power’, for example, the poet displays a verve, a wit honed as if in the loquacious coffee-houses of Paris, or in the competitive atmospheres of her salons. By this epigrammatic style we are arrested; the reward is instant. The poem itself, lest we skip idly by, is shaped, physically, as a beggar begging. The humour of a Combes is rarely distant.

Likewise in attendance, however, is vitriol. In a poem of two parts, ‘Willy 1’ and ‘Willy 2’, Combes begins hopefully, hinting at the mysteries of the human machine, in expressing that

‘Everyone has within him

possible chasms and summits.’

Yet in the interim separating the two, a change has occurred; the blood has blackened. In ‘Willy 2’, we see that humanitarians, like the rest of us, have breaking points:

‘We brought you home

collarless dog.

You betrayed us and tricked us

as 

not even a dog would.’

The weaponisation of words, embittered yet potent, reminds us of Celine; and as with Celine, we find ourselves with the sense of dealing not with a devotee, but with an empath tormented. 

With an appreciation of where our guide is coming from, we encounter, in ‘Sililoquy’, another man of few means, ‘talking to himself and making expansive gestures’. Here, we’re advised, is a gladiator in training, whose inscrutable programme inspires wonder in its witnesses

‘Perhaps he’s rehearsing

a great speech

in which he will throw

his essential truths

in the face of the world’

Though the object of our attention is ‘an old Algerian’, we are encouraged to the belief that this man, against the world – unspecific though that enemy might be – will prove a formidable opponent. Yet the world, astute as it is, and, having read Sun Tzu, ‘for the moment’, alas,

‘prefers to avoid him.

It doesn’t want to meet him

and turns its back on him.’

Our hero’s training is for nought. He’s made to wait,

‘But then

he is used 

to waiting.’

In war, of course, patience is a virtue. However, against this opponent, whose reserve is universal, and whose army is omnipresent, he made to wait risks waiting forever. 

Similarly terse is an offering titled ‘The Age of Gathering’. In thirteen short lines this piece paints a portrait, in documentary fashion, of destitution in the modern age. Using as its model the proto-societies of our ancestors, it speaks of men and women who 

‘are reduced to walking for hours

            in the streets 

their hands outstretched 

in search of food.’

The primary asset of the poem is its emotionlessness; by relating banal observations and making a loose association, this miniature stimulates a series of small but palpable sensations in the mind of the reader; we are led to ponder the trajectory of man’s evolution, his changing relationship with nature, and his cognitive development. By bringing to mind the age of the hunter gatherer, with its dark and occult terror, we nevertheless find ourselves longing for the simplicity, the accord we imagine was theirs; to those early societies, the fruits of the world were available; all that was required was diligence, determination, and, perhaps, a touch of ingenuity. 

Yet for modern gatherers, the field of play is different. These bipeds, emerging from forgotten alleyways, venture forth as if by ritual; the cosmopolis is laden with sensory treasures, teems with the culinary vapours of the globe, yet the participants in our little documentary remain unnourished, and return to the innards of the city ritualistically, a little hungrier, and no wiser. In this steel and plate-glass arboretum, even the greenery, strategically planted at the behest of a local governmental committee, provides no succour:

‘(But even the trees 

do not appear to see them.)’

As is common among postmodernists, Combes has a penchant for shock. His ability to lull a reader, utilising rather pedestrian imagery delivered in the cadence of a tour-guide, sets us up for a jolt, and, occasionally, sends us roaring, outraged, back to the ticket-seller.

For example, in ‘Intimacy’, we are shown, ‘a few feet from the Arc de Triomphe’:

‘a woman, standing next to her igloo tent

on the pavement, 

her little knickers around her ankles’ 

As she

‘carries out with a bit of rag

her intimate

washing.’

The slow-moving serpent of cars is transfixed, its occupants, we imagine, given to disgust, some to horror, a few to helpless voyeurism; while others may stare straight ahead, endeavouring at all costs to forget. But sometimes to forget is impossible; an image may burrow, like a parasite, into our memories, and there feed on our endorphins; notions of security, identity, strategy, may find themselves troubled, undermined by one peculiar, and peculiarly potent, representation. 

In this way, Combes indicates, the dispossessed have a role, though it is not a role they, or anyone, would have wanted. A homeless individual is necessary, in this conception; their utility is psychological, they are as the street-lights or park-benches; they provide succour. By their hunched postures and dripping vestments they affect in passers-by a sense of order, of good fortune; by their ability to shock and disturb we are spurred onward; for darkness, we are reminded, is real, and only by the light of our industriousness, of our hubris and lack of self-reflection, can we keep the night in its place. 

There are times when the poet takes an image and stretches it. Musicality is rarely prevalent in this tome, yet there are occasions when Combes sees fit to indulge. In these instances, the reader enjoys a sense of relief, for he has by this time learned to expect the sucker-punch. ‘At the Palais Royal’ offers such relief

‘Coming out of an appointment with the solicitor

I leant against the railings of the Palais Royal station

to listen to my messages

so I was telephoning

when a young fairy with a face as round as the moon

(of the type of an Italian tourist, or blond gypsy,

obviously stone-broke)

took me by the sleeve.’

Though it is not exactly reminiscent of Joachim du Bellay, nevertheless we are not in the company of an avowed song-maker, pedalling love lyrics in country taverns; rather, our raconteur is Bukowskian, one who turns a bitter and impassioned inward-gazing eye outward. 

To that which we have encountered thus far, ‘Troubadour of the Shops’ is a somewhat different animal. 

‘Now I have to sing of the difficult subject

         Now I have to approach an ungrateful and intractable theme

                 In truth I’ve been thinking about it for months 

                        And always putting it back to another time.

‘Others before me have sung and others will sing

          The beauty of Mother Nature, the ever renewed surprise

                   Of a rainbow, the renewal of love in the spring

                               Or the bloody disaster of a sunset.’

Du Bellay re-emerges in our consciousness; like that late-Renaissance humanist, our poet delivers in unadorned language a visceral declaration, in this case against consumer culture: calumny attenuated only by a resurgent ennui licking at the feet of the metre.

‘Others still have known how to speak of the beauties of the town

       The nostalgia for stations, the streamlined power of the TGV

                The troubling music of the cosmos

                        Or the insolvable mystery of the black holes of the ego

‘But who will sing of the charms of shopping areas

         Who will praise this new beauty never sung in poems?

                   Who will eulogise the high aesthetic achievements of capital?

                                It falls to me today to approach this theme.

‘Perhaps anyone will say that of all people I’m the worst prepared

        In their eyes, my baggage of an out-of-the-way militant

                Sets me up badly for the role of commercial poet…

                           Because the task is demanding and the position sought after.’

It is a measure of the poet’s drollerie that perhaps the most rhythmically pleasing verse in the poem is composed primarily of brand-names:

‘Then, pell-mell, the banners and hoarding

       For Saint-Maclou, and Saint Frusquin… Gifi, Renault,

                Leroy Merlin, Bricorama, Total, Esso,

                       Kiabi, Jardiland, Lapeyre, Babou, Gemo…’

Combes picks up, albeit wryly, the tradition of the chanson de geste.  Cultivated from the 11th to 14th centuries, these songs were made to vaunt the deeds of aristocrats; reaping this harvest of talent and intelligence were the Carolingian overlords, who enjoyed the public promotion afforded by these epic songs, in which their heroic adventures, factual or otherwise, were rendered in the most noble light.

‘The count Rollant sees the Archbishop lie dead, 

Sees the bowels of his body shed,

And sees the brains that surge from his forehead;

Between his two arm-pits, upon his great, 

Crossways he folds those hands so white and fair.’

This, written in the latter half of the 11th century, is a verse from what is perhaps the most famous example of the chanson de geste, ‘The Song of Roland’; a work of indeterminate authorship. We are given a taste in these few lines of the tenor of the age, an age stained crimson, certainly, but one with veneration at its heart, an ideality that seemed to float above the troughs of war, filth and poverty. 

And from this tradition of tragic reverence, our current balladeer strays. Inversion, however, is not his goal; here is violence, but it is invisible; here is reverence, but it is implicit. Unlike those older chansons, made to amuse the egos of warring elites, Combes’s poem flatters the masses, appeals to our sense of injustice; effects which, adequate or not, represent a quick win for the poet; for this emotion, harboured so near the base of the throat, is easy to rouse, being apparently innate, and is surely as old as class itself. 

Under the gaze of our minstrel comes no deed or action, no character, nothing lofty or enviable; it moves not on horseback, charges no enemy. In this vale of tears, digitised and self-drying, innocent blood is not shed but sucked; as the host is transfixed by the circuitry of billboards, his essence is stolen through channels uncorporeal. 

‘At each side of the road the great publicity hoardings 

    With their square shoulders lined up in ranks

         Like soldiers prepared for battle

                 Ready to launch themselves into the conquest of the Earth.

‘In the reddening evening their escutcheons shine 

      They carry at their waists their masters’ weapons

           Coloured and loud, facing the sky they brandish their coats of arms 

                  Like a glove cast at the world they are going to subdue

‘Here it is the new epic of the time of peace 

     The machine gun of the cash till

             For which we can always if necessary by the pen and the sword

                     Launch into new wars.’

In this ‘epic of the time of peace’ there are no conflicts, no stalemates, no need for treaties or pacts; the aggressor, our hero, will face no opposition.

‘And yet they grow and proliferate

    Like life, like a cancer

        This beautiful carnivorous disorder

                Devours everything, changing all it touches to gold.’

Neither sword unsheathed nor galloping hoof embroiders the scene; this creature of appetite, insane with greed, embodied not by sanguine warlords but by brand names, by logos, that hover, that seem to exist of their own accord, whose entreaties, seeping subliminally into the minds of the young – those delicate and burgeoning ecosystems of idea and will – reaps gold from earth, secures for itself the twin supplies of vanity: the new and the returning customer. 

Its ends are met not through physical tyranny but by sheer ubiquity. ‘The Demi-gods are on the move…’ the poet warns us, but be not afeard: these new kings, cloaked in electricity, wish only to ‘introduce order where disorder reigns’.

And hitherto, on the earth, disorder has surely reigned; for confirmation, consult the history books. Subjected to diseases, disasters, and have-a-go demagogues, this derelict race has built castles, cathedrals, monasteries and even pyramids, for sanctuary, for solace. Yet in these times, of what use are such buildings? From what, exactly, need we seek sanctuary? There is on earth but peace and equanimity; and don’t we (most of us) have a little walking-around money, right here in our pockets? The trajectory of the history of human struggle has culminated at a point at which we, children of ease, can finally treat ourselves. 

And dare not be ungrateful, for if we look at the matter too closely

‘The anguish of the void seizes us and makes us quiet.’

No volume of French verse would be complete without a few attempts to seduce the female readership. Of this campaign, the most successful manoeuvre, in terms poetical and otherwise, is Homo Erectus’s Wife:

‘Often, my dear,

I see you battling with things:

an electric plug,

a meter,

a sewing machine,

a computer,

a car engine,

software…

You look at them, you feel them

you turn them over, you take them apart

manipulate them, you get a bit annoyed

and, finally, you are right.

Watching what you do

I think of homo faber,

homo sapiens sapiens

or rather his wife

who, without letting herself be beaten,

(while the man, proud of himself, was coming back from the hunt) rubbed two bits of wood together

in her cave

until the flame appeared.

Yes, you are her descendant..

It’s through people like you

the species makes progress…

As for me

who am no more than homo erectus

as I watch you

to console myself

for my uselessness

I take a fermented drink

and admire you.’

Nor would we feel quite at home in the absence of a sociopolitical crie de couer; this wish, if not already met a hundred times over, is met in burlesque fashion in ‘Tract’. 

‘You the tomatoes that have never seen the earth

You the fish that have never seen the sea

You the lettuces which grow in water and fibreglass

You the salmon that have never swum up river

And have never known the joy of sparkling in spume and light 

You battery-raised hens who have never known the open air

Never seen the sun, never run in the grass

You the bananas, you the avocados, you the melons

Prematurely torn from your family and left to mature far from home

In hangars beneath displays

You the shrimps who have never been in the depths

And know only tap water

All of you, conditioned products of large-scale distribution

Revolt!’

Parodying the style of long-dead revolutionaries, this cannonade of spleen unloads on a series of unlikely targets: farms, factories, laboratories – centres of testing, breeding and culling – the vertebrae of the industry of genetic modification. 

‘Down with modern slavery!’ chants the rabble-rouser, storming up and down the supermarket aisles. We are put in mind of Marat, that importunate celebrity of the Terror, vaunted and hunted, and those many lesser pamphleteers, politicking in the shadows of the icons, whose words, which once clung so well to the esprit du temps, were ground underfoot, in the pell-mell disbursement of anguished Parisians. 

Poet to man, man to poet; perhaps their diseases are non-communicable. Before a silent audience, composed of humans, sheep and grapes, each modified for optimum edibility, a poet must consider his position.

As he looks further inward, Combes’s canvas broadens. For example, in ‘Image of Western Man’:

‘But the most numerous are those who have nothing. 

According to his image, western man is a conqueror

but, in life itself, most men from here

are beaten…

The image of western man is always right

it is universal and covers the Earth

while he is quite rare

and altogether in a minority on Earth.’

And in The Seven Wonders of the World:

‘The sixth wonder I name, is our imperfection, our power to never

be satisfied, to always search, desire, to go further, to imagine and 

to invent, to compose songs, build cities and not renounce the

future where we would be a little less imperfect.’

We see the poet bringing to bear upon his mentation the themes universality, identity, desire, and later utilising the specimens of history and mythology, to add texture and polyphony to his crystalline conception. 

What Pound said of Whistler, that he ‘tested and pried and worked in many fashions’, we could say of Combes; throughout the latter half of this volume he chases and is chased by his muse, as he diligently tries ‘to wrench her impulse into art’. He darts hither and thither, absorbing formats where he can; the result is a loose series of poems written in the miscellaneous forms of rap, living wills, manuals, and recipes. 

In ‘The Poem’ Combes revisits the question of his role, and concludes that a poem is something like a

‘a plane tree leaf, yellow

wide as a splayed hand 

falls gently

caressing

this afternoon’s autumn 

face.’

By which 

… ‘ the world

(but it doesn’t know it) 

is slightly changed.’

The poem becomes a natural manifestation, an automatic event in the world of cause and effect. The poet, likewise, is but a link in this eternal chain of happening. 

The section titled ‘Moral Poems’ is perhaps the most musical in the collection. Here, Combes gives himself room to play, to take in the joys of lyricism, meditating lightly on the complexity of nature, and the necessity of transformation. 

For example, in Carnation:

‘Patricia picked it just before we left.

In the folds of her skirt

blood-red cutting

it hides a scent I’d forgotten

a light scent, free and peppered,

an Andalousian, Amazonian and Brigantine scent 

which cultivated flowers never have.’

 In Of Unity & Diversity:

‘To see them close at hand

(once the gardener has pulled them from the ground) 

anyone can recognise

that asparagus

every asparagus on earth

is

different

from every other

and at the same time similar

unique and identical’

And in The Bean Plant

‘in the company of your brothers 

hung along your covering

by the skin of your back. 

the light of day

comes to you filtered through the closed eyelid 

of your maternal envelope.’

The songster in Combes is capable also of the pseudo-nursery rhyme:

‘The rose and the apple

the plum and the pear

and the cherry

in spite of their differences 

are all part

of the large family 

of rosaceae.’

Scattered throughout the next few pieces are some memorable lines, in ‘Parliament of Birds’ and ‘I and the Other’ particularly; yet in the next section, ‘Political Poems’, the tenor changes quite dramatically. 

‘It’s had its head cut off several times

but, as for the Hydra of Lerna, it grew back.

(In fact, its body was still intact.)

However, it isn’t invincible

and sooner or later it will be killed

because our survival

depends on its elimination.’

The ‘it’ is Capitalism, his personal bane, the harrower of his muse. Yet in this poem, titled ‘Capitalism: Wanted Dead or Alive’, Combes again betrays a belief in life, in the primacy of the human above the situation; man to Combes is sacred, ever on the ascendency. Capitalism, and its little sister consumerism, are but twin blips on the horoscope. Yet Combes does not venture to offer anything against this opponent; presumably, because humans are inherently good, just, and righteous (though perhaps a little easily-swayed), it is a matter of course that we will simply pull the plug on this system which no longer serves, and wind up the extension cord. The poet’s view is unhelpfully romantic, and is elaborated in Etiology of the Parasites

‘There are on earth all kinds of parasites

which cling to their hosts

to draw their sap,

their blood, their chlorophyll

or their money…

Parasites are numerous and dangerous

but they are a minority.’

Parasitism, to be sure, is rife; the body of the public represents a rich meal. Yet one of the laws of nature is reciprocity; we give, but every one of us takes. Nature favours the most powerful; he who can give less than he takes will find himself with an advantage; a position of power, and each of us, regardless of status, take all the power we can get. 

Aristocrats, financiers and policemen are listed in Combes’s parasite index; can any of us name a time when those in charge of land, money and law were not generators of ressentiment in the public breast? 

In Epitaph for the Twentieth Century, the poet again frames the powerful as lesser beings, calling out the ‘cockroaches who give orders’, the ‘badly identified bacteria’ – the psychopaths, to whose act, after all these centuries of terror, cruelty and depravity, we should surely by now have grown wise. For Combes, it appears the 99% cannot be elevated without the reduction of the 1%, in terms economic, political, spiritual or otherwise; to venerate the powerless is to disparage the powerful, and the former, it would seem, can not attain any self-respect without the expulsion of the latter. 

In ‘Mythological News’, subtitled ‘after Heine’, we are favoured by an appealing conflation of a Greek myth; that of Io, who was transformed by Zeus into a white cow, and of Europe, who was seduced by Zeus in bull form.

‘Io, Io, my sister,

that the ancient Romans also named Europe

how can you be forgiven?

We know about Leda’s misadventure

that she allowed herself to be seduced by a swan, 

is perhaps a little unnatural

but hardly surprising…

And Semele who succumbed 

to a shower of gold…

Of course, it’s not brilliant 

but the times are hard…’

In Gods In Exile, his famous essay from 1854, Heinrich Heine imagined the flight of the pagan gods from Mount Olympus, at the onset of Christianity; driven first to Egypt, then to Europe, where a few of them took up poorly-paid jobs in the central lowlands, in the farming towns of Germany and Austria. 

These gods – testy, petulant, myopic, found themselves ousted by a singular deity, one who took their wanton violence and made it part of a programme; who erected on the earth the infrastructure of his worship, and filled the gaps with whatever he thought worth taking from that earlier religion; had it refashioned, and outlawed the original. The pagan gods, wearied by the strain of their excess, stood not a chance against the emergent sovereign, whose scheme crossed borders and kingdoms, whose seed germinated in the bellies of the starved and envious. 

How unfortunate, then, for us, that Europe allowed herself an indiscretion with a bull; a mad bull, no less, on the wane and in denial.

‘You must know that you run a great peril in climbing on the back

of such a beast

brutal, jealous, lustful,

who dominated the world and took himself for a god.’

Combes knows, of course, that the world’s throne is fickle; power is supreme, but no power lasts. And our Europe, impregnated, is taken to Crete; there, she brings forth Minos, the future king of the island, and the preeminent sovereign in European myth. 

His mother, our sister, so careless in her choice, so short-sighted – the willing vessel of the spirit of a continent, a continent ruled by terror, by Caesars and Charlemagnes, Napoleons and Hitlers; masters of violence, legislators of cruelty; Europe, the progenitor, who knew not what she did: the poet asks, and we ask, how may we forgive her? 

Dave Russell on

Wendy Young – The Dream of Somewhere Else

Survivors’ Poetry, 2016

Wendy Young is ever the champion of the marginalised and oppressed; witness her opening slogan: ‘To those who stuck with me (there aren’t many) and looked past the nutter, the loser,/ the drinker, the idiot, the child’. Or ‘To all the abused, the bullied, the kids who are now adults and hope you find a voice too – eat, drink, shit, talk, write!’. 

This feels to me like an echo of Bob Dylan’s ‘The Chimes of Freedom’, with an added retrospective of childhood sufferings contributing to adult traumas.

‘A Bird in the Dark’ depicts a creature (probably a wren) which is both extremely fragile and extremely resilient – ‘strong enough to drown hospital trolleys’. It seems to cry out for a mother, echoing the poet’s sadness at her mother’s deafness and loss of kindred. 

‘Been There, Seen That, Forgot It . . .’: submerged nostalgia – ‘I remember when my memory’s jogged’. Wendy has been to many music events, which have been important to her; she didn’t buy programmes, but did keep ticket stubs, which are good memory jogs. This was my first introduction to the Archaos ‘alternative’ circus. I see they are radically innovative. Perhaps a footnote would have been ‘reader-friendly’ (as with the Mark Twain poem).

‘Cockleshell Heroine’ – brilliant imagery here of the duality of crowns of gold – both tiaras and tooth fillings; also the ‘phoenix effect’ turning disaster (of fillings dropping out) into euphoria: ‘. . . As if a weld/turned them into a mace/headed by pearliest cockleshells/Waiting for Fortune/It’s right here in my hands.’

Dear Jenny is an epic eulogy of a deceased mother, written 20 years after her

departure. What an intensely moving story! Mother was intensely heroic, suffering enormously from battery and rape. Young: “The point about my mother is what a Trojan woman she was and never got the recognition or empathy she should have had – also, how domestic abuse went on and still goes on.”

In 1947, when she was expecting Young’s brother, mother valiantly took a 4-mile walk to the hospital, with waters breaking. This was in 1947 when (as I later discovered) the midwives were on strike – so she gave birth in a nursing home. Basically, her strength was continually being put to the test, and wasted. Mother refused the imposition of Thalidomide anaesthetic – a heroic gesture which subsequently protected Young from being a Thalidomide victim. Young: “I was the youngest and born at a time when Thalidomide was being doled out.” Twenty years later, her brother died on the same road – killed by a drunken driver. In 1951 she lost an unborn child; her husband kicked her when she was 7 months pregnant –Young: “My father caused the death; I had wanted a poem called Bonny Cattle in there which tells it a bit more – basically it was murder!” She makes a wry comment about dismissive ‘care workers’ – “abusers don’t really mean it.”

‘In the Psychiatrist’s Chair’ – people in search of counselling about abuse must have painfully conflicting feelings. Her mother made a startling declaration-Young: “I didn’t tell anyone; I thought they’d take you away.” What an eye-opener to the arbitrary callousness of the system. And what a response! 

To my shame, and her dismay,/I said ‘I wish they had’. 

The advantage of open reporting would have far outweighed any drawbacks. Young desperately misses her mother, who suffered so much from deafness and other ailments, and had her own emotional conflicts –Young: “Wanting mates but putting up barriers to keep out love.” Some indictment of sometimes futile consultants: “Get a crystal ball while I struggle with puzzles.”

‘Lion of the North’ explores the confluence of disability and sadism – someone who lost an arm in a mining accident, and then turned nasty in his own right. Ne’er the twain shall meet relates to Young’s struggle to save Kensal Green Library; part of her activist side. 

‘One of Them’ concerns a kid who is moving between worlds e.g. the old world – of Grandma and naiveté – and the new one, with powerful peers who make fun of her, trying to cope with both. The poem celebrates rugged individualism in the context of a deprived childhood –Young: “If I was told I wasn’t pulling the line I would try even harder.”

‘In Shocks Away’, Young shows her grasp of cosmic/scientific imagery: the benign cataclysm ‘. . . blew my mind into space, and particles of me/my brain/my psyche hover over black holes . . . Like a hundred little me’s went tramping out telescopically and played into the universe – now I’m picking them out of black holes, over a million trails of brain cells, left for dust.’ 

There follows an attack on the conspiracy of silence about domestic abuse: ‘Would he have hit you if you hadn’t let him?’/Woman can be woman’s worst enemy.’

‘Now I am Grown – You Groan’ – the abuser is not now dealing with the same meek, compliant partner he started with: ‘I kept my mouth shut, now it’s open’. The wheel has come full circle: ‘When I unleash all the years within, let the tears begin. Not for me this time/I could have flooded Sudan/Now it’s your turn.’

Young is a great lover of London – ‘I remember how you saved me/For my sanity, for my life, for giving me a new start.’ This is followed by a brief homage to cinema escapism ‘before the gloom of the last bus characters/Taking us away from our dream of somewhere else’. There’s one comic poem suggesting a bi-curious threesome. ‘The Wind Cries Auntie Mary’: in Young’s words “Its title is a play on the Jimi Hendrix’s song ‘Wind Cries Mary’, and also about quality and memory.” Some nostalgia about revisiting the North; some reference to her sibling situation: “I was the youngest but felt I’d lived

the longest – acted like the oldest. The image of a lion suggests an allusion to her father.

The Afterword proffers an illuminating perspective on the creative process:

‘Somehow those dispersed brain cells honed in my brain, and the memories are

proving to be cathartic in my journey of writing and expression . . . I continue to insert words that come into my head (and stop me sleeping) into my mobile calendar, and then get processed into verse.’ Long may she persevere!

Dave Russell © 2016

Felix Cassiel on

R.M. Francis 

Subsidence

Smokestack Books

67 pages 

Of the diverse criteria by which we measure the health of a culture, one frequently overlooked is the term’s definition. If we take culture to be a living thing – which we must, if we are to take the matter seriously – we assign to it not only the necessity of subjection to certain laws, but also the dignity of accident; no living thing can be known entire, and in our observation of phenomena we do well to confess that our object originates and continues at the behest of laws too subtle for our laboratory conditions; and for that vast and moving assemblage of phenomena we call culture, we would scarcely allow ourselves the pretence of a microscope. 

Abashed individuals we may be; yet on the societal level, our behaviour is quite different: here, we wield our microscopes, like John Henry his mallet; we have our Ministry, and our Minister; we have our funding committees, government incentives, and stimulus packages; we have our consultations with ambassadors of arts; all with the end of promoting ‘culture’. Part of the problem, it seems, lies in the term’s accepted meaning. T. S. Eliot’s essay, Notes Toward A Definition of Culture, illustrates the difficulties involved.

‘A new civilisation is always being made: the state of affairs that we enjoy today illustrates what happens to the aspirations of each age for a better one. The most important question that we can ask, is whether there is any permanent standard, by which we may compare our civilisation with another, and by which we can take some guess at the improvement or decline of our own. We have to admit, in comparing one civilisation with another, and in comparing the different states of our own, that no one society and no one age of it realises all the values of civilisation. Not all of these values may be compatible with each other: what is at least as certain is that in realising some we lose the appreciation of others. Nevertheless, we can distinguish between higher and lower cultures; we can distinguish between advance and retrogression. We can assert with some confidence that our own period is one of decline; that the standards of culture are lower than they were fifty years ago; and that the evidences of of this decline are visible in every department of human activity. I see no reason why the decay of culture should not proceed much further, and why we may not even anticipate a period, of some duration, of which it is possible to say that it will have no culture. Then culture will have to grow again from the soil; and when I say it must grow again from the soil, I do not mean that it will be brought into existence by any activity of political demagogues.’

Though the idea of culture has since undergone further modification, we see that its progress has not deviated substantially from the course projected by Eliot. 

Another measure of the health of a culture is the variation of dialects therein; as a subculture gains from its interplay with other subcultures, while retaining those qualities by which it is distinguished, so a dialect may be strengthened in commerce with other dialects, and the wider culture to which they belong gain correspondingly. The balance is a fine one: there must be fellowship enough to allow for just exchange, but animosity sufficient to keep them distinct. Too much of the former will occasion a blending of the two, or subjugation of one to the other; too much of the latter will result in separation, and a mutual buttressing of cant.

With these concerns in mind, R.M. Francis has produced Subsidence, a little artefact containing poems written predominantly in the dialect of the Black Country. 

‘E knows ‘ow to kip a furnace burnin’ 

Through days an’ nights a sun an’ snow.

Alruna gid ‘im the runes for churnin’,

‘E knows ‘ow to kip a furnace burnin’.

Gram-sword deft kept knights returnin’ 

‘E toils dirt-ore to whetted glow.

‘E knows ‘ow to kip a furnace burnin’ 

Through days an’ nights a sun an’ snow.

• Wieland I.

Immediately we are put in mind of the border ballads; and as a ballad the piece has much to recommend it. The diction is vigorous, even warlike: each word at times seems to clash with its neighbour, yet the big, muscular, beating heart that drives the rhythm carries the voice before it is caught in a pitched battle. That the opening poem is designed to be sung is appropriate; we are, we feel, in familiar territory, and by the elasticity of the music, Francis has made allowances for our untrained ear.

We ay from brumajum

Weem in the border less

Pits – black be day 

Red be night. Where baby 

Rhymes with Rabbie – that old 

Bard who kept the burn 

In his tongue.

That burn connects, it burns 

Like our old forges burned –

Burning trade and toil and song 

And burning a brand 

That yow know and yow know- 

Burns like Saxon shamans 

Who’s embers were stamped 

And pissed on by ministers 

Of education immersed in 

Double spayke – 

• from Burning Tongues. 

If we have taken culture to be a living thing, we take also its constituent elements to be organic; the parts behave as organic things behave, and the object of their behaviour is survival; as such, we see how in a culture unfriendly to a particular art, the art will over time become more isolated, and its interplay with other arts will diminish, and be eliminated altogether; the art will deteriorate in the agony of its isolation, yet by its evasive action it will have secured its continuance for a short while longer, though in a woefully degraded form. In the same way, a dialect will tend to retreat from a larger, unfriendly power, one that wishes to subsume the dialect into its own system, and take up its station in remoter areas. Hence, we see the remnants of Gaelic in the mountains of Wales, and in the West Highlands of Scotland; we see Doric hiding in the uppermost terrain of northern Greece. Any spirited effort of preservation is attended by, and even dependent on, a certain species of hostility; those among the preservers consider their neighbours effeminate, debauched, and infected with careerism; in this light, we observe that the commerce between the lowlanders of Scotland and the northerners of England has occasioned disapprobation of the former by the Highlanders. 

The Black Country, however, enjoys no such fortune of geography; there is little in the way of high ground to which the dialect may retreat; as such, any resistance to outside influence is made by mettle alone. Francis, in this book, endeavours to produce a sense of besiegement; and though its situation may be infelicitous, the Black Country wants not for frontier spirit.

During the day and during the night 

Fires on all sides light 

The landscape in fiery glows – 

Constant twilight reigns.

Broken by hills 

Of cinders 

The echoing green, 

Honeycombed 

In mining galleries – 

Almost unknown…

Iss plastic an’ electric light 

That measures us now, ay it?

Forges pour plagues,

Cut-minerals mek

Shot and cannon

For Colonel Dud,

To sink Charles’ foes – 

Thatcher fucked 

The redbricked and hardskinned,

Iss PPI an’ empty pubs 

In the sink ‘oles now, ay it? 

• from The Cradle. 

It is not long before the reader develops a sense of otherness; we are, to the poet and the people he represents, outsiders; and we conduct ourselves as outsiders are expected to conduct themselves, with a curiosity bordering on voyeurism, made possible only by an acute sense of separation. By the speech of a self-contained community we may be delighted, instructed or repulsed; in either case, we seek to know how far the speech is an accurate representation of the attitudes and morality of the people speaking it. 

We do not doubt that it is a common assumption that Thatcher single-handedly brought ruin upon England’s mining industry, but we would be surprised to overhear such terms as ‘redbricked’ and ‘hardskinned’ so used in ordinary conversation. 

Our efforts are complicated by the method of conveyance; for in coming to grips with verse in dialect, we find it difficult to ascertain what is innate, and what extraneous; how much of what we read would we hear in a genuine encounter, and how much has been superadded. This difficulty is evaded in works of determinate form and metre: we accept, in a ballad, the artifice of song, and concern ourselves but little with its claim to realism. We take as a given that the representation is accurate within the limits of the form, and we harbour no illusion that the superimposition is regulated by the diction; we know the reverse is true.

‘E’d gid yo’ ‘alf a anythin’ 

‘E ‘ad an’ Ed could spare,

Thass why the swan-wench fell fer ‘im

‘E’d gid yo’ ‘alf a anythin’.

‘E coked a feather into a ring 

Daiked with a Tetnall pear,

Thass why the swan-wench fell fer ‘im

‘E’d gid yo’ ‘alf a anythin’.

• Wieland III 

By the conversational pieces the water is muddied; through the use of dialect, the poet provides for himself a well of colour, with which he may add tinctures to his determinate ideas; frequently, in Subsidence, the colour supersedes the idea. 

Eileen said – 

Down in Worcester, them posh down theya,

Sound liyke farmers

And the wenches wear

Coats med a’ the semstuff

As nan’s threepiece. 

The barrista couldn’t understand 

How ‘er asked for tay fer two – 

‘Er took me as saft, ‘er did.

Eileen doh need ‘em to know

How ‘er yeds med

Like Royal Brierley.

• Eileen Says.

Like the efforts to preserve culture, an attempt to preserve a dialect demands of us resources not at our disposal; in our resistance to the onslaught, we may preserve many things, and dialect might be one of them; yet the preservation of dialect for dialect’s sake is an task essentially Sisyphean. 

Nevertheless, as our acquaintanceship with the folk of the Black Country develops, we sense increasingly that this is the line pursued. 

When young McKain’s son

‘Ad ‘is fust bab

Everyone stuck a quid 

In ‘is collection. 

Bob knew ‘im as a nippa,

Only tipped ‘is glass.

Soul as grey as ‘is ‘air,

There’s a Mild behind the bar 

For tendin’

Leanne’s baskets 

When ‘er was down in Burnham. 

An’ we all gerr’im one in 

‘Cause ‘e onnny ‘as two 

Before gooin’ ‘ome

To tend to mom.

We all come and goo ‘ere,

Slipping in and out

In our suppin’.

• from Bob the Fish 

History, for Francis, weighs heavily upon the conscience; yet history in these poems serves all too infrequently to enlarge the ideas or contextualise the sentiments, but is used primarily as a measure for decline. History in Subsidence is short, and begins only as the rot sets in. 

The middle son boards 

With Mother, she could tell a tale – 

The only child of a factory wench 

And ex-guardsman,

With council estate maisonette,

The stench of salted meats 

And carbolic soap. Father,

Eldest of three in Post-War Semi,

Where tobacco, wine and classical

Music steep the scene. 

Watched his Mum die at seventeen,

Never says a word about it.

• from Borderlands.

It was remarked by the poet Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux that ‘a mean or common thought expressed in pompous diction generally pleases more than a new or noble sentiment delivered in low and vulgar language’; and this is true up to a point. Over vulgar language, pompous diction has two clear advantages: one, by virtue of its construction, it will please before its contents are discovered; two, being quick to please, it will boast more auditors than will the low, which tends to repel before its merit can be discerned. 

Yet what is termed vulgar may differ from man to man, and certainly from class to class; over the course of succeeding generations, too, a phrase may undergo such extreme modifications as to conduce to solemnity in one age, and to cackles of mirth in another. 

One of the issues raised by Francis is the interrelation of speech to conduct; how accurately is conduct, which has for foundation and pillars a particular morality, mirrored in speech; how far does the health of one depend on that of the other? 

Now, my marketing company work from a barn, new media bred

From noveaux riche neighbourhoods, riddled with stainless steel

And glass, faux plants and tokens of trade, my bluechipped barn

Farms consultants for consultants and cuntsaltonts and…

• from Pass Over.

Francis depicts his characters in various states of degradation; he tells us what they are to him, but gives little indication of what he thinks they could be; there are characters within, looking out, and characters without, moving in (as in the above excerpt from Pass Over): neither think much of language, nor of their own humanity; and the introduction of the latter to the dwelling of the former will onlycatalyse the deterioration of both.

Nevertheless, in so doing, the poet also impresses us with a sense of urgency: hitherto, as outsiders, we have carried a sensation endued with the pathetic, but rarely have we felt engaged with the afflictions of those in Francis’s care; yet, bombarded as we are by the lamentations of those on the interior, the wailing of the besieged, in voices fragmented and commonplace, a sense of impending loss gains upon us: we prophesy elimination, and the prophesy is a sensible one. We have been privy to the process, and have taken it in complacently; soon, we will deal with the denouement; we will tell ourselves that accidents happen, and by accidents are communities removed; we will be less eager to remind ourselves that the operation was observable to the naked, untrained eye, outside of laboratory conditions; and we will have only artefacts such as this to call to our minds the fact that once upon a time, there was life here.

Felix Cassiel© 2021

Sleepers

Jo Colley

Smokestack

83 pages

2020

‘To have with decency knocked that a Blunt should open,’ says Ezra Pound, in his eighty-first Canto, ‘this is not vanity.’ 

An old man, looking back upon his own vanity, and burdened, as he was, with a painful far-sightedness, Pound offered to the generation succeeding him those gentle words, that the new artistic liberties delivered unto them may not be accepted outright, mor their worth assumed at face value. The craftsman knowing the rules of his craft knows, too, that they are immutable; the judgement of his fathers is his own judgement; he services his society, and while it is not expected that that society remains precisely as it was when serviced by his forebears, nevertheless, it does not alter so much as to demand from the craft a new set of rules: or, if it has altered to such an extent, it no longer needs the craft at all. 

In ‘Sleeper’, Jo Colley does not with decency knock, but belabours the door with fist and boot, and screams, I know you’re in there.

To our chagrin, Blunt opens not. Nor, for that matter, do we find ourselves received by any personage, notable or otherwise; the door remains shut, but out of the letter-box comes a vapour, and in that vapour is a collation of images: leather school shoes, Rugby shorts, Latin textbooks, black suits, Homburgs, and Freemasons’ handshakes; identity cards, bulging wallets, and bullet-ridden women. And as the vapour dissipates, our voluble guide turns to us, and asks: What more proof do you need?

Boys. The smell of boys: feet, fart and sweat. Later, testosterone.

The muscle surfacing through puppy fat, hardening. The thunk

Of dropping testicles. The gasp of mass masturbatory rites of

Passage, of toilets flushing over the upturned heads of the

Smaller, less fortunate ones. Cruelty and adoration, pain and

Pleasure, the twin peaks of learning to be a man. Chinese burns,

Floggings, wet towels, the hurling of possessions and items of

Clothing. How on earth do you survive without nanny?

– from ‘Boys’.

Calumny, in literature, is pregnant with risk; a writer, in prosecuting a lust to censure, drastically limits the colours of his palette: that he chooses his colours adroitly is of premier importance. Too many colours, and the work falls short of its object; too few, and the reader is bored. It is possible, of course, for a writer so taken with this spirit to use too many shades of the same colour. 

Censorious poetry usually is endowed with what may be termed an antiheroic spirit; the writer, implicitly, confesses his limitations, both artistic and moral; and if he does have the gall or wit to erect an edifice before his persona, it is just as nimbly dismantled by the reader, who is too wise to impute any superiority to one whose aim is to drag a brother or sister over the rocks. The best examples of this kind of poetry, then, carry with them an understanding between the author and auditor: the author, in his effort to commit to Hades the object of his ire, must be willing to go there with him. 

And if we return to the likes of Juvenal, it is not owing to a desire to feel superior to the characters he renders, but rather to drink from that peculiar and abundant draught of imperfect insight, poured by one who has condemned himself, along with all he describes, to the pit of merciless correction. 

This hour each week was like 

A poultice on the open wound

Of my alienation, my wrong

Footed scurry through the world

Of academe. How the voice joined up

The bigger things: history, politics,

The great movements of thought

That shaped the world. I sat

In the dark, in love with

Ideas, their power revealed in each

Uncovered layer. So when I read of Blunt,

The minds he touched, 

His mannered cleverness, I weigh

This against his snobbery, his

Queen Mum teas. I force myself

To imagine that he cared about 

Injustice, about class war, about

The lives of those he never met or knew.

– from ‘Was the Queen Told?’

We note, with regret, a worrisome symptom, and one that persists through much of the work. There is, in the text, a distinct lack of humility; and where there is no humility, there is no humour; and where there is no humour, strong passions are want to go untempered, and in works of animadversion, the stronger passion like an ascendant weed drives out the weaker, and sucks dry the soil from which it grows. 

Iconic, back lit, your silhouettes are history

Symbolic of a war that never ends. You 

Have the family silver, the Crown Jewels,

And every acre of this land at your command.

You believe – God put you here to rule, to conquer,

And to bask in His glory. We say – the life

Of the mind – ideas have no master. We say – 

One day – justice will prevail, the people

Will rise up, and all this will change.

– ‘Class War’.

The poet attributes to her enemy recognition of a master, that being God, but is careful not to assign to him piety: the elites, in Colley’s conception, do not fear God, but laud Him only; their religiousness is confined to assigning divine approbation of their own actions (which weakness of mind is not the dominion merely of the elites, of course; status is no bar to believing that what is good is simply that which one happens to do, or say, or think.)

Yet to the poet and her fellows, introduced here as ‘the people’, some other communal treasury is enjoyed: ‘the mind’, populated with ideas that ‘have no master’. Whereas the God of the elites is the giver of material abundance, the people, poor in spirit and resource, recognise no God: if this is said without jest, we cannot but discern its historical, not to mention philosophical, unsoundness; the latter, for as created things, ideas have as master their Creator; and the former, for as history bears out, among the classes it is the one that rules that is first to divest itself of religiousness, and embrace atheism; the common rung is the last, and even when the name of God is no longer on the lips of the poor, the conduct of their interrelations, in the main and indistinctly, retains the commandments.

Those long days. Endless loops of movies in my head,

Our technicolour figures on a beach. He came to me

On the cusp, the high wire act about to fail.

The game was up, before I had a chance to learn

The rules. I shelved my life, flew to a dark airstrip 

To meet a man in a dark coat who spoke in his voice. 

But it was not the same. He blended with the grey,

Made the alien streets of Moscow a new backdrop.

I needed light, a balcony with a view of the sea,

Restaurants, bouillabaisse. I shivered in my Harrods

Camel coat, incongruous in the bread queue. How

Love thinned in the cold. Did you miss me when I left?

– from ‘Eleanor Brewis’.

To a generation conditioned to accept as a given the glamour of espionage, Colley’s objective is clear: our views, conditioned though they are, deserve modification; for the characters before us are not the subclinical psychopaths we have come to know by names such as ‘Bond’, and who have, by their psychopathic acts, brought us hours of mindless entertainment; they are subclinical psychopaths known by names such as ‘Philby’, who have occasioned, by their psychopathy, untold destruction, with impunity. 

Even as a child, she was promiscuous, knew

How to get what she wanted by pleasing men.

Her father leaves, her husband’s wedding gift

Is syphilis. She endures the death of a son,

The theft of a daughter. She refuses the blindfold, 

Her last sartorial decision. Twelve men eye

Her breasts, hoist their rifles, fire. Margarethe 

On her knees, waiting for the coup de grace.

– from ‘MargarethaGeertruida ‘Margreet’ MacLeod’

So much for our foe. But what of the portrait? At once we may surmise the poet does not care much for rich white men, and the richer they are, and the whiter they are, the less she cares for them. Nevertheless, we are to caution ourselves against that proclivity termed reductionism. Colley’s gripe is not with spies, but with the ruling class, not with the individuals, but with their origins. The complaint is not a new one; indeed, one would be hard-pressed to discover a man who had an affection for the ruling class of his country, and if, among those surveyed, there was one who did in fact harbour such a sentiment, it would be disadvantageous, socially and politically, for him to reveal it. The tenor of cultural discourse today is such that the poet’s view must travel far to run into opposition.

In several of the works, the poet seeks the inner life of her subjects, and her goal is to represent it by internal monologue. Too frequently, alas, this quest is stymied by an overriding contempt, which serves only to turn us away at the door. Nevertheless, there are occasions when the device finds its way clear, and we are received hospitably.

Gone, the boy who ran naked through

Gran Hester Meadows, swam in the Cam, 

Compact body pink with privilege. Now

You stagger slant through Gorky Park, nothing

Working as it should. You don’t complain: that’s 

Not your style. Besides, you know none of it

Will last, try to be stoic, accept the diversion

Of the dream, a paradise lost. A country lost.

You try to be philosophical.

• from ‘Burgess in BolshayaPirogovskaya’

Probably the most rewarding pieces in the volume come to us near the end, under the head ‘Motherland’. Here, for the first time, we are granted an unadulterated perspective; here, there is no more assumption, and little conjecture, unlike many of the pieces that preceded it, which relied for their content on textual research, and theories of power, class and manhood, never fully developed, and at times errant, we profit in Motherland through an encounter with Colley’s tenderness; a tenderness which, we suspect, has been forged with some violence, and which, we are happy to note, reveals itself as an operative function in the poet’s intellection: the sentiment is clean, crystalline, and without a hint of excess. 

Your feet and my feet on the weathered boards,

Your arm in mine. The stick keeps you upright 

In the northern breeze, while the salt air uncovers

The woman I once knew. Years and cares blown

From your face as you drink in the view, recall

All the oceans of your life, from Flamborough Head

To the Great Bitter Lakes, from the Bristol Channel to

Cardigan Bay, to both sides of the German Sea. 

What you liked was the way it always changed,

That view from the beach of water on the move. 

Later, landlocked, you lived like a stranded dolphin,

Gasping for breath, unable to help yourself, slowly

Collapsing under your own weight,

– ‘Saltburn Pier with my Mother’

It is in these later pages, too, that we discern, for the first time, an earnest attempt at a poetic idiom; hitherto, generally speaking, Colley’s ideas have been delivered to us shorn of any attribute we may term poetic: the production is at all times neat, crisp, and balanced; yet for a true poetic encounter we might trade these in favour of the rough, the imprecise, the uneven: in other words, we would take a big-hearted Gothic failure over a conceited neoclassic certainty. 

Nevertheless, there are stanzas that please the ear. Colley is, perhaps, at her most lyrical when utilising sensations recalled from direct experience. The most successful in this regard, ‘Cold Grey Sea’, exhibits the following.

Eyes down, I cased the pebbles, while you

Kept silent, your switchblade tongue 

Slid back inside your mouth.

Alone together, we detectorised the stones, 

Gathered what we could: aquamarine tears,

Opaque crumbs, mere fragments. Not enough

To penetrate this complicated fog. I took off

My shoes, immersed my feet in the North Sea. 

The reader finds himself not unsympathetic: the fog, indeed, is a complicated one, and rifling through the opaque crumbs and mere fragments yields little in the way of instruction: Sleepers gives us a view of history, which is no less than a philosophy; and as a philosophy it must, as John Ruskin would have it, availtowards life, or towards death; and by its fruits we will know it.

Thus we return to our initial concern: what service may a craft provide to a society so altered from that in which the rules of the craft were set? The said rules do not change, and we see this with poetry as with anything else: the rules have not been adjusted, but by degrees removed. To T.S. Eliot’s assertion that No verse is free to the man who wants to do a good job we may find ourselves in wholehearted agreement; yet we confess, too, to a disconcerting observation, that as verse becomes freer, its reason for being becomes more tenuous. If it is argued that certain subjects must be rendered in a manner prosaic, we agree that certain subjects are not fit for poetry. And as the world, and the things in it, become more prosaic, there are correspondingly fewer things for poets to write about. Yet, as the evidence suggests, this does not prevent them from writing. Its effect, indeed, may tend to the opposite: for when rules are relaxed, membership swells. And if the craft of poetry, ‘originally intended’, as Pound claimed, ‘to make glad the heart of man’, is to continue gladdening hearts, it will not do so by its own principles; it will become, instead, merely so much vapour, reflecting images agreeable to our predilections, and its charms will be such as we can get, and will prefer to get, from our amiable espionage thrillers. 

Felix Cassiel© 2021

Felix Cassiel on

This Noise Is Free

A Green

Whether it be the garrulous screeching of the gull overhead, the clatter of the waste lorry at dawn, or the ringing of the church bell on a hungover Sabbath, it could be argued, and not too forcibly, that no noise is free; yet we may pay something in the enduring of it.

In this collection, Andy Green summarises his observations in a manner both brusque and generous; generous, for finding an extraneous line, or a disused sentiment, in this slim volume could well be an exercise in futility. 

Mr. Green is a busker, and his subject matter is his vocation. The history of poetry does not want for troubadours: from Bernart de Ventadorn in the Middle Ages to Joachim du Bellay in the High Renaissance, and in countless practitioners since, we have seen the gradual evolution of the lyric, and the cadence of the spoken word, as they are fastened ever more imperceptibly to the knots and folds of measures perfected by men who knew, as Pound noted, that music atrophied when it departs too far from the dance, and poetry from music. Though we may do well not be overly romantic in our expectations, for with this tradition Mr. Green has no truck.

The street is a bottle of white lightning 

asking me for a hug

the street is a one-toothed woman

sharing my flapjack

the street is a boy in a bright red scarf

they stole his guitar

and his best Scottish hat

but one day he will get them back

the street is an eighty year old man

singing Elvis in German

giving Nazi salutes 

warning me about all his heart problems

the street gets off its bicycle to tell me

it wants to spend more time

making experimental

sonic machines 

the street is an Australian jazz musician

blowing the clarinet and roaring

now this is real music!

so sick of this town with its cold jacket potatoes 

the street is a beautiful red-haired woman

who’s been out all night dancing

lopsided panther 

she winks and hands me a silver coin

the street has been sleeping on the backseat of its car

talking to god and keeping a diary

it’s a long story

the street quietly whispers in my ear

the street is dragging a heavy suitcase

battered and torn

the street comes over and hugs me like a jukebox

it just got out of prison today

 – The Street is a Vortex

Part of the charm of a busker taking to his pen is that finally, and unexpectedly, we get to hear from one whom we always seem to hear, expectedly. The busker is heard, overheard, ignored and adored: and in opening this volume, it becomes clear that our poet is singularly placed to catalogue the contents of a city’s stomach.

He looks rough this morning

I hang around and ask

what happened?

we sit opposite the Mecca bingo hall

scoffing down Lion Bars

4 for a pound

some wankers

just came from nowhere

gave me a good kicking last night

after a while it’s time to move on

Danny champion of the world

that’s what I call him

oh yeah he laughs

getting back up on his feet

well in that case where’s my fookin’ prize?

• Champion

‘The greatest of poems is an inventory,’ said G.K. Chesterton, in discussing Robinson Crusoe. Mr. Green perhaps encountered this line and took it literally. This Noise Is Free reads as less of a collection of poetry, than it does notes for a collection of poetry.  Indeed, we feel something may have been gained for subtitling the book as such.

Aaron’s jeans splattered in rainbows of paint

the pet snake wrapped around Steve’s shoulder

it’s Betty’s last fag before not returning to the hospital

the pint of ale waiting on the bar for Joan to settle

piles of baked beans from the sign language cafe

plastic bags collected and recycled by Kevin

birds nibbling the crumbs of Sandra’s wages 

Karen’s pram wobbling up and down the alley

a new moon tattoo covering Emma’s old wounds

out of date crisps from Mike’s market stall 

the tambourine man coming around the corner 

the closed day-care centre that once took care of Joan

– Snippets for Town Mural

For one for whom music is considerably more than a hobby, we are surprised to find in the text little trace of musicality. We are quick, however, to admit of an argument in favour of a staccato rendering: given the nature of the subject at hand, any obvious or semi-obvious attempt to fashion the words into a form accommodating the principles of melody, may be to gild a lily best left ungilded, or to shoe a songstrel better left unshod.

For in the scenes and characters that capture the poet’s attention, we see something of the observations of a young Tom Waits, and to a lesser extent, Charles Bukowski. Whereas there was romance in the former, veneration in the latter, and robust good humour in both, in Mr. Green we get something closer to an itemisation of a consciousness, and the items contained therein are all too frequently analogues for wretchedness: the ruined face, the irreparable dream, the divorcee from everything but desperation. 

The diamond child watching me

through the eyes of 17 gold canaries 

the clothes shoppers swooping in tight formations

the egg cress sandwich I shouldn’t have stolen

the evaporating lottery ticket woman

eating the cloud’s silver lining

the street cleaner whistling at imaginary pin-ups

the man being paid nothing to hold up

an advertising board that doesn’t even exist

the apocalyptic newspaper seller

shouting at dogs from his plastic Tardis

the lips scoffing fresh cream buns of gossip

the rushers by rushing into meetings

which they somehow don’t yet know are cancelled

– Hidden Histories 

The style to the content is adequately married, and in their union we see mirrored the itinerant nature of the poet’s life; though in this as in all things moderation is the key – and there are times, indeed, when a seedling idea seems about to germinate, yet the poet’s attention too rapidly moves on. 

No man controls what he sees, but he can control what he writes about. It is this, we feel, that separates the poet from the subject – though he may pick up his guitar and leave a place, he never quite shakes the sense of imprisonment. The busker busks and moves on, but what allows him the two inches of separation is not the utility of travel, which in this case seems less a border-crossing and more a prisoner being moved from cell to cell, but the sentiment of genuine tenderness, which in these works is all too often buried in the pomp of the parade, yet on occasion does present itself as the governing principle, and the nucleus of Mr. Green’s literary efforts. 

Wanderer in a torn tracksuit 

he sits by Tesco Extra 

spiky orange hair 

dirty trainers

he keeps nodding off to sleep then

waking up again

by his feet

sits a large brass bowl

round and ancient

I keep an eye on him

then go over check he’s ok

it all depends 

what path you’re taking

is all he will say

to my questions about existence

words floating upwards

smoke rising from the mountain

– Praja

As the reader reads, he may be troubled with the question of whether this is a collection of prosaic images rendered poetically, or poetic images rendered prosaically. By the end of the book, this question is unresolved, and for the brevity of the work, and the pace at which it unfolds, we may find ourselves quite as nourished as the poet himself, sharing a four-pack of Lion Bars with Danny the champion. 

Felix Cassiel© 2021

R.G. Foster on

Judith Kazantzis’

Sister Invention

(Smokestack Books, 2014)

Plunging us into a bejewelled purgatory of language and imagery, Judith Kazantzis’ latest release strives towards reconciliations; using constantly re-imagined standpoints the poet attempts to marry the public to current events, current events to the poet, and the poet’s craft to her maddening, ghostlike emotion.

The opening poem, and title piece, starts the motor in a highly imagistic fashion:

The mountain has the skin of a snake,

  blue and green and glowing,

The reader will be forgiven for believing we are heading into a ballad, but the narrator quickly derails our assumptions:

flowing downwards, grasping what

  or who she’s caught in her breath

until she sheds and runs at the sea.

It runs away from us, much like those serpentine waters. We carry on through a phantasmagorical sequence involving tourmaline, a white horse, cowbells and whirlwinds until the 4^th stanza:

 How the lift goes up and down

   touching between howling floors:

lingerie, double boilers, lad lit, chick lit

   paradise flowers, cream curtains

madam inviting your little ringed fingers.

We seem to have reached an area of commerce; a department store, perhaps, or at least a supermarket, in which everything is available, with the exception of, presumably, whatever it is the narrator’s chasing.

After the promises that were all but granted by the this stanza, with the precise images depicting almost an inventory of solid items, and allowing us to build up a hope, an expectation, even, that after the hitherto frustrating hunt for apparitions we shall be rewarded, satiated, with a reasonable conclusion, the following lines may leave us feeling a tad impoverished;

Oh but the horse steps up the amber stair

  for she is your sister

the horse of the see-through stairs

Elusiveness returns like a playful slap on the face, the narrator is toying with us, teasing us, and to what purpose?

  the jingling bridle in the naked hand.

And you? Her constant sister of invention.

In a Bowie-esque turn of reasoning, the purpose appears to be, if not for the sake of invention itself, then for the sake of invention, or re-invention, as either a coping mechanism, or as a catalyst to some degree of self-understanding. One interesting motif recurrent throughout the poem is the image of limbs; ‘rings on your toes…..cold, cold fingers…..little ringed fingers…..naked hand” – our jointed protrusions, ‘feelers’ if you like, are our antennae and therefore constant, despite the turbulence of mind and environment.

The last line of the third stanza is, I think, particularly telling:

where whirlwinds keep the rattling gates.

The gates are rattling of their own accord, because they are gates; entrances and exits, on hinges. The whirlwind is present as a superficial measure – to provide the buckling mind with the semblance of logic. The kind of logic we crave from this poem, or any poem; denied, of course, by the mocking writer, to whom it has likewise been so torturously denied.

For most of the first part of the book (there are four parts), Kazantzis excavates various figures and images from history, using ‘the great halls of tapestry’ (‘In Rome’) as a backdrop for the battling anxieties that arise from being a poet and a woman. Indeed, ‘In Rome’ unfurls like an old embroidery, or perhaps a contemporary reworking of an old embroidery; a sharp modernist tenor is ever-present in the rhythmic development, an astute metre pushes us forward at a snappy tempo:

When you are well 

                               the voluminous apricot folds 

of the laundered skirts and the 

crisp transparent fichu, the new turban 

of the Sybil, or any woman you may like

better, sailing on the Sistine ceiling, conferring 

                       as fresh as a practical woman,

We enjoy here a delicate weave of sound, and the narrator does intend for us to sail; the reader stands in as the masculine observer, taking easy pleasure in the apparent availability of ladies, ‘any woman you may like’ – music to our ears in more ways than one. This passage may act, somewhat, as a reprieve from the beginning of the poem:

When you are ill 

                the great halls of tapestry 

remember themselves quickly as bland, expert 

with the muscled bodies of that trance, 

                silent and sensuous, by torture 

at the fingers of white-muscled executioners,

and they rifle the metal hall of night, 

and they sight the slow golden morning.

This illness, more spiritual than pathological, has bred beauty and violence, the feminine and masculine, if we like; a cohabitation infinitely more interesting than any notion of historical setting. But we must not seek a party to blame in this particular affray; ‘the white-muscled executioners’ are as innocent as the ‘silent and sensuous’; this is the natural war. In this way, we conclude, it is in illness where we are closer to our nature, and most healthy, and it is in periods of peace, as we are ‘sailing on the Sistine ceiling’, where we enjoy what is merely a dissociation; 

Autumn is here. Don’t the men sit still and write 

               of the plough and the earth,

of country women with the fruitful, high-held baskets?

Let us praise the poets and their conventions.

Upon encountering grandiose lines such as ‘and they sight the slow golden morning’, we may expect things to develop into a kind of call-to-arms; the heralding of a new age, the coming of Nietzsche’s ‘free spirits’, however, the poem ends with something more resembling a grateful compromise:

No gilded lily, but given over to your fate 

comfortable, conscious of the sun

sufficient, gold for today.

Kazantzis’ work, while often refreshingly obscure, is at times frustratingly dense, as in ‘Dr Morreau’s Island, the credits’:

In age they retired 

to the eye of the hurricane

climbing its thunderous wall 

into the stunts’ burial chamber, 

where the soul rows up 

to a peep of the endless hurtling dance.

It is an abstractness perhaps required somewhat by the subject matter, and it’s likely that a familiarity with H.G. Wells’ novel would greatly bolster understanding, however the poem does seem ‘exclusive’; rewarding for those involved, sterile for those who aren’t:

After Morreau’s inept knife 

the stunts, losing their wings 

but gaining a syllable, 

tried falteringly dropping 

from cars in Bullitt chases, 

diving off horses, pushing through 

squares of singed bubblewrap 

in designed towers

‘Mrs Midas’, on the other hand, does not have this issue.

You set it, I mean that ring 

on my finger, and the gold raced in, 

streaked in runners of sunlight, 

dayglo, gold, up my finger, 

 settled in.

The imagery is direct, allowing us to observe the alchemy without obstruction. And indeed we are observers to this poem; watching the Greek legend’s curse unfolding in this most intimate of settings. And by the end of the poem we may even feel a certain unease at the proximity granted us:

Now my yellow hand is 

all yours to hold in bed, 

the one that strokes you heavily 

where you like it, so cold, 

 my honey.

The final piece in Part One is a sweeping, tormented storyboard of a Christmastime car crash. ‘Ghosts’ begins portentously, and gradually ups the pace:

Helter of wind in skelter of rain, 

the storm, the worst for years, 

beating the tree at the top of the hill 

into a whirlpool, in near dark. 

My two arrived in an armoured vehicle 

carrying a bushel of presents, a turkey, cheeses, 

out of the length of the afternoon, 

out of the twilight 

where the sycamore whipped itself 

into a circle of cracking twigs, 

the brow of the wood a vicious circle 

round and round the sunken pit 

of the old disused farm pond 

as if on its own farm generator,

With line beginnings such as ‘beating the tree –’, ‘out of the length –’ and ‘the brow of the wood –’ sounding almost like gear changes, the plot progresses through red dragons, Bodmin Moor, solemn encounters with Christian couples and Hollywoodesque slogans of regret (‘Call a Loved One Make Her Happy’), and with a central arboreal theme; the poet, incarnated or partially-incarnated as a tree, develops from a state of prideful unawareness, to horrified self-mutilation, and finally to self-blame:

and my two squealed up under the tree —

Where I bobbed out, flailing my arms 

towards an embrace, two embraces, 

held back in the teeth of the tree,

For all the intense emotions that are overtly weltering, we can’t help but sense that the narrator is holding back; clinging to vagueness where we crave elucidation, we feel perhaps the narrator, understandably, has not quite come to terms with the incident. The phrase used for the victims – ‘my two’ smacks of possessiveness, and we may feel emotionally excluded; here is a person trying to bear her soul, but hasn’t quite the heart to manage it:

but now, then, to bring my arms round each one, 

each sidling, wet, black figure in the lane 

to hug and to kiss, Happy Christmas.

The term ‘black figure’ throws up anonymous images – we cannot relate, and it is at this point perhaps the poet feels she cannot make herself clear, and thus does not even seek our sympathy. ‘My two arrived in an armoured vehicle’ – the poet seems to have crafted an armoured vehicle of her own.

Briskly switching the backdrop to current affairs, we find ourselves looking into Middle Eastern troubles, Western foreign policy and the like. It is not long before we notice a vague disquiet in ourselves, we are sifting through a chronicle of madness:

All the times the screaming head, 

the bombed woman, 

sees the planes about to 

sees her town, her children, herself. 

All those times 

inside this skull 

out through this mouth 

sorrow’s grinding scream 

protrudes its lava 

of terror, knowledge. 

This organ plays a march 

unstopping, never composed. 

The backing is gray flesh — 

not wind, brass or string — 

the discords silent.

(‘The Bombed Woman’)

The reader, identifying with the innocents, sets himself in an instable purgatory – between apparent lunacy reaching from the skies, raking its claws through the crust and into the bowels of the untapped earth. However, perhaps we are not quite as blameless as all that:

Cross customers are curses to slaughterers, 

feeding their panic of being all alone, 

fighting, fighting in the locked up deep 

frozen chest of meat and not touching.

So they reach out with stubby thumbs, 

turning the queue into statues where 

we stand, smiling good thank you thank you 

we’re better now oh we’re prime.

(‘Curers’)

This poem, somewhat of a parable, seems to dare us to dismiss the thought that it is we Western citizens who are locked up in the ‘frozen chest of meat and not touching’. We, with the worn-down thumbs, rampantly communicating on the current state of affairs, and gladly satiated by either tabloid or ‘quality’ news, depending on our seasoning.

‘Rockets are the jokes of the weak’ offers, possibly in spite of itself, a touch of light (but not quite comic) relief from the murky goings-on:

Finally we couldn’t resist. 

Unable to stifle our own 

more democratic laughter, 

and ever eager to impart our 

more civilized sense of fun, 

we ran a hilarious sitcom 

over three weeks 

for 1400 Gazans.

What a show! 

They fell over laughing. 

They crawled, howling. No surprise. 

We have perfect timing, delivery, 

state of the art material.

Throughout large parts of Part Two, Kazantzis plays with the idea that, despite our access to facts and information, and more or less unlimited opportunities for communication, we still are unable to grasp what is actually going on:

Today’s news is more of today, 

more shells and more shivering screaming 

and blood anywhere but this garden lawn, 

‘securing the sector’ against ‘insurgents’. 

Also my right to say, not in my name? 

to say, what does it mean what does it mean 

what does it mean what does it mean What 

 shall we make it mean?

(‘Dick Cheyney’s Garden)’

After some angst-ridden deliberation, we are left impotent in the face of reason, and all that’s left for us to do is induce our conscience into contenting itself with the instinctual conclusion, or subjective mock-reasoning.

‘Bin Laden in the Gulf of Iran’ is initially striking for its constricted layout, it has the appearance, even, of a newscaster:

By the time he reached the bottom 

of the Gulf, by the time 

on the way down, half a 

mile you thought, two and a 

half thousand feet, neither 

of us could make out metres of 

metres of metres, hours then,

even the humble seconds 

that lowered the slightly 

smiling lips, the bedraggled 

infested prophet’s beard past 

creatures zoologists can name, 

not I, smaller and smaller 

his own citizens, denizens,

Starting off at a slow tempo, resembling a body’s gradual drift to the ocean floor, the poem quickly grows into a well-governed rant barely containing its own anger:

erupting all along the passage down, 

in, or out, moving from their 

accustomed cells through or to 

other cells, all intent on eating, him, 

each other; propagating, changing, 

swimming, dying in the depths they 

did not anticipate, he after all a mere 

land animal like the other animals 

who shot him and tipped him 

into the only element he could not 

claim for his soul or his god.

It could be that Kazantzis intends this poem to be the public’s response to the news reports constantly streaming into our electronic devices.  Kazantzis’ depiction of Bin Laden’s milieu is that of a melting pot; a commotion of beastly, half-dumb cannibalism, devoid of any nobility; we are reminded of the early days of Mesopotamia, in fact, of streets awash with death, disease and manic copulation. The situation we find here, however, is not destined to peak with the birth of any kind of new humanity;

Bits of him fly like rag flags 

on battlements of coral — 

in full fathom — what was it? 

Failing metres, we didn’t know 

that either. Wrong. Not the math, 

but his (I grant you) efficient 

unmartyrdom. Wrong: he

should have lived but in murder’s 

lock; and his drowners, 

so should they, for great murders 

that came in revenge, and come 

and come, and slaughter has two roads, 

two songs sounding off, 

and the saints go murdering on.

In this last passage we face the possibility that no form, not even poetic realism, can accommodate the horror (‘failing metres’) and the narrator is thus reduced to the didactic (the abrupt repetition of ‘Wrong’) – the promised land of the devout ends as a wasteland of gunshots and screaming, it cannot any longer be claimed even for a divinity (‘battlements of coral’), and it ends in a slightly ironic, quasi-adolescent last line, suggesting, perhaps, that, if indeed the narrator here represents the public, exposure to the Terror can’t help but turn us all into would-be poets.

We move on to ‘Easter Monday’, a soft-spoken lament for mankind’s incongruities that gingerly becomes a weary and unstated affirmation of life:

Above my favourite ever race-track 

the clouds in their white silks 

chase one another in the gallops of the blue sky: 

quarter horses and riding ponies, 

herding, pulling apart without a squeal, 

circus ponies, shires, all classes of crest, 

flank and hindquarter, nose to nose 

nudging over the laps of the downs.

Envying the grace and ease with which the clouds above manoeuvre, the narrator scoffs at the sight of human diligence bent to the workings of chance:

But none of us care about the weather: 

we work our eyes, brains, on the alluring odds 

and at last on that single irreversible 

all for all and glory of the pell-mell

But they soon come around, noting the ‘uncertain ramrod’ as the rightful symbol of a life well-lived; that despite our inability to know, and our ineffectiveness in negotiating the odds, we have acted with conviction, despite having none. And soon we begin to see the inherent sterility in the sky’s tranquillity:

Check halfway, confirm the coloured dots 

strung flat out on the tilted plain, 

Hardy Breeze, Northern Saddler, Nearly Gold, 

and overhead, in their opposite career, 

never jibbing but changing, the chances 

even and even along the blue plain.

‘The well bespoke’ is a funny and clever take on Papal disparity. Prefaced with a quote, ‘intrinsically disordered’ (barely a quote at all, so short it throws up endless contexts) attributed to Pope Benedict XVI and his views on homosexuality, this persona piece smugly asks the reader’s forgiveness for some resoundingly un-masculine personal tastes. Because of its meagre length, I include the poem here in full:

Forgive a soft spot for such shoes 

inside out of crimson silk, 

a silk that Prada specified 

of silkworms putti plump on virgin milk, 

then dyed to match that matchless blood 

whose wounded steps my little feet, 

they do say elegantly formed, 

thus imitate to trip downstairs and greet 

the boring nuns and clever gentlemen 

for whom I wave my little wave. 

Blood-red beauty! These are the shoes 

in which infallibly we trip to save.

Written in the conventional form of ABCB-rhyming quatrains, this poem utilizes razor-sharp humour to portray the pontiff as a figure so effeminate and dainty, he likely could not prosper in the exclusive red-blooded world he so unshakeably espouses. Kazantzis has some fun with the idea that the leader of the Catholic Church, for all his heterosexual bombast, finds himself in an acutely submissive position; a mannequin, draped in whatever garments his commercial affiliates or the ‘boring nuns and clever gentlemen’ wish for him to present to the world.

Some of Kazantzis’ finest rhythmic virtuosity can be found in the latter parts of the volume, with prominent examples being;

We walked on past flowers 

too easy on the eye. 

What had they sent me? 

The shadow wreathed him 

a hat, yes — I slowed a stride, 

impatiently watched it place the vine 

on his head, all three 

of us moving, the scratch 

of leaves, grapes soft and swollen, 

I too breathed, heard no breath behind — 

Happy am I, roared the lark’s song.

(‘What the head sings’)

    What is daylight? 

Shine on me 

   They say the day 

            is white, but you 

                   are white — 

and night is bluer, 

               something bluer 

and soft, Pasiphae, 

             two horned mother — 

 (‘Labrys’ Child’)

She must have lived because she’s dead. 

Jam and butter and a pinch of bread.

Old salt scar on old white skin, 

such bitterness will do you in.

A drip of milk ran down my chin, 

I licked it up and tucked it in.

(‘Salt Lick’)

Kazantzis’ musicality reaches its peak at those times when her joy in observation is most palpable, for example, in ‘Song for Matala Bay’:

The hero on the bow-bellied mountain 

stands; a ruff of whispery 

red gold haute coiffure 

adds breadth to a whiplash neck.

You were Heracles in the morning 

shadows, the first to call 

dawn to the slippery surf and to 

the drought stiff grass,

where you moved like a coin chieftain 

                        with few brains.

Now in his peignoir, stippled, 

dappled, eyelids carved 

like a monseigneur’s out of hot 

geranium, his side-eye 

turned in a disk, as he scratches by; 

and flutters, like a fish its gills 

showing its whites. 

He moves quietly 

adding his oodles 

                            to those 

of the others, quiet sounds 

appropriate to a day 

under the bow-bellied hills.

In the lengthy banquet of language that is ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’:

Each bird bends 

its beady eyes to love 

comical love, that clown, 

buffoon of buttocks and breasts 

I gawp at your head 

You squint through the hole 

Delight is wholly a garden, 

holy fruit, the holes in fruit, 

ripe, rotting — ever the 

fruit runs riot, and ripens —

Anyone can squirm through, 

you, me and Sesame —

Open wide — what 

word or womb or which wide? 

A family joke,

a joke of leaves and birds 

Faces of innocence

and alabaster arses

we’re all here

happy as blue jays

green as woodpeckers

Sharp as the point of flight

All is one is one and one is all

every mouth is wrong

and every mouth is right —

And in ‘Hopkins Skipkins’, also notable for its bold and refreshing use of archaisms:

O day deliveranos 

He chews the pockets of his head

where memory bleeds from a sore gum

inflamed still by its baby teeth,

points which never smoothe. 

From the craters of the night

O day deliver the lot of us,

the baby sewn into mud;

how grown souls spring up at night

and stamp around their ruins.

One poem that, for me, encapsulates the majority of the book’s themes to the most intense degree, is ‘Skylla’; a dark and fascinating descent into a particularly monstrous chapter of Greek myth.

Dog heads at the end of tentacles 

waving like the tails of a pack of hounds. 

Pups in the womb. Abandoned. Miscarriage 

re-enacting each its death 

slobbering down the side of the cliff 

each time there’s a ship. 

The echoes whimper back 

what delicacy they’re snatching 

up out of the spitting race, 

retrieving for me. As in former times 

the sacred hounds in glamorous woods 

hunted with the Goddess? I wish. 

First Homer finally Ovid. 

Shipmasters drown the last yells. 

(Mine too, a fainter cry.)

Men Overboard! 

Divided, they say at port, 

between two murderous women.

Skylla (or Scylla) was depicted in legend as a beastly sea goddess who lurked among the rocks on one side of the Strait of Messina (directly opposite on the other side resided the daemon goddess Charybdis). In this poem the narrator appears to re-imagine herself at one moment the poet, at another Skylla herself. We are struck a few lines into the poem when we realize that this will not simply be a recording, or even a reworking, of the actual tale, but rather an effort to question why and how the stories themselves have been chronicled. And what, if any, significance a modern revision may have.

Imagine a lost younger sister. 

A bubble of laughter, (naiads?)

……………………………………………

Elements of a spark, doused. 

A splutter in the mind’s rock. 

How was she? Beautiful? Gifted? 

Did she laugh? Pleasant to know?

‘Imagine a lost young sister’ may seem to us in one way helpful, in another way a tad condescending (is that great, oft-quoted classical angst so far from our comprehension?!) but the next line ‘A bubble of laughter, (naiads?)’ dismisses the latter thought; the poet is having as much trouble as she thinks we are.

I, she, ache at waist level, hip level, 

feed their canines, their baby claws. 

I, they, are tearing who they live for, 

all to bits, elegantly, year by year.

Seen through contemporary eyes, these lines could well reflect the worries of motherhood, and the horrific mixture of physical pain and spiritual joy, the ‘binary praxis of antagonistic reciprocity’, to quote Sartre, that occurs during childbirth.

But under the waterfall 

really — how might she be? 

Was she a beauty? Witty, quick? 

Postscript: the wickedest queen, 

no god’s invention neater, 

her crooked finger 

to find the chink in little Skylla 

— her job to needle — 

find it open, bloody, 

then stuff her back down herself 

screaming, caught for good by 

her first/last ocean of desire. 

So that in the dark 

behind the rock face 

notorious to men and ships 

the long hair of the waterfall 

dries to snake and dog, 

the zoo in the hill of the womb, 

and as in all such strange cases 

(O aborted women) 

the misshapen begins to grow.

The insistent questioning is a thoroughly post-modern exercise, we feel the narrator is desperately trying to make sense of timeless predicaments; the atrophying of the soul, and the accuracy and relevance of literature. 

In this poem we also find evidence of Kazantzis’ endeavours to reconcile; mother and child, youth and old age, the living poet and the dead poet, the primordial and the civilized.

This volume has captured the expansiveness of Kazantzis’ range and learning, and serves as a showcase for her love of words and delight in writing. She has set her various battles across a swathe of different ages and backdrops; endowing her concerns with a degree of timelessness. As her tools of combat she has employed the art of self invention and re-invention, displaying a zest for life, and for language, through which the fruit of her experience is yielded.  And indeed – I can confidently say that Kazantzis’ concerns are the concerns of every woman.

R.G. Foster © 2014

New & Selected Sorrows (2015)

George Simic 

Fish, blood, guns, and constellations; in this collection of newer and older works, celebrated Bosnian Goran Simic endeavours to blueprint the inner world of the outsider; with recourse to his defining symbols of organic and celestial life he plots the career of the hunted – the romance of the passions, the destitution of the situation – to fabricate the tension of a permanent alien.

Of this book, from 2015, movement is a major theme. So much so that after the opening few lines one acquires the impression of having boarded a train; the destination is uncertain, yet for company there is a fidgety old man who, occupying the window-seat, wastes no time in regaling his neighbour. For our narrator is something of a vagabond, a travelling minstrel, singing his songs of sorrow in a reedy tenor, each verse dedicated to the goddess of ennui.

Indeed, Simic’s awareness of the divine, clothed in one mantle or another, constitutes the spine of this drifter’s skeleton. Or perhaps more accurately, its half-eaten flesh. The relationship with the Higher Power is largely antagonistic, and, occasionally, downright abusive. Yet in reading many of these works one feels that what is under review is not God’s presence, but his absence; or rather, the absence of what may be termed godliness in His comportment. God to the poet is one who

‘…sometimes knocks on my frozen window

and I don’t let him in because 

he has the eyes of a prisoner and always asks: why?’

This reduction of the Almighty to the status of wretch is made in anger, disdain; yet a prisoner must at some point, for sanity’s sake, shake hands with his lot. Thus follows:

‘As if I knew.

I just half-breathe humbly and die the other half 

Looking for the place where the door used to be.

Sleep, Goran, sleep.

Prisoners do not exist.’

Simic’s conversational, atonal method allows for unusual semantic structures, and in the above instance his direction of the reader’s attention away from the word ‘die’ to the word ‘looking’ is indicative of the desperate mind lurching at all costs from the growing likelihood of destruction; it is by utilising passages such as this that the poet reminds us that we function as automata, governed by little except the desire to survive.

And to maintain his own survival the poet appears to have deployed various tactics, primary among them anonymity; in ‘Passport borders’, for example, we are given the perspective of the immigrant confronted by his new nation’s apparatchiks, agents of security that cannot help but view him as a potential rogue element. 

‘Perhaps he didn’t know that I travelled at night,

that my skin was full of odours

of continents unknown to him

and my room full of things meaningful only to me;

I brought an icicle from the North,

fire from the South,

a candle from the East,

wind from the West,

and I didn’t have to justify myself to anybody.’

The immigrant, bearing such a rich array of global accroutrements, must necessarily fall under the suspicion of a neurotic, individualised policing system. Yet there is an artfulness to his collecting; like the ghostly skin of a prisoner which we cannot make out beneath the tattoos, this international truant has rendered himself unidentifiable to blinkered homeland security.

‘My hands are as cold as the TV news, my skin as blue

As the stamp on a birth certificate.’

Thus in ‘Candle of the North’ Simić continues in this vein, and one begins to feel that the poet has spent many a night in unbearable reflection, perhaps atop Zarathustra’s mountain, or in some bombed-out garret in a Bosnian village. In ‘Adam’ however, we are treated to a slightly more youthful expression:

‘Outside my window sad people walk the street

and compare themselves with passers-by.

Outside people wear masks while walking dogs.

Even dogs wear masks. Outside is a mess’

And in ‘To the dining car’ Simic reinforces the hint of underlying innocence, a memory of the maudlin expectations of childhood. 

‘Let’s go there.

We’ll press our noses to the carriage windows 

trying to guess where we are 

but all we’ll see will be our eyes wide open in the glass. 

Like the eyes of dead fish belly-up on the water.

Where we’re headed or whether we’ll ever get off this train 

will lessen in importance.’

This piece, which, in its sentimental treatment of the belief in action, and its refrain of ‘let’s go’, is almost an inversion of Eliot’s Prufrock and other early works, places us on a strange train, populated with strange people; and unlike his fellow passengers, the narrator is not quite the small soul curled up in the window-seat, reading the Encyclopedia Britannica, but rather one who seems to bound up and down the length of the train, this train we’ve no recollection of boarding, and which will stop at God knows where. Yet the focus of our attention, and the object of our immediate desire, is not the destination, but the dining car; nourishment, which is attainable, will usually succeed in taking our minds off of the darkness beyond the windows, or indeed, the darkness we see for a moment reflected in our own watery, amphibious eyes.

‘Dream Nuance’, however, returns us to the perspective of the anonymous; here, we sit across the table from a speechless woman, silent but for the drumming of her fingers, 

‘Can you see me? I ask her. Can you see me at all?

                              She nods. But she is lying.’

She is beyond communication, existing not as a corporeal figure but rather a figment; a femme fatale, a murderess in the imagination of the poet, whose death-agony becomes palpable; this poem is less a critique of the mysterious Other, than it is a howl into a glass jar.

His inability to connect, and his attendant failure to identify the Other as a creature of volition, reflects his own nebulousness; his avenue of honest communication, between himself and the outside, is but rubble. Yet for having for so long evaded us, about a third of the way through the collection, the poet-as-poet finally reveals himself. 

‘O tell me who I am.

For a long time I lived my literary imagination.

For a long time now I have hovered over a bookshelf,

an inkless page. Too many things remind me of death, 

of this planet I dare not touch.’

A certain relief is encountered here, a certain gladness; for now the narrator appears to us in a more definable form; and while he still has no idea who or what he is, we feel secure in the belief that we know a little better, that perhaps finally, we have him pegged.

Yet sharply on the heels of this piece follows ‘My Shadow’, a more thoroughgoing and lyrical expression of the general tenor than all offered thus far; in this composition we find brevity, a refreshing pungency, and in its representation of the diaphanous spirit, this liquid scribe of the alien, it is emblematic of the entire volume. And while suitably energised, we find ourselves again on the back-foot. 

‘Who will eat my breakfast tomorrow morning? 

Who will tell my boss I will be late again?

Who will listen to my fellow workers make jokes?

A shadow is a poor excuse.

‘They know nothing about my shadow.

They know nothing about how day follows day

and I no longer recognise my face in the mirror.

They do not know my shadow shaves every morning

and how every morning I would cut my skin

if I wasn’t afraid I might see

no blood.’

Here we get a firmer sense of the man, a more visceral appreciation for his position; he begins to form before us as one who has worked, one who has probed the craggy plains of the motes in the eyes of the other, and who has, disgusted, turned inward, and, downing his tools in horror, laments bitterly that in the beam in his own eye there is nothing. By the point at which he picks up his pen, his fellow humans appear to him as he seems to appear to himself; organic machines, so many mini-abysses, uninteresting at a distance, and dangerous in close encounters. 

The disconnect is born of necessity:

‘after I wiped with a dishtowel the blood from

the face of an old woman, fearing I would recognise her’

Only one who encountered early the dread of intimacy can use a mask of blood for a buffer. Following this is a series of war-poems, immediate in their effect but rather indistinguishable, with each piece an echo of the one before it; inevitably there arises a sense that our time as audience on this particular train is drawing to a close, and we begin counting the minutes until our stop is due. Yet it is precisely at this point that a wizened yet virile hand reaches over and slaps us; if Simic had not by now quite convinced us of the horrors innate in the warring mammal, he succeeds in ‘Lejla’s Secret’. 

The violence of the imagery is enough to breed insomniacs, yet it is what is left unsaid that torments the faceless neighbours that make up the subject of this piece. Here Simic takes advantage of the idea that we suffer more in imagination than we do in reality, and he wields his power almost joyfully over the somnambulist reader. 

‘What was it she saw in the mortuary that day?

Like contagion that question began to obsess her

neighbours, and the secret of Lejla’s madness 

became our nightmare. Her ghost turned our

basement shelter into a workshop of horror. 

Some believed that she’d recognised the face of

her late husband, others that she had seen a 

corpse sewn from the bodies of different people. 

The rest saw a baby in an open womb. Before

long, fear of our imagination surpassed our fear

of the shells.’

On page 79, however, the poet’s eyes turn away from the gory canvas of the physical war, and return to the noiseless power play; on another train, our narrator is assailed by a fellow passenger, this in the form of a statuesque Madonna, whose cold war policy does not leave a trail of eyeless heads and shorn ears, but chill in the soul of the desirer. 

The collection ends on a rather drawn-out note, ‘Wind in the straight jacket’, which endeavours to tie up whatever ends may have been cut loose in the preceding works. Over the course of its 39 pages, this composition recovers the trod ground such as identity, family and religion in a reconciliatory manner, though not, it should be added, by softening its bite.

The poem lurches here and there, trying to accumulate assertions from every corner of its reality. As a result, the offerings are something in the nature of the pick-and-mix, producing a pebbledash effect; certain strong lines offer nourishment, but we are left wanting more. ‘How wonderful it is to be protected by the cage of words’ he avers, and we his co-conspirators, dipping into the bath of bitterness, cynicism, and alienation, which he has so politely draw for us, find ourselves agreeing, stiff-lipped and rosy-cheeked. Indeed, those nutritious lines are so individual, refreshing, that they strike us almost as life advice.

‘the safest way to go on a crocodile hunt

is to wear crocodile-skin boots’.

And

‘My first pair of glasses 

my parents forced me to wear

to see people better…’

The ignominious spectacle of which was 

‘too big for childish eyes,

seeing people as deer

or as hunters’.

By page 100 religion is less a framework of faith, or a cause for torment, than it is something more practical, a sorting-house for ritualistic human behaviour:

‘what will the confused door say,

that threshold you crossed only once in your wedding dress

but many times in black?’

And 

‘I am afraid the children will wake up

too early for school,

only to find their teacher

in the classroom crucified.’

The latter third of the poem, however, is tighter, more concentrated, and, in essence, declarative. The notion of the sacred has left religion and has been deposited in the figure of a wife, whose body, living or lifeless, must be protected from the cold machinery of the modern campaign. 

‘My darling, I am going to bury you

in our garden, 

so I won’t have to look for you

in others,

where you’d get devoured and digested 

in the bowels of military trucks.’

Yet the trucks are heartless, a product of men, and men a product of nature. Mother Nature is heartless, the Tao Te Ching tells us, and treats all things as straw dogs. Death, for Simic, resides in these trucks, the vehicles of war, yet his argument, we feel, is not with the machines, or the systems that produce them, but rather nature itself: the terror of the situation.

The poem, and perhaps the collection, reaches its thematic and emotional culmination in a single stanza, the impetus of which is a childish cry, an atavistic, helpless retaliation against the impersonal aggression of the Other. In this we find the rage, the desperation of the disempowered, yet we also find a hint of resignation, the solemnity of one, sadly but inevitably, exposed too early:

‘Where is the man? I shouted

Where is the man?

I shouted at the official in clinical attire

piecing together 

a nameless skeleton as if solving a mere problem.’

 

How Death Came Into The World

Nancy Charley

Smokestack 

2020

71 pages

‘Well, you stay where you are, for all I care.

You sing from there then. Walk your own path.

And you can keep your oaks. But who, tell me,

Who shall be our judge? If only Lycopas,

The herdsman, were in sight somewhere.’

Theocritus, The Idylls: V. The Goatherd Versus the Shepherd

It could be that the charge, made in a pre-juridical age, has never been adequately refuted; or, as is equally likely, that it has not been taken seriously enough to warrant rebuttal. In agreement with the majority of Western civilisation, Nancy Charley proposes that Woman did not, in fact, bring death into the world; and, in this book titled ‘How Death Came Into the World’, she produces other avenues by which death did not enter. 

For the student of The Golden Bough, there is much here that will interest: upon a tapestry of folktale and ritual, of heroes and superstition, the poet has, with precision, embroidered her characters. Though it would perhaps be unfair to examine them strictly as characters; they are, primarily, dislocated persons, removed, it seems, from the narratives of their own lives: voices or bodies, but rarely both; these poems are of the lyric, not dramatic, species.

A reader of Robert Graves, too, will find items here worth his attention. In much of his work Graves advocated the theory that in the pre-Hellenic age, societies in Europe were almost uniformly matriarchal, and that it was only when the Hellenic invaders and raiders swarmed over the islands and the mainland that rule by men was made the norm. Graves argued that a great deal of mythical rape, and certainly the unbounded philandering of Zeus, had as their originals the desecration of the temples of the cults of the lunar goddess, and the institution of the worship of the solar god. The critic can find nothing to suggest that Nancy Charley has not read Graves carefully.

On his first encounter with the text, the reader will be forgiven for thinking himself in the realm of the pastoral; yet in pastoral there is so often celebration, praise and healthy contest; soon he discerns the scaffolding, and notices that the attributes of this particular landscape are, in fact, inversions of these. 

Sometimes she dreams of her mother’s teat,

Imagines her yelp in the east wind’s howl

But the urge for nurture 

                Is being overwhelmed 

   By a nascent drive to devour.

From ‘Foxed’.

And from ‘Not Your Daughter’:

She stalks the streets of St. Tropez,

Fists primed for fight, keepsakes to hawk.

The well-heeled, designated prey,

She stalls on streets of St. Tropez

To plead her need, make men purvey 

Her trinkets wheedling as they walk.

The scene is stripped to its core elements, or, certain of its core elements; foremost among them is predation. Men are not properly men, and women not properly women, nor are the beasts fully themselves; the hierarchy is split through the middle: on one side is predator, on the other prey, exchanging positions as the mood demands. 

He baits breath, smashes eggshells

On birch trays, patterns mosaics.

Evening sees moth sacrifice by candlelight.

She draws curtains, shuffles the tarot pack.

Faithless he waits, knowing his designs 

Die or survive with her soothsaying. 

From ‘Rule’.

Predominating over all other themes is the interplay between the sexes. In accordance with the teachings of the school of postmodernism, Charley renders the necessary reciprocation between man and woman too often as a power-play. In dramatic or narrative poetry, or in any poem which utilises personae, partisanship may be expected, and in those depicting battle, it may even be desired; torn from the significance of the event, however, its effect, at best, strikes hard upon the ceiling of polemic.

Frequently the poet produces the general tone of polemic, yet its object remains uncertain. In polemic there must be risk, a sense of something personal that is at stake for the polemicist; here, the stand taken by the poet is largely in harmony with the fashion of the age, and it is for us to guess what, if anything, is at stake.

He’d endured the wake,

It’s wailing shenanigans,

Heard how he was loved,

How messed he’ll not be.

He guessed on day, 

Though God knows when,

He’d be called up

By a trumpet blast

Or the earth shaking.

But he wasn’t expecting

This recent revival,

Dragged from the ground

In the dead of night

To be gaped at by strangers,

Slit skin flapped apart, 

All his innards outer.

And as for his Annie

They’ve felt more of her

Than he ever managed.

From ‘Deathblow’.

It is perhaps true that a poet writes his poem only to one person; and the poet himself may have only a hazy idea of who that person is. Even so, the reader of poetry seeks to experience the sensation of being spoken to as an individual, and a poet has no better reason for writing than to communicate directly: the readers of How Death Came Into the World, however, may find themselves not so much with the feeling of being talked to, but of being talked at. 

With a song and a swagger, his dancing dagger 

Sliced common sense from her brain.

He made captive her heart by that terrible art 

Of blurring boundaries between crazy and sane.

How did she come to lie with him

Entranced by the stories he’d weave?

How did she come to lie with him

Forsaking all that she believed?

To no-one’s surprise as the moon hid her eyes,

They left. Her love postured, complained, 

Made impotent gestures about how he’d fetch her 

Till old men’s lips curled in disdain. 

How did she come to rely on him

When she knew he cheated and thieved?

All she knew was she’d willingly die for him

For he thrust to the core of her need.

From ‘The Plunderer’.

In the machinery there is something approximating to the folkloric strain of Yeats; and in certain pieces we hear echoes of Yeats’s preoccupation with youth and age, with the progress of the mind toward maturity, and then on to decay. Maturity is attended by new sensations, peculiar combinations of feelings that gain in intensity as maturity develops, and which arouse certain modes of thought from which the less mature are spared. Yeats knew well the dangers, and the imperative sacrifices, inherent in maturation; and he knew also that many minds go from youth to age to decay, bypassing maturity entire – a danger more awful than any enlargement of burden. As such, his human scenes are adorned with a catholicity of sentiment, and his scenes of nature with the implicit knowledge of the primacy of the supernatural. 

While How Death Came Into The World wants for catholicity, there is nevertheless an awareness of the timeless; the most striking manifestations are found in Charley’s rendering of social and domestic intercourse – in one case (‘Winter’s Code’), it occurs as each sex’s tendency toward prejudice (i.e. old women are witches) – considered as a whole, this awareness seems also to provide something of a foundation. 

For a week the neighbours muttered 

About how the farmer wouldn’t get his crops sown.

But the horse knew on which side it’s bread was buttered 

(Sorry, poor metaphor – where it’s oats we’re grown),

So returned to the farm with some pals it had made,

A herd of wild horses galloped in and stayed.

The neighbours rushed to congratulate,

Free horses! Such blessing! What bounteous good luck!

The farmer shrugged and simply said,

Good luck? Bad luck? Who can tell?

All we can do is to try to live well.

From ‘As Luck Would Have It’.

For the most part, the emotion is monochrome: the poet starts at something akin to indignation, and she struggles to move beyond it. In Yeats, we delight in his suspension of judgement. In Charley’s book, there is no such suspension. The poet does not shy away from suggesting the inexplicable, yet too often the persons she gives us seem but a nebulous complex of atoms, wailing at the wall of myth and ritual; between the person and the past there is a struggle for communication, and the languages of the dead and the living are mutually unintelligible. Standards are set by the dead, and to them the living are subject; standards may be mingled with emotions, even prejudices, age-old and age-thick; but the standards that endure (which tend to be the only ones with which the living take issue) are always constituted by reason; those that are not so constituted perish prior to examination. Whereas for Yeats, ‘an aged man is but a paltry thing,/ a tattered coat upon a stick, unless/ soul clap its hands and sing’, Charley, too frequently, pulls up the horses before we reach ‘unless’. 

It is in the lyric that Charley excels. The book does not want for demonstration of skill. Charley has studied rhythm, and her knowledge of the importance of music in verse is beyond question. There are times when the music gets away from itself, and other times when it dominates the content, but we readily accept these instances, delighted as we are at others.

Not enough to alter appellation, 

You must transmute the traits.

So take a rabbit, pluck the scut, 

Put on a rack. Resect the hop, the urge

To dig a hole, to twitch, to reproduce.

Lengthen the jaw, insert incisors, 

A taste for blood and a lust for flesh.

Add padding feet, instinctual howl,

Moonshine prowls, a brandished tail.

A final test in headlight glare:

If eyes are steady and do not glaze,

If she snarls then lopes away,

Wolf shall be her name.

– ‘Reclassification’. 

In the year of our Lord 1588

Brananter Stevenson fetched up,

Promising rich pickings 

To tempt men to work the copperas.

In Tankerton fish were the living

But with no stomach for swell and squall,

Joe joined the gang, dug the pits,

Collected the fossil twigs,

Kept them bucked with seawater – 

Four four years!

                            That Brabanter paid well

And when he began to sell to wool 

And leather men, engravers and quacks,

He was true to his word – Joe’s money grew.

But it’s devil’s brew! Tom slid a stone 

In his pocket. By the time he was home

His gabardine was burned and holed.

And Harry, the fool, fell in the trough.

They fished him fast – but that night

He breathed his last. 

                                    Aye, strange business!

The Dutchman, though, proved shrewd, 

Knew the worth of biding time,

Showed living as more than hand-to-mouth.

– ‘The Elizabethan Coast’. 

Isabella

Caroline Maldonado

‘It is all very egg,’ Ezra Pound once told a young Hart Crane, in response to the latter’s submission of unpublished works to The Little Review, ‘But you haven’t the ghost of a setting hen or an incubator about you.’

While we may be careful not to cast too critical a gaze on the output of a novice, especially that which was written without much, if any, consideration for posterity, nevertheless it is incumbent on the reader to admit to any and all impressions that overwhelm in the course of reading a work; and the impression achieved in one’s encounter with Isabella Morra, from the opening sonnet, tells us overwhelmingly that as our acquaintanceship unfolds, we will want not for egg.

It is a difficult thing to estimate the value of a work that is preceded so acutely by the biography of its author; indeed, as we wade through the sonnets and canzoni that make up the book‘s first half, we are never unaware of the situation of the poetess. And if, for a moment, there is a lapse in our sympathy, the author is quick to tell us what’s what.

What makes the Isabella question peculiar, when considering the separation of the work from the biography, is that there is not much of the former, and even less of the latter. Isabella, we are told, lived in obscurity, and her life itself commands no attention; the tragedy, and sensational ugliness, of its end, is precisely the draw for the layman, if not for the critic. 

Caroline Maldonado, who has diligently compiled these poems (as well as translating them, and contributing several of her own) provides an extensive introduction, which is rich in historical context and enticing for all of us interested in the political and social situations of High Renaissance Italy.

It is sufficient to summarise here what we know about Isabella.

Around 1520, in her family’s castle in the village of Favale, Isabella was born. She was of noble stock, and boasted seven siblings. Thanks to the wealth and status of her father, Isabella benefitted from a classical education. Unfortunately, circumstances prevented her from making use of it; while other women of the nobility, we’re told, were living it up in the courts and drawing rooms of Northern Italy, Isabella, restricted to a desolate, plague-battered Southern countryside, could only pull her hair and pine for the life she thought due her, but which, it turned out, was never to be hers. 

The Morras were a landowning family, and Isabella’s brothers, rough and brutish, who shared but little in her education and not at all in her refinement, went about the family business, spending much of their time, it seems, embroiled in disputes with neighbouring landowners. 

In Southern Italy, decades of political unrest had preceded Isabella’s birth, and at the age of seven or eight the horrors of war and intrigue brought themselves abruptly to bear upon the child’s life; roughly three years earlier, the French King Francis I, ruler of the Kingdom of Naples, was defeated in the Battle of Pavia by the Spanish King Charles V. In the aftermath of the Spanish victory, Isabella’s father, a nobleman-poet, who had sided with the French, went into exile, taking with him only one other – a son, Scipione, who was educated alongside Isabella, and whom clearly showed prodigious capabilities (he would, in adulthood, be appointed secretary to Caterina de Medici). Ms. Maldonado speculates that had Isabella not been a woman, her father might have taken her along as well as, or instead of, Scipione. But, of course, he quite reasonably may not have.

At the time of her father’s flight, Isabella had less than 20 years to live. Those years, if her poems may be submitted as evidence, were spent in desperation, fear, and listlessness. While the patriarch, Baron of Favale, eked out a living and a reputation in the exiled, waning French court, and the favourite son the same, Isabella and her brothers endured in the soil, sweat and sanguinary of the rural south. 

Approximately at the age of 26, Isabella was stabbed to death. In what appears to be a most repugnant case of misunderstanding, three of Isabella’s brothers, intercepting a letter to her from one of her few correspondents, suspected an affair between Isabella and the sender, and, in a spirit of high-bloodedness that is no doubt useful for defending one’s fiefdom, but woefully unsuited to weighing the contents of sensitive memoranda, set about the poetess in the most brutal fashion. In the same spirit, they murdered also her tutor, who brought the letter, and, much later, the supposed writer of same, the then-celebrated Count Don Diego Sandoval de Castro.  Between the killing of Isabella and her tutor, and the killing of the Count, two years had elapsed, in which the brothers sought sanctuary in the French court with their father. That Don Diego was a notable Spaniard may indeed have been in their favour, but this is not explicitly hinted. In any case, for their crimes the three brothers never saw trial.

This review will give attention only to Ms. Maldonado’s English translations, and not to the Italian originals.

The first sonnet provides an adequate idea of what we’re in for. 

I write weeping about the fierce assaults 

On me by cruel Fortuna and the lost days

Of my youth, how in this vile, odious hamlet 

I spend my life without a word of praise.

In this opening stanza we are acquainted with three of Isabella’s primary concerns: Favale, which imprisons her; her family, which neglects her; and Fortuna, which despises her. These complaints never leave her, yet her hope that ‘despite the interfering, blind goddess’ she may be ‘valued in more highly in some happier place’ endures, if weakly.

Indeed, it is this thin beam of hope, the single Christian element in an otherwise pagan intellection, that seems to buoy the poems amid the ravenous undercurrents. 

The second sonnet finds her endeavouring to make alliances; before the cramoisie altar of Hymen, and the ivory of Juno, she solicits support against her adversary, whom, adroitly, she refrains from naming:

Tie a fine, gold knot around my neck.

You are the only one I wish to serve,

I am your dearest and most humble subject.

Turned away from Olympos, it seems, empty-handed, in the third sonnet our beleaguered Neoplatonist redirects her attention to the terrestrial realm; Favale again is the target of her ire, ‘the one and only cause of my torment’, yet here the hamlet’s failing, and the one for which Isabella would see it damned, is that it no longer contains her father.

For when I see no oars cut through the waves

Nor a single sail billow in the wind 

(the shoreline is so abandoned, so alone!)

Then must I speak out against my fate

By this point, the impression upon the reader is that it is precisely Isabella’s vertiginous, if incomplete, education, coupled with the high expectations of one of her status, that amplify, if not cause, her complaints; for aren’t we to imagine, in the reading of such a work, that many a young peasant girl, breathing in the same humid air as Isabella, air ruined by plague, flies and dust, enduring their lot in boredom, hardship and deprivation, would have similar, if not identical, grievances; yet this is indeed an act of imagination, for throughout the Renaissance and all the ages either side of it, we hear not a peep from them. 

Throughout the sonnets there is a vigour of sentiment, a roughness, almost a violence, that seems to soak the text as if from a heavy cloud, or a burst riverbank; the speaker is impulsive, and meets aggression with aggression; indeed, we may conceivably wonder whether the poetess would not have been quite at her ease in spending her hours garrisoning the perimeters of the fiefdom, club in hand, with her brothers. The result is coarseness, an inelegance of diction, which lights upon the ear at times disagreeably, and at other times, disinterestedly. Isabella apparently admitted to this defect and made no excuses for it, reckoning it to lend bloom to a passion that may have wilted under more assiduous cultivation. 

For what is pleasing in the work we must look elsewhere, and pay attention to the sentiments themselves, which, while admitting little shade or gradation, at times find a happy marriage with well-chosen imagery. It is here that we detect the lily amid the thorns.

For Isabella’s intellectual inheritance was rich; her education had included Petrarch, in whose mould these sonnets were made; and many of her lines betray, directly or indirectly, the fruits of the work of men like Pico Della Mirandola, who had died in Florence a few decades previously, and whose life’s project, if we are to use Pater’s paraphrasing of a line from Wordsworth, to ‘bind the ages each to each by natural piety’; and not many years prior to Isabella’s birth Michelangelo had executed the Doni Madonna, a tondo of the Holy Family replete with the voluptuousness of the rediscovered, reimagined pagan sensuality. 

In lines such as these, from Sonnet IV, we telescope, for a moment, upon the cultural horde of the High Renaissance. 

The perfume of the vermilion rose with its sweet 

And vital aura feeds the soul no less 

Than does the sacred golden lily’s scent.

By the tenth and final sonnet, the reader finds Isabella maturing. In this piece the flurry of pagan imagery, indicative of the poetess’s arrested sensuality, is eschewed entirely; in its place we find something approaching reverence, an acceptance of the mystery and a deferment of passion, though for this the lines are no less robust, and no less affecting on the sympathy of the reader.

You know, in those days, how bitterly I wrote,

With what anger and pain I denounced Fortune. 

No woman under the moon ever complained 

With greater passion than me about her fate.

Now my soul repents of its blind mistake,

No longer finding glory in gifts such as these 

And though starved of all that is good while it lives, 

It hopes to grow rich in the light of God’s grace.

Neither time nor death, nor some violent, 

Rapacious hand will snatch away the eternal, 

Beautiful treasure before the King of Heaven.

Nor will summer or winter ever do harm,

For there, no-one feels heat or icy cold, 

You see, brother, all other hope is vain.

The canzone follow a similar trajectory, and, in the main, are no more compelling for their extra lines and feet. The rhythms are choppy and the sentiments, which in the sonnets were governed, at times successfully, by the limitations of the form, in the longer works bear the traces of  incontinence. 

‘I write now only to express my desires,’ says the poetess, yet by this expression, which offers neither outline nor movement of said desires, we learn nothing much of Isabella; as we would expect from one cloistered, Isabella speaks of little else but herself, and it is perhaps precisely for this reason that in reading these works we feel no closer to her. Instead we are given moods, never entirely dissimilar, akin, instead, to a single canvass, daubed with a single brush, at once overwrought with carmine, at another with chartreuse. It would not be inappropriate, in fact, for these canzone to be subtitled along the lines of ‘Isabella, looking out to sea’, or ‘Isabella with her bible, by candlelight’.*

In great effusions of lyric, Isabella probes those sentiments that may be called religious; here, she endeavours to marry them to her carnal impulses, there, she laments their irreconcilable differences. Nevertheless, the poems shed further light on the Renaissance spirit, that which was bent to the union of schools, and the harmonising of doctrines that were thitherto deemed incompatible. For this reason, they are not without interest. 

When the blond Apollo raises

His bright face and with his proud look

Chases shadow from the valleys,

A brilliant thought overwhelms me. 

I seem to see Jesus in the temple, surrounded

By wise men, debating in a calm voice,

And she, for whom I burn with passion,

Sheds tears of joy. 

These beech trees bring me comfort

Rather than unspeakable suffering

And I shun the distant sirens’ song:

For on solitary roads

The lovely youth, so beloved by God, 

With his holy, pious and chaste desires,

Saw the path of the angelic choirs.

It should not surprise us that it is in Ms. Maldonado’s own poems that we learn more of Isabella than Isabella could tell us. 

A white arrow flies south along a coastline

Of beach, umbrellas scattered and sea all a-glitter;

The land broadens out, flattens, changes filter

To yellow earth, burnt crops, pumpkins pitched

Awkwardly in harvested fields. The soft wingtips

Of windfarms (here they call them Aeolian fields)

Quiver in the breeze. Grapevines clutch fingers 

Side by side on the flat, instead of grappling

On hills: white egrets crowd on a branch

Arced over a river inlet. Most becomes sun.

The train’s twenty-five minutes late.

At Foggia the travellers alight. The ticket collector, 

Hat askew, steps out, smokes a cigarette.

A horn announces departure. The arrow flies on 

Past ruined houses in unploughed fields, fallen

Roofs on oblong brick masserie, past concrete bridges,

Warehouses, apartment blocks, polytunnels and

African men, women in long skirts and head wraps, 

Bent double to pick tomatoes with trailing stems

For our pastes and purées, our passatas, our pomod’oro.

South.

Here Ms. Maldonado offers something more than a snapshot of the territory; in plain, picture-postcard language we are given to understand the heat, the toil, and the somnambulism of the scene, a scene that, besides the few additions from the repository of modernity – the train, the windfarms, the warehouses and polytunnels – has remained, we feel, largely unchanged from Isabella’s day, and from aeons before that. Even the ticket inspector, we imagine, could, if he wished, trace his lineage to the High Renaissance, and beyond; his ancestors, perhaps, worked the land for the Baron of Favale, or for Count Don Diego, or for some other Baron or Count long forgotten. Today, the landscape is dotted not with Italians in the fields, but with Africans, whose labour the great progress of the human mind, through the Renaissance to the Enlightenment to the Industrial Revolution, seem not to have made any easier. And from this toil, this hardship, this unchanging fact of human existence, the fruit, unendingly, is reaped – and puréed. 

I watch you lift your skirts,

Climb up through forest paths,

Pick your way over rocks at dawn

Towards the peak of Monte Coppolo

Before the heat descends,

And take your place on the hollowed stone

With only beetles and lizards for company,

From where you can see water 

Gleaming through the hills

But no sign of your father’s ship.

There, viewing the abandoned land, 

You’re aware of your solitude.

But are there not days when you return,

Your arms full of broom,

Mind bursting with poems, 

Heart light as the new sky?

Other days.

Iron bars on your window. You can just see

The courtyard below, terracotta pots 

With geraniums and basil, cactus plants 

Against the brick, a strip of sunlight

Across the cobbles and the tabby kitten

Sprawled on warm stone.

There’s a clatter of pans and dishes 

From the kitchen, your mother is shouting

At the servants; a tap at the door 

And Delfina brings your freshly laundered 

Petticoats and a word before she leaves.

Outside the wall at sunrise 

You watched a line of men with their hoes 

And shovels set off for the fields.

In the evening they’ll return silent, 

Heads bowed, their steps slower.

You return to your desk and take up your pen.

The nib scratches the page and the plume

Lifts in the draft from your window

Carrying you to the French court,

To your brother, Scipione, and father, 

To a place of pavane and volta. 

Outside the wall.

When they spoke to me of Honour

I cursed them and they called me mad.

The moon tonight is low and red.

Down in the piazza, sounds from lira

And zampogna tear the air like teeth.

I am poisoned by the spider

And will dance the tarantella,

I’ll don a mask, and join the gypsies

And despite my ancient bones I’ll dance.

Faster than the drums, I’ll dance.

After Isabella’s death, her mother curses.

Though we are in the imagination of Ms. Maldonado, through these pieces and others like them we attain a crystalline picture of Isabella; by the metronomic simplicity of the lines, we sense the nature of Isabella’s plight, the melancholic regularity with which the household is managed; the inability to fill, enrich, or hasten the day; and finally we catch a glimpse of her mother, who remained behind with the family after the Baron’s departure, who struggled to govern the warring personalities of her brood, and who, in Isabella’s poems, remains silent. 

Ms. Maldonado treats her subject with care, compassion, and a deftness of touch that rounds and furnishes our impression of Isabella; in the astute guidance of Ms. Maldonado, we are relieved and grateful to find the egg provided its incubator, or its setting-hen.

*A warm thanks to Mr. G.K. Chesterton.

Review

The Clear Daylight

Peter Branson, Littoral Press, Sudbury, Suffolk (2021) ISBN 978-1-912412-32-7

Peter Branson describes his third collection as his ‘best yet’. It is hard to disagree. The poet and songwriter riffs on his familiar themes – a Catholic childhood in The Potteries, the natural world, social injustice – with a clarity of craft and diction that makes the whole collection thrum. The rhythm of fiddle and bodhran throbs through his political ballads and tributes to folk musicians, but there is far more here than fol-de-rol and derry derry down. From Peterloo to the murder of Jo Cox MP and the Manchester Arena bombing, the poems vibrate with righteous anger.

Branson is a keen observer of the natural world. A sequence of ten poems about bird species in decline forms the core of the collection. Evocative regional nicknames add depth and colour – ‘Goatsucker’, nightjar, ‘Sky Dancer’, the hen harrier, ‘Mizzly Dick’, the mistle thrush. The sequence combines sharply observed detail with social comment. These are no text-book observations, Branson has clearly watched all these birds, ‘scarecrow-still’,  in flight, at rest or feeding:

One moment it’s

the hobby, slicing through dense crowds of swifts

like ticker-tape (‘Goatsuckers’).

The poet’s father hoisted him ‘waist-high’ to peer into a ‘throstle’s nest’ and he was ‘drawn for life’ (‘The Early Bird’). There are painful reminiscences of boyhood nest raids and capturing newts, ‘Twin pocket dinosaurs, jam jarred’ (‘Newts’). A note of authentic, lived experience chimes through the collection with a strong sense of conviction in the political squibs. Add to that striking imagery and an ear for a musical phrase and what emerges is a body of work that resonates long in the memory – ‘a crow bleeds like a cursor/left to right across the screen’ (‘Taking One for the Team’).

Reader of Branson’s previous collections, Red Hill (2013) and Hawk Rising (2016), both from Lapwing, and those who have heard him sing or read live, will find little new thematically but plenty to admire in terms of craft and conviction. Newcomers to Branson’s verse will encounter verse that is muscular, robust and worthy of repeated reading.

Philip Williams, winner of The High Sheriff’s Cheshire Prize for Literature, 2013.©

Book Review

Maj. Gen. G.D. Bakshi SM, VSM (Retd)

Dances with the Cranes

Published by Pilgrims Publishing, Varanasi

Price Rs. 245/-

ISBN 978-81-7769-943-2

 

A poetic flight of mysticism

 

Dances with the Cranes’- a book of poems written by Maj. Gen. G.D. Bakshi SM, VSM (Retd) is themed around reincarnation. All 66 poems in the book revolve around the mystical, magical personal experiences that Maj. Gen Bakshi has had relating to the transmigration of the soul. He shares these experiences in the prologue of the book. His unabashed confessions of self-discovery in a remote area of North Sikkim where the acrid smell of burning Rhododendron leaves wafting from a copper urn nailed the vague yearnings he had had all his life for the Himalayan Mountains. It was later pronounced by the Ying Ma Pa sect Head Lama Thin Ley Dorjey that the army man was a reincarnation of a Tibetan Lama from many lives ago. The announcement not only brought a deep feeling of homecoming in Maj. Gen. Bakshi’s mind but also gave birth to his book of poems. The book’s title has an apt reference to cranes because in the Himalayan nation of Bhutan, migratory black necked cranes – the Grus Nigricolis – are believed to be the best motif of rebirth. The metaphor of transmigration springs from the migratory flight of these birds year after year.

 

“..Black wings appear

They come year

after year

to our valley

in the Hermit Kingdom

even as they come

from life to life

in our dreams.”

The book starts with this poem called Dragon Kingdom. Through this and a host of other poems, the poet’s words demonstrate a magnitude of insights on the cosmic cycle. The poetry is as fascinating as the subject they delve into. Rich images of all things natural – birds, mountains, rivers, hues of precious gemstones and myriad foods are embroiled in the stanzas in a way that leave one slightly breathless. This retired army man’s poems make the reader yearn to grope into the mysteries of where they belong, who they really are…

Lines such as

“do all birds sing but once to the full moon or is it the tune that waxes and wanes there, then and here again and again”

And

“Meals made of moon dust and the pale ambience of many moonbeams”

lend a other-worldly charm and texture to the verses in the book. They ensnare and transport the reader into another dimension of time. This ethereal quality of Maj. Gen. Bakshi’s poems sets him apart from the genre of the flat, trifle unemotional-writing that is the hallmark of contemporary modern poetry.

Coming from the pen of a man whose hands have hitherto wielded only guns and cannons, (Maj Gen. Bakshi has seen many years of combat and has had many near brushes with death), Dances with the Cranes is an incredibly imaginative and creative body of work. It brings to the fore the sheer sensitivity, artistry and spirituality of a man who many would not have believed was capable of such delicate thoughts because he belonged to a rough and tough cadre.

The language used is simple but imaginative – “Prayers rise like foam to the heavens” to quote just one line. The poet makes a trademark use of the proverbial benefits of brevity. Most of the poems are under 10 lines and carry an average of three words in a line – such a short –form of poetry is an added impetus to read the book cover to cover for the readers.

As Krishna Srinivas, President World Poetry Society and Editor ‘Poet’ Magazine says in the FOREWORD to the book ” all those vexed with the mysterious march of events in every day ness, craving for liberation from moral colican get solace in the poet’s poems.”

The pensiveness of human life is reflected in the following verse contained in the book

Birds migrate

The self migrates

It flies from life to life

Sparks migrate from fire to fire.

While the subject of reincarnation is understandably a matter of one’s belief, the power of these poems to stir the human mind is unquestionable. The poems per se may not lead us to salvation but they do permit us to link hands with someone who set out to meet his destiny and did not return empty-handed. The book brings home the age-old tenet of our soul being permanent even though its outer form may keep changing.

It would be fitting to quote the last few lines of one of his poems titled “Two Golden Oreoles”

 

“..One bird was free

from the cycle of births

The other returned

again and again

to the Tree.”

*******

Vinita Agrawal was born on August 18th, 1965, in Bikaner, India, Vinita Agrawal is a freelance writer and researcher based in Delhi. She can be reached a tvinitaagrawal18@yahoo.co.in

Norman Buller on

Derwent May

Wondering About Many Women 

Greenwich Exchange 2011 

The author of this collection knows his way around literature.   Among other notable achievements he has been literary editor of The Listener and literary and arts editor of the Sunday Telegraph and the European.   He has also been a judge for the Booker Prize and the Hawthornden Prize and is at present literary consultant to the London Magazine.

So Derwent May has been active in the literary world for some time, with many poems published in journals, four novels and several works of criticism to his credit.   He has had the advantage of moving in influential circles yet, surprisingly, this is his first poetry collection.   This speaks well of his modesty and suggests that he has not been subject to the rampant egoism which seems to drive and obsess many of today’s writers.

If you like your poetry to strike a quiet note not dominated by the insistence of ‘the great I am’, this could well be your kind of book.   From the first poem onwards one becomes aware of the simplicity and directness of purpose of the author’s approach.   It is there in the unfussy dedication to the truth of his experience which characterizes his choice and organization of language.   In short, one feels in the presence of much that has been best in the tradition of poetry in English.

It would be disingenuous to pretend that any of these poems actually achieve the greatness of the best in that tradition.   None of them are perfect; poems hardly ever are.   The important thing is that the personal compass guiding the author’s course is true and without that genuine poetry is well-nigh impossible.   

The title poem is a good example of his work:

                                        Wondering About……

                                        Wondering about many women – all

                                        Who looked at me and fell into my care;

                                        Wondering about what they used to feel,

                                        How much they laughed, how much they chose to bear;

                                        Whether any sigh to think of me still,

                                        If they fix a year by our affair.

                                        Wondering about the one who by a kiss

                                        Set all that was really meant in train,

                                        Laid up for me and for herself

                                        Strange shares of tenderness and pain,

                                        And will not see another take her place

– As now she steps in through the door again.

Reflections on past intimate relationships could, in the wrong hands, turn out to be crude, lumpen, boastful and generally unpleasant.   Here, however, the tone is entirely delicate and refined, the reflections mature and wholly human – thoroughly civilized in fact.   In the final stanza the simplicity of the diction helps express the tenderness and loyalty of the affection which fortifies the relationship, allowing the feeling to come through in a genuinely moving way.    This poem represents the quality of Dermot May’s work at its best.   

The poems in this book are modest but have the inestimable quality of being wholly unpretentious.  They are not interested in ‘isms’ and don’t concern themselves with trying to be great.   There is no striving after effect for its own sake.   The imagery is, on the whole, effective because it is there for the sake of the poem and not for itself.   Some of the poems don’t quite manage to get where they were going but that, after all, is par for the course.

This collection contains only thirty-two poems and one wishes there were more.   It deserves a wide readership.

Norman Buller © 2011

                                                                                                                                                                   

Brian Beamish on

Howard Mingham’s Waters of the Night – Complete Poems 1974-84

Wept, honoured and sung

It’s a rare occurrence in the field of poetry to read an entire life’s body of work in one go and to be so moved by the originality of voice, tone and turn of phrase.  It’s a sad irony therefore that such a poet should be, to quote Sir Walter Scott, “unhonor’d, and unsung”.  From what little is published about Howard Mingham’s life it seems that he died too young and without the recognition that he is now overdue.  His untimely suicide in his early 30s only adds weight to the often deeply poignant and sometimes prophetic lines that he composes.

I thought I would begin a review by finding out some more about his life or work and went straight to Google.  No such luck.  Little is known about either aside from the excellently written forewords by poets Alan Morrison and David Kessel to The Waters of the Night – Howard Mingham – Complete Poems 1974-1984 who seem doggedly determined to keep Mingham’s memory alive – and rightly so.

There are several strands running through Mingham’s work, if one were to approach this exegesis, such as it is, thematically; his socialism, atheism, his empathy for both man and beast.  All 25 of his poems show some measure of these and the world is richer for them.  What burns most brightly in his work to my mind is his use of Biblical imagery that captures elegantly both the beauty of the original and the tenderness of its application.  This is not to suggest that Mingham’s intention was to proselytise – far from it, but given the sum of our experiences and knowledge, these ‘cultural references’ are treated with a lightness of touch that would suggest a very personal respect.  From what I can glean of his own attitude to religion, he was an atheist, which is most probably why the imagery itself is handled so poetically rather than religiously.  This invests it with a certain gravitas for which the Romantic poets might have called upon Nature.  Consider these lines from ‘The Cat’: “Envy-bright / it watches solitary / the plenty birds / Slowly he moves, rehearsing leaps / mind certain as a cut diamond / ‘Those things clutter the trees’ / said the Lord / ‘I am in agreement’, he purred / ‘And they remind me of Paradise’ ”.  The capitalisation of ‘Lord’ and ‘Paradise’ are not accidental and do not go unnoticed – they serve to accurately reference the Biblical texts and in so doing, add the weight of respect and a certain air of mysticism that quietly pulsates behind this poem.  Could it be that the ‘story’ of the poem is to suggest an agreement between God and Satan – the hidden voice of the cat, or is it a Darwinian example of natural selection, that re-writes the creation myth?  Neither one of these answers is satisfactory in all honesty as they serve to reduce and resolve the poem to a mere fact, where facts are inappropriate.  The poem itself, to my mind, stands as it is – beautiful in its simplicity and elevated by its imagery.

Morrison mentions in the foreword to the collection that Mingham’s particular brand of socialism as what Mao Tse-Tung would describe as ’embourgeoised-delusional’ and Mingham’s ‘Ode’ is preceded with a fragment of Mao’s speech from the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art of 1942 that is referenced therein.  The effect this has is to throw into sharp relief the raw humanity of Mingham and to juxtapose the machine-like world of Mao’s vision with the simple love and fellowship with humanity to which Mingham alludes.  He writes: “You say I must learn the workers’ language / You say it does not begin with love / I do not know / I had always thought it did”.  The disagreement with Mao’s sentiments is stark in comparison.  Later in that same poem, Mingham describes his fictitious son and the aspirations he has for him: “Let him know his left from his right / and not hop the old polemics / of the absurdly just and logically right/ […] Let him not glad / wave the mad flag / or crazy beat the drum / […] Let him love, deny and know”.  Whereas Mao’s vision of art is in complete service to the revolution and meant solely for educative purposes to oppose the counter-revolutionary argument:

“[Our purpose is] to ensure that literature and art fit well into the whole revolutionary machine as a component part, that they operate as powerful weapons for uniting and educating the people and for attacking and destroying the enemy, and that they help the people fight the enemy with one heart and one mind.”

Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (1967) p.301

Mingham’s vision is much less antagonistic and he uses his art to build bridges, to reach out to his fellow human and to offer hope for the future.  Mingham’s humanistic vision is also incredibly honest; he writes: “Let him rise each day / and modestly study / the large and airy body / of abstractions” here he is not only referencing Mao directly in contradiction, he is confessing that the abstractions of life – love, art – are those that should motivate us, not the dry logic of the Maoist machine.  Mingham is essentially an artist, pursuing the belief that art should be as free as the soul from which it comes.  He stands opposed to the dehumanisation that Mao’s contorted brand of socialism created with his brutal ‘cultural revolution’.  Indeed there is an inherent difficulty in the contiguous positioning of the words Mao and socialism.  Mingham is rather a true socialist – a humanitarian who values life and love – abstract maybe, but necessary and ideal, definitely.

His humanitarianism extends not only to his fellow human but to the animal kingdom as well.  It is unclear whether he intends his animal imagery to be metaphorical for humankind, however that may be reading too much into his references.  The short poem Sleepless Night could as well be written for the homeless of the world as it is for an urban fox: “Through a long night emptily / And now the dawn and a morning hunger / Stretch, day-long, before him”.  Considering the era in which Mingham was writing up until his death, there is a retrospective irony considering the subsequent exacerbation of the homeless situation that the Thatcher government was later responsible for in the 1980s.  Given the social divisiveness of most of our successive governments it is all-too easy to draw comparisons with Mingham’s socially aware poetry that has humanity at its heart.  

Aside from these considerations there is simply some beautiful and memorable imagery in amongst his poetry “I am petrol on the puddle of night,” from ‘Ode’ and “He who was the sky has now become the sea,” from ‘Rain’.  Amongst the beauty there is pain, stemming it seems from his schizophrenia and incarcerations in various mental health institutions.  Not only does this serve to inspire his poetry but it almost seems from some of the lines that Mingham draws a great deal of strength from this supposed ‘weakness’.  He talks of a “marvellous agony” and a “beautiful wound” (‘From Ward F5’) – both oxymora that reveal this dichotomy of his mental suffering and poetic flourish.

It is a sad irony that in common with other outsider artists like Antonin Artaud and Isidore Ducasse, Mingham may ‘achieve greatness’ but will probably never be a mainstream poet or more widely recognised in the established canon.  He deserves both of these things but the nature of his oeuvre with its recondite references to the world of schizophrenia, which many people would find either uncomfortable or pass over as the lines of a literal ‘outsider’ would preclude his entry into the poetic canon.  This is not necessarily a negative thing however as the joy of discovering a poet or artist that only a select few know about has its own particular pleasure and the appreciation feels more profound in some kind of literary cadre.  Therefore when Mingham writes “there are mountains, canyons in the mind / where publishers never wandered nor critics ever climbed / and where only a seldom sun has ever shined” (‘To Scholars and Ken Worpole’) he is writing prophetically and we, the favoured few who have encountered his poetry are the richer for it.

Brian Beamish © 2010

 

Leon Brown on

Oliver James

“Things can only get ….worse.”

The Selfish Capitalist: Origins of Affluenza

By Oliver James

Vermillion. Pp 282. 14.99

The thesis of popular psychologist Oliver James’s The Selfish Capitalist, the follow up to 

his Affluenza, is a devastatingly simple and highly attractive one (at least to those of the appropriate political persuasion, whose numbers – in this country at least – seem to be diminishing daily judging by the current credit-crunched, property-mad torpor of the British people). Capitalism, or at least the ‘selfish’ variety which James identifies, drives you mad. Quite literally. 

Although to anyone on the Left, the title of the book is tautological, by Selfish Capitalism, James of course means the virulent strain of freemarket or neo-conservative ideology pursued by governments in the English-speaking world (most notably Thatcher, Reagan, Blair and Bush) during the last thirty years. This is an economic and political doctrine whose fanatical and ruthless apostles, from their pulpits in Wall Street, the City of London and Washington, preach a gospel of small government, slashed welfare provision for the poor, financial deregulation in the, at best, misguided, at worst, possibly criminal belief that a 

new age of aspiration, competition, hard work and consumerism will result in a more affluent, innovative and efficient society where everyone benefits, including the poor – 

a theory termed by monetarists as “the trickle down” effect.

What James sets out to do – if slightly simplistically as demonstrated by his use of the somewhat obvious labels ‘Selfish’ and ‘Unselfish’ Capitalism – is to forensically demolish this myth and expose the sad and at times sinister reality lurking beneath. Namely, an irrational and frenzied materialism fostering a culture where people live to consume and beat others despite decreasing social mobility; a growing gap between rich and poor and all-round misery, whether witnessed in youngsters being tested to destruction in schools; spiralling prison populations; increased promiscuity; obesity; kids stabbing and shooting each other 

on the street; gender rancour at home; and increased war and instability abroad. 

 

At times the book reads like a mental health awareness pamphlet version of  Will Hutton’s 1995 seminal The State We’re In, which showed how economy and civic society in Britain 

had withered due to Thatcherism, and extolled a palliative ‘third way’ between Keynsianism and Monetarism. At the time, Hutton was wrongly identified as being the intellectual founding father of new Labour. New Labour subsequently went on to ignore most of his suggestions for economic reform in favour of a slightly bigger spending continuation of Thatcherism. This is an irony not lost on James whom quite rightly denounces new Labour and its obsession with costly and inefficient Public Private Finance Initiatives and League Tables.

Like Hutton, James also provides an impressive battery of statistics to support his claims: most notably a recent World Health Organisation survey which categorically proves (if any further evidence were needed) that as of 2007 rates of mental illness (which James prefers to euphemistically call “distress”) have doubled since 1973, the year which saw Keynsianism buried under the triple avalanches of the unravelling of the Bretton Woods monetary system, the first oil shock and stagflation. This was an economic philosophy which had governed the West since 1945, underpinned by the belief that government spending on society’s infrastructure can inflate economic growth and the well-being of the population. Keynsianism is clearly what James is alluding to when he talks about Unselfish Capitalism, although at no point does he adequately define it. Had he done so, the younger or even older less-informed readers, who have probably spent much or all of their adult lives living through Thatcherism, would have a counterpoint with which to contrast James’ hated Selfish Capitalism and then decide whether in fact there is ‘the alternative’ which Thatcher denied.

 

James is adroit at choosing his targets and then taking aim, often with deadly accuracy. Firstly he takes aim at the ‘trickle down effect’, arguing instead that what has happened is 

in fact a ‘trickle up’ effect. Quite simply, the richest ten per cent have got a lot richer, whereas everyone beneath has seen their wages stagnate. He also argues that the hoped 

for improvements in society’s infrastructure, whether in health, transport, education or 

the public utilities, never arrived because privatisation’s sole aim is to improve a company’s share price and not the service. Scarcely an earth-shattering epiphany to any beleagured train commuter on the 7:47 am South Central Brighton to London.

Sadly what isn’t acknowledged is that far from being innocent victims manipulated by “wicked puppet masters” in the City,  Canary Wharf and Whitehall, in a sense we are all being complicit in the insane way our society is run due to the greed that resides in all 

of us. In essence, we are all “selfish capitalists,” although James scarcely pays lip service 

to this truly revolutionary concept, which probably offends his clear love of humanity. True, the politicians and media (it is noticeable that James has little to say about the likes of Rupert Murdoch other than the role played by advertising) made a naked appeal to this greed through the sale of council houses, nationalism and the supply of easy credit but 

it’s scarcely likely that we are at any time soon going to tear up our credit cards or sell 

off our massively appreciating houses. It is this slight naievity about human nature (and particularly British human nature – which is traditionally conservative and individualistic: going back to the days of Edmund Burke, Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill) at large – 

namely that we are most definitely a selfish and greedy species – which is one of the flaws 

in an otherwise timely and badly needed polemical tract. Instead, James seems to see humans as innocents through the rose-tinted spectacles he quite rightly slams as one of 

the basic tenets of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

It is in the area of CBT, and the mental health arguments of the book, on which James is 

of course an expert (in contrast to his sketchy grasp of economics), that the book comes alive. James derides CBT and its emphasis on positive thinking as “mental hygiene”, which seeks to erase the accumulated grime of negative experiences in sixteen sessions without seeking to address the mental scars inflicted by childhood (a theme addressed in a previous book They Fuck You Up). He movingly shows how CBT simply addresses the symptoms and 

not the root causes of mental distress through a series of memorable case studies.

James also takes successful pot shots at the work of evolutionary biologists such as 

Richard Dawkins et al, who – despite not intending to – have had their neo-Darwinian 

theory, that we are self-replicating machines designed to carry our selfish genes into eternity, hijacked by neo-conservative propogandists as scientific justification for their dogmas. Once again here his observations prove illuminating: when he actually asked the publishers of The Selfish Gene for the sales figure history of the book, they refused – presumably because they knew that they showed a leap in sales during the Eighties, suggesting a link between biological natural selection and the mores of its economic twin: Thatcherism, or rather Selfish Capitalism, then at the start of its rise to global dominance. 

Finally, and most controversially, James posits the theory that those nasty neo-cons who planned the move of Western civilisation into organised rapacious greed in the mid-seventies a loose collective known as the Washington Consensus (including Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher among its ranks) knew this all along! 

In the book’s final and perhaps most deliciously memorable passage, James’ loathing of 

Selfish Capitalism almost gets the better of him. He even goes as far as to suggest that the whole intention was to keep people addicted to consumerism in order to create misery. Because of course if people are miserable, to paraphrase the lyrics to Ghostbusters, “Who 

ya gonna call?” Why the prespcription drug companies of course. It’s an intriguing conjecture but although I share his clear-eyed contempt for neo-conservatives, judging by the sheer scale of their mendacity, incompetence and ignorance these past three decades, most notably in Iraq, I doubt even the likes of Friedman, Thatcher, Reagan, and more recently the Bush/Cheney hybrid, could have been quite this far-sighted or ingenious.

To those (including this writer) who cling to the punctured and shrinking liferaft that is the so-called British Left, none of this comes as a revelation, although James’ book can only be applauded and welcomed as it is likely to sell far more copies and reach more people than any work by Will Hutton. However, despite the fact that I gulped the book down like a cup of hot chocolate, I found myself yearning for solutions. Sadly, James offers none and his conclusion is decidedly blase in its assertion that the electorate is “heartily sick of thirty years of Selfish Capitalism”. In fact, there is scant evidence to support this claim. If one looks around Britain, the notion that the population are yearning for public service, redistribution, egalitarianism (beyond knee-jerk political correctness) or indeed any longer capable of questioning or criticising the society around in huge numbers seems ludicrous. 

A recent Independent poll found: 

“More than a quarter think poor people are poor because they are lazy or lack willpower, a view held by less than a fifth in 1986. Only 34 per cent think the Government should redistribute income, compared with 47 per cent in 1995.” 

This suggests that Thatcher’s Victorian mindset is tightening its grip among a sizeable minority of the population; and not just the timid and heartless new Labour politicians who suffer a collective nervous breakdown when the foreign super-rich threaten an exodus if they’re taxed, yet are quite content to punish council house tenents with homelessness if they don’t find a job working in MacDonalds, and then proceed to throw 55 billion of public money at a failing private mortgage lender, Northern Rock. So much for the free market: which has always been an illusion. As for the claim that “sooner or later” a politician or party will come along carrying the torch for Unselfish Capitalism, again this is wishful thinking: there are no grounds for believing this will happen other than blind faith in human nature.

In conclusion then, although The Selfish Capitalist is to be applauded for its hypothesis, it 

is likely to remain, along with Will Hutton’s The State We’re In, Peter Oborne’s recent 

The Triumph of the Political Class, and Naomi Klien’s peerless No Logo, sadly another noble yet ignored addition to the small yet growing canon of dissident literature. It is a 

regrettable and sobering fact that if you look at the history of the last hundred years society only becomes fairer following a fearful catastrophe such as a Depression and a 

World War – neither of which mercifully are in the offing, although maybe the rate at which we are destroying Mother Earth may necessitate a move back towards Unselfish Capitalism, another concept which James pays scant notice to in his timely yet deeply flawed book.  

Leon Brown © 2008

Clydebuilt 

Owen Gallagher

Smokestack Books 

2019

84 pages

In deciding how best to introduce himself, a poet weighs much, and deliberately: his subject may be general, or specific; his focus may be round, or precise; his diction may charm, and delight the ear, or it may disturb, and prohibit inertia; to the poet, the matter is of primary import, to the reader, it is no less so. 

For the reader learns, or thinks he learns, a great deal from a first impression; and, in the conveyance, it is the poet’s prerogative to leave to chance as little as he can. Living within, and outside, these considerations, is a matter of great moment, but one too often neglected; the vivifying factor, too often scorned; that which tends to induce but a yawn among our poets, reproduced sympathetically among their critics: that is, the moral matter.

A poet may, or may not, have a rigorously developed morality, yet whatever morality he has, regardless of his awareness of it, is bound to manifest; as pores emit traces of the previous night’s garlic, one’s moral system, whether confessed or occulted, inherited or fabricated (though that which we fabricate we are more likely to confess), is born out, by craft or the lack of it, in one’s work. 

In Clydebuilt, Mr. Gallagher tarries not; his confessions come swiftly, and his inheritance, with the hoarse strains of a penitent, is given urgent examination. 

The opener, ‘Soot’, is as black as its name suggests. Here we meet the poet’s mother, but we do not get to know her; we see her from behind glass in a darkened room, being made to behave as no human should behave, by a man in a white coat, behaving unhumanly, we assume, by his own free will. 

Each time I flick a light switch

I see mother strapped to a chair.

A white-coated man throws a lever.

Her body thrashes like a live cable.

We have our idea of mother, and our idea of torture; and we may question the integrity of a poet who so eagerly wishes to force these two ideas of ours together; nevertheless, for the ugliness, we find ourselves engaged, though it is not, as we first suspect, of a character sensational: before we know what’s what, our sense of injustice springs forth in arms.

I nurse my heart with its image

Of mother framed in the doorway,

Dressed as if in mourning,

Her temples blackened 

From repeated shocks.

Switches are flicked, and levers are thrown; the latter diffuses the darkness, the former, in its failure to limit the spread, quickens it. The lever, in the hand of authority, is mightier in the memory of the poet, than the means subject to his own hand; the one carries the weight of science and government, the other but the poverty of a rebel’s dwelling. To the lever the light-switch is bound in servitude.

I nurse my heart for the mother

Who never came back.

She lived in a darkness 

No prescription could lift.

I am the soot from her chimney.

The next poem, ‘Fathering Mother’, adds colour to a few of the disconcerting blanks; the poem is intimate, and we rightly hesitate at the threshold.

Her hair was bramble and fiery red, her face

A pool of freckles. She dipped her brush in

And out of what she called ‘the font’,

And sang Lovely Leitrim, a comforter,

Yet we are drawn in, not as voyeurs, nor even as almsgivers (for amid the cold concrete of the tenement, in those pale eyes that hold their tears unblinking, we sense no expectation of charity), but as ghosts, antecedents of the living blood, with no material assistance to offer, but with an unkillable Nous, that guides us to attend where pain threatens to become unbearable. 

Once, I found mother on our own stairs,

Tears pumping out of her. My tiny hands gloved hers.

I was her father, her son, her skin, her tears.

Circumstances have arranged themselves infelicitously for our child-poet, and we are unsurprised to find in him a pugilistic streak. Against the miscellaneous opponents, large and small, there is one personage that lurks beyond the ropes; he is a dark, rangy figure, with a crooked mouth, and given to communication by gesture – Plutus, the cowardly and unintelligible god of Riches, he that strips the field and mocks the field-hand, that makes kings of squires and emperors of bankers, yet whom, finding himself in the Fourth Circle, far from his constituency, a heated line from Virgil can send sprawling to the ground. 

When the cabinet minister was obliged to dismount

From his bike and charged the policeman 

With being a ‘Fucking pleb!’

I thought of mother.

After she stood in the rain to pump the tyres 

Of the young Edward Du Cann’s bicycle 

She sprinted to open the gates of his estate 

Hurdling over puddles on the way.

As his Lordship pedalled past 

In his waterproof Mac

She curtsied and wiped the spray

Of muck from her dress and face.

– ‘Kowtow’.

Indeed, the shadow over these works belongs to Plutus; the scenes presented are largely domestic, and recommend themselves nicely to the imagination; the characters are rough, hewn from the living rock; and the cadences are regular, well-constructed, and accommodating; and above all this, another presence hangs: its attributes, being toil, deprivation, and death – both living and actual, line the interior with Plutonic dust.

An old ganger told me later that father could out-dig 

Any man and square a hole so plumb

It could be tested with a spirit level.

‘He cemented every gang’, he said,

‘And was always horsin’ about.’

The old fella broke into song:

‘As down the glen came McAlpine’s men

With their shovels slung behind them,

‘‘Twas in the pub they drank their sub 

And up in the spike you’ll find them…’

Those who could sing, did, 

And those like me who marvelled at their camaraderie,

We’re angered that they were sweated to the bone 

And their throats were caked with concrete 

By the time they got home.

From ‘McApline’s Fuseliers’.

Yet for the prevalence of the game fighter’s spirit, hostility is little to be found: no slugger is our poet, nor is his guard want to drop. Gallagher is a man who has thought much about language; he knows the rules of his craft, and tempers his ambition where it might easily overwhelm.

The poet asks us to pick sides, and he asks earnestly, yet he does not demand it – he knows our side will be picked, whether it is we who do the picking, or not. 

And when she was done, his tie and suit pressed,

Pioneer Pin closing his breast, didn’t she pour 

Paraffin over him, set him alight, so no one

Could see what they’d done to her wee boy, 

And didn’t she go out into the street, kitchen knife 

Under her apron, and take three soldiers with it.

From ‘Christmas in Belfast’.

Throughout the book, our fighter-poet strikes an uncommon balance, possessing, on the one hand, the precision and seriousness of the skilled amateur, and, on the other, the casual bonhomie of the ageing journeyman. From the union of the two issues some pleasing satire.

Whitever thi weather, thi three o’ us, kitted out

Like Columbo, pulled oan unlit cigars.

We deserved Emmy awards fur delivering his line:

‘Where did yi git thae shoes?’

Tae security warkers ‘n’ shop-assistants 

While we nicked the latest Levis, ‘n’ Byfords.

Oor coats had mair pockets than Fagin’s.

Oor hauns we’re quicker than a shirt-maker’s 

In a sweatshop. Windae dressers wondered;

‘Did ah nae dress that mannequin?’

We strutted wi’ Seturday nicht fever oan thi toon 

Boardwalks in oor latest collections,

Left thi dance flair huvin swiped bras as souveniers,

Hummin’ Colombo’s signature tune.

– ‘Claes-horses’.

While the humour is exhibited in what may be termed the minor poems, nevertheless the impression left is not quick to fade; it is a buoyancy, a bigness of spirit, that we value, and it is valued no more in a poet than it is in a man; and the more fiercely a man feels, the more humour he needs.

One of the more peculiar pieces in the book is ‘Amen’. In terms of locution, it is one of the most successful; Gallagher is not often a voluptuary of words, yet here, as if by confession, he produces images at once sensual and reverent: the voice is restrained, yet the phrases betray a mind stricken with awe, and enlivened by suggestion – in this case, the suggestion of the cosmic unseen.

It was all a mystery, a kneeling place for faith 

                     To light its candle,

Where pledges were made from the kingdom

                     Of words and neighbours 

Would queue on Fridays to confess a well of sin,

                            Mend their souls, 

Stand like a lighthouse in the family again. 

But it was the mystery of Latin I thirsted for most,

                                The tabernacle of language: 

Confiteor Deo omnipotente, beato Mariae 

Semper Virgini,

Beato Michaeli Archangelo, beato Ioanni Baptistae,

Sanctis Apostolis 

Petro et Paulo, omnibus Sanctis, et vobis…

The rising and falling of its oars,

                        Where my tongue longed to row,

The learning of it by heart,

                        A boat pushed out daily 

To early and evening mass,

                        The dark chocolatey flavours

That never melted in the mouth

                        The ancient recipe that bound me

And that I still recite

                        To savour the sounds. 

In this poem, we are happy to find several of Mr. Gallagher’s moral attributes in sober procession, each bearing their own incense: the deep awareness of tradition, the appreciation of heredity, the hunger for understanding, and the service of community. Encompassing these is a large sense of wonder, made possible by the stronghold of humility; and while Plutus and his dogs may have their way outside, the dark currents of his malice can but strike the outer walls, and return, as if rebuked, feebly to their source. 

Felix Cassiel © 2021

Felix Cassiel on

Karl Riordan

The Tattooist’s Chair

Smokestack Books

2017

64 pages

Deborah Moffatt

Eating Thistles

Smokestack Books

2019

102 pages

It is not for this critic to explore the merits of the art of the tattooist; it may be so that the merits are several, and that in adorning a body it may by gradations according to the skill of the practitioner be improved, or marred by his incompetence; the production may have standalone merit, or may for its full effect depend on the canvas, which by its inherent shape, shade and texture might illumine qualities of the work that would, on another canvas, remain without emphasis; yet we, as observers, cannot judge a tattoo on the strength of its sentiment, nor on the success with which it is communicated. The tattoo, meaning what it means only to the one tattooed, remains to us incomprehensible. How far the poet has sought inspiration from the premier body-artists of the age is a matter for conjecture; it is enough for us to ask how far his own meaning may be anything to us.

And in the manner of shaking hands with a man whose dense embellishment emerges at the sleeve and ends abruptly at the wrist, our first impression upon acquaintance with Mr. Riordan is one of absence. In this case, not of a tattoo, but of a father: one we catch in the process of fleeing a domestic situation that is altogether far too much, or far too little for him. 

I watch through the chink in the bedroom door, 

My father slicks back his interlocking D.A. 

Three angled mirrors at the dressing table 

As he whistles to Lipstick on your Collar. 

The crackling record spins in the corner,

Grooved like his black Brylcreemed hair.

Listen to the rumpus, the fumbling upstairs,

Slotting his record collection into boxes

Unaware of me pacing below.

I catch him at the front door 

As he tries to make a quick getaway,

A day I’d been expecting.

He drives off in his blue Datsun Cherry

Leaving me straddling the white line.

Then the gear crunch at the end of the road,

And you can bet your bottom dollar 

That he’s checking his rear view mirror. 

‘Mirror, Signal, Manoevre’

Such a debilitating loss of blood may procure from us a warm bedside manner, but does little for our expectations. Of the pieces that follow, several appear to prevail upon our sympathy, but others remain aloof; there are times, in fact, when the reader is given so little to go on, that he may conclude, quite reasonably, that his presence is not desired. 

After a night shift checking-in drunk guests,

I go with Felipe for breakfast, ale and pool.

We tower stack silver coins in the queue 

Waiting for Billy to pot the seven.

He misses and the thud of the white

Rebounds around the blue baize table.

He bayonets his pal in the gut with a cue, 

Clack of sticks the sound of two running stags.

Fallujah’s being bombed on mute T.V.

I tug on the cuff of my sweater 

And wonder if the woman serving 

Is Diane and how she got into this?

Her alto voice calls to cut it out.

Am old man sat nearby makes cooing sounds,

His top-set of teeth fall down in his mouth.

He extracts the grin, necks a pint of heavy.

Billy-boy sinks the black ball like a gulp.

‘Diane’s Pool Hall’

This is not to suggest that Mr. Riordan is not a man of deep feeling. Despite the abrasiveness of the rendering, which serves sometimes to convey an image more completely, but at other times does not, there lives in these works a sentiment of charity, and a developed sense of humanity: both crucial, of course, for anyone who sets upon himself the task of good work, whether in art or otherwise; and this humanity, though vigorous when provoked, is, it seems, too often want to lie prone, to reveal itself substantially only at brief intervals. 

Aggie fussed in and out of the kitchen,

Bringing in floppy bread and butter.

The tension built up on Saturdays,

She’d wear her pinny with pockets so deep

She could pick out a wish by fingertip.

I’m perched on the black-leaded shelf,

Back pressed against the oven.

Crowds start to boo from the tele 

As Giant Haystacks stomps into the ring

And we all hope he’ll fall through.

Big Daddy fetches a stadium roar, 

his sequinned leotard catches the light.

Aggie, rocking in her chair now,

Shreds the Radio Times to coleslaw.

Andrew is cross-legged on the floor

Still struggling with the hoist since age ten

When Muscular Dystrophy took hold.

His limbs are twisted in grey marl school socks

As if someone had applied heat and moulded

His ankles into hockey sticks.

He still manages to bray the floor

Holding his opponent into submission

Three, two, one.

‘After School and Weekends’

The poet’s attention is often on minutiae, and generally on the commonplace; and as our acquaintanceship develops, we feel, with regret, that this may be less by design than it is by habit. We are given much of the chair, but little of the tattoo. 

Barney perches on the caravan steps,

Drinks tea from a dented enamel mug,

Stares at a scribble of hawthorn hedge

As nest-making sparrows flit out and in.

Brida washes crockery and trinkets.

Hands them down to her her children.

They wrap up pots in local press headlines,

Stow away heirlooms and the old lies.

A police helicopter strips the air;

Their Virgin Mary trembles, looks skywards

From the garden patch. A boy cries

As their blue balloon is sucked away.

The sticks of foxed placards rattle 

Against the disconnected 

Gas bottles. Stop Evischen.

Let out Childran go to School.

‘Road to Nowhere’

Smallness of conception is perhaps the most excusable of a poet’s vices, and certainly if the poet, in an effort to avail toward a sense of good humour and robust fellowship with his reader, resorts to a focus we might term narrow, we may yet attribute to him healthy designs; but when that focus is so held over the course of a book, the content of which to varying degrees impresses upon the reader’s breast a certain languor, we may, with all due respect for the tenets of realism, wish for something with a little more light, and a little more air; something, in short, a little less claustrophobic. 

Mother ruffled up my hair today

As she scuffled around the kitchen

In preparation for my 21st.

One more shift,

Before reaching my majority. 

Nothing is said only knowing looks,

Keeping me out of the way, slapping hands,

My boots are unlaced warming by the fire,

Just like those mornings before school. 

She’s blind to me lifting the oven latch

To peek and inhale the sweet smell of sponge

Taking the air from the sinking cake. 

‘The Cake’

It is to be admitted that the craggy Anglo Saxon of the phrasing and the assortment of cultural referents offered by the text would indeed stimulate a sense of the aforementioned fellowship in some readers, and, given the subject matter, it could be argued that any other rendering would be inappropriate, and to this the critic cedes: the volume, after all, is a short one. Nevertheless the language, while craggy and appropriate, lacks vitality; despite our sense that the poet would like something to change, we are allowed no conception of how, and little of what; his reality, so bluntly delivered, is set against no alternative, and the root of the problem, if a problem there is, is left unexplored. Regrettably, the sentiment remains unallied; the essence abides not in the strength of its dogma. In so little a book, this absence of the strong arm may be something of a missed opportunity. 

Felix Cassiel © 2021

Felix Cassiel on

Eating Thistles

Deborah Moffatt

Smokestack Books

2019

102 pages 

‘The Bible hardly ever talks about neglect of the poor. It always talks of oppression of the poor – a very different matter. It does not merely speak of passing by on the other side, and binding up no wounds, but of drawing the sword and ourselves smiting the men down. It does not charge us with being idle in the pest-house, and giving no medicine, but with being busy in the pest-house, and giving much poison.’ 

 – John Ruskin.

In the 1860s, John Ruskin expounded upon the centrality of iron in nature and society; in the former case, its ubiquity in the earth; in the latter, its facility in works. For Ruskin, the pillar of civilisation was triune, consisting of these broad heads: the Plough, the Bond, and the Sword – these being the rules of labour, of law, and of defence, or courage. In each of these, exhorted the critic, the role of iron is chief, and as such is to be reckoned the great enabler of the works of men.

Around this pillar the poet’s troops are arrayed, though it is for the reader to decide which way they’re facing. 

‘At Meroe’ offers a pleasing introduction to the matters weighing on Ms. Moffatt’s mind; here, we are acquainted with a generous historical awareness, which we are glad to find on display again and again as the volume unfolds. 

Part I brings us face to face with the burgeoning might of Roman arms: 

…..I could take delight 

In the daily humiliation of the great Caesar,

His head wrested from his statue and buried 

Here beneath my feet, our fleeting victory 

Enduring, even in defeat.

Part II frames an empire in decline, the military face of which belongs to a certain Horatio:

Kitchener was there, standing hand on hip 

In the midst of it all, imperious, distant, 

His smile a grimace, his eyes straying, 

His patience tried, or spent,

In Part III we find disintegration; there is no hint of a superstructure, and no well-designed hero to front it;  instead, we have artefacts of empire, an empire ravaged by empires, sands of immeasurable antiquity, whose gods, with the coming of each new Babylon, were despised and substituted, or, found palatable, appended to the rites of the soldiery, barely discernible in origin or function; and to this land, atomised as it is, and sapped of meaning, peopled by a race duty-bound only to its stomach, and blackened by ahistorical mist, we see the beginnings of an embryo, a new type of empire, one built not by blood, but by technology, sustained not by martial valour, civic virtue or religious order, but by inversions of these, by cowardice, selfishness, and materialism: an empire, in other words, with its reason for being eliminated, leaving the disordered subjects within wondering, indeed, if it really ever is, or was, or will be. 

Your companions tap their phones, waiting

For news to break. You scan the desert sky,

Looking for a change in the weather, an avatar, 

The emperor’s head, suspended in time.

***

The truck rumbles over Bin Laden’s road. Revenge

Is impossible. There was never anyone to blame. 

A moment of carelessness, then you die. 

At least he didn’t lie when he said goodbye.

Critics of the modern historical method, I mean that which first set forth the idea of a depersonalised history, that is, as a series of affairs unfolding mechanically, according to laws unaffected by man or the vicissitudes of fate, may find weakness in the poet’s method: after all, what are we given here but an illustration of a life cycle, in which the greatest actors are static – indeed, by the time their images reach us, they are already dead men? yet this is perhaps to neglect another perspective, one rich with the fruit of a cultivated imagination, that which makes intimate the remote, which reflects life into the dead eyes of Augustus, and in this way he becomes for us not a human, but a demon, a form animated by a foreign body: lifeless, yet endued with local motion, and for this we feel no closer to him, nor to the order he represents; but to the living Nubian peasant, through whose one good eye our glimpse is had, we feel, in our poverty of spirit and fantasies of power, something of a kinship:

Yet that same head, that image of the handsome Augustus

As he was when young, his thick curls licking at his brow,

His bronze skin tinged with an olive hue, his tender lips

Set for a kiss, his radiant eyes turned contemptuously aside,

As if my dark Nubian skin or my own blighted eye

Offended him, or as if I were not worthy of his gaze, 

There are, however, less successful exercises of this method. ‘The Baltic Shore’, for example, has neither the intimacy nor the breadth to hold our interest; the rhythm is too loose, and the language too prosaic to convey adequately the strength of sentiment.

She dresses for dinner beside a meagre fire,

Each garment a layer of the past, the faded silk blouse,

The threadbare woollen skirt, the thin cashmere shawl.

You remember the jagged ice floes cluttering the winter sea,

The pale bloated corpses floating like buoys amid the ice, 

The ragged clothing flapping wildly in the wind. 

A more satisfactory affair is ‘The Roman Road’. Here the poet conjures a writer idling before his computer screen. His solitude he savours, she says, as his authorial fancy rushes up against shores he seems to have every intention of exploring. At length, the hour of contemplation terminates. His imagination goes to work, but not without compulsion; as with the rest of the organic envelope, it would much rather be engaged in something less taxing. 

He endures his solitude, takes pleasure in the neat black lines,

The first hesitant threads of a narrative unreeling into the screen,

The hours of contemplation interspersed with a fury of typing,

The chattering keyboard a scold, a reminder of work to be done,

While emails remain unanswered and romance is postponed.

By a slow, almost dolorous transport we are taken from the indulgence of expectation to the toilsome drubbing of keys; thence to the profound vacancy of the creative unoccupied. Doubts over the veracity, and then the quality, of his work, commence their insurgency; and these, in the typical fashion of the hubristic author, find themselves just as quickly transferred onto the subject itself – history, not even the area with which he’s concerned, but all history – the grand human periplum, driven by prevaricators and the great tight-lipped – against such obstinate matter, of what use his humble chisel? 

This bridegroom, we sense, is beginning to tire of his union, as the duties entrained outgrow the ecstasies. The sense of life going on outside his bedchamber once again prevails upon him. Not that the doubts aforementioned are not, in their own way, voluptuous – as the dreams of a spouse  by degrees take the form of a personage other than their beloved, we sense our author’s deliberate attempt to write himself into another world, and in the effort, excusing his actions in this one. 

His work nearly done, he regrets his solitude, frets over emails

That no longer arrive, senses her pain and blames himself, 

Though it was never just a simple matter of building a road,

He writes, not only the earth that was unreliable – even history 

Could not be trusted…

In Eating Thistles dolour is want to turn to despair. By the time we reach ‘The Christian Door’, we are primed for something of a darker cast, nevertheless it is with surprise that enter an interior black as pitch. 

It is something to be noted, too, that here is found Ms. Moffat arguably at her most lyrical. 

A Christian door, your mother called it,

And you bowed your head before the cross 

Former by the muntins and rails 

Of a door kept closed more often than not.

There was something sacred, you imagined,

In the secrets of that forbidden room – 

The stifled whispers, the shuffle of sheets,

The creak of a bed-spring in the night –

And something of heaven and hell 

In the storms that blew open the doors 

With bright peals of laughter 

Or the shrill fury of angry words. 

This door, while adorned accidentally with a simulacrum of a crucifix, leads to a private theatre of death – physical, as symbolised by the ‘dumb beasts’ there slaughtered, and spiritual, by the fornication there hidden. The bloody and ritualistic character stressed by the poet serves to excuse the confusion of the subject, that individual in whose memory the poem takes form, and to preserve their ambivalence – which, because it is a moral ambivalence, is necessarily black – as is suggested by the use of the adjective ‘pagan’. Yet ‘pagan’, despite the poet asking us to acknowledge its murderous roots, which we readily do, suggests also something else, something utterly absent from this poem: that is, innocence; though the pagan may be lustful, and malicious, and proud, as his guilt grows, so does his helplessness; the pagan, as history bears out, is eminently convertible. Yet this is not countenanced in ‘The Christian Door’. There is nothing convertible about these protagonists: there is mockery, laughter, taunts and chatter; no innocence 

is in evidence; the atmosphere, instead, is more noticeably satanic, odoriferous with the abundance of decay; these memories are heavy not only with wrongdoing, but with wrong done knowingly. 

How else are we to regard the response to that greatest of sins, suicide?

….The barn door, 

Heavy and hard to pull on its rusted rails,

Was never closed, until that summer day 

When you found it nearly so, and slid inside

To find your father dangling from a beam 

With swallows buzzing around his head.

In the swallows’ taunting chatter 

You heard your mother’s mocking laughter;

In the dark silence of the barn

You heard the whispered secrets of the bedroom.

The cross on the door was a coincidence,

A chance arrangement of pieces of wood, 

Nothing more…

Here and elsewhere in the volume death manifests to varying degrees, and to several purposes. The governing sense, however, at length obtained by the reader, is not of death as a prospect, or even as a certainty, but rather as a state, something that happened before we opened the volume, and in the rotten bosom of which we have placed our heads, and by its fleshless lips are read these stanzas. The characters we encounter strike us as fossilised, their personalities animated by an automation of memory, and their actions already a foregone conclusion. The naturalistic style maintained throughout, while at many times obtaining its object of intimacy, has a tendency to wear on the reader – and there are, it seems, occasions, though rare, when the poems approach the threshold of morbidity, but are, warily, restrained. 

The encounters Ms. Moffat provides us are not without interest, and the characters we meet are not ordinary; though they are, in fact, men and women defeated, having succumbed under the weight of iron, or suffered in the dearth of it (for that which gives life is prone to fall into mismanagement, and the recipients of its life, who are also the managers, fall correspondingly into dilapidation) they are, nevertheless, men and women who, to the best of their abilities and the singularities of their natures, fought, for, or against, or in spite of, and, while they exist for us now as but fossils, their evidence may yet inform. 

Felix Cassiel © 2021

Felix Cassiel on

This Noise Is Free

By Andy Green

Smokestack

2019

71 pages

Whether it be the garrulous screeching of the gull overhead, the clatter of the waste lorry at dawn, or the ringing of the church bell on a hungover Sabbath, it could be argued, and not too forcibly, that no noise is free; yet we may pay something in the enduring of it.

In this collection, Andy Green summarises his observations in a manner both brusque and generous; generous, for finding an extraneous line, or a disused sentiment, in this slim volume could well be an exercise in futility. 

Mr. Green is a busker, and his subject matter is his vocation. The history of poetry does not want for troubadours: from Bernart de Ventadorn in the Middle Ages to Joachim du Bellay in the High Renaissance, and in countless practitioners since, we have seen the gradual evolution of the lyric, and the cadence of the spoken word, as they are fastened ever more imperceptibly to the knots and folds of measures perfected by men who knew, as Pound noted, that music atrophied when it departs too far from the dance, and poetry from music. Though we may do well not be overly romantic in our expectations, for with this tradition Mr. Green has no truck.

The street is a bottle of white lightning 

asking me for a hug

the street is a one-toothed woman

sharing my flapjack

the street is a boy in a bright red scarf

they stole his guitar

and his best Scottish hat

but one day he will get them back

the street is an eighty year old man

singing Elvis in German

giving Nazi salutes 

warning me about all his heart problems

the street gets off its bicycle to tell me

it wants to spend more time

making experimental

sonic machines 

the street is an Australian jazz musician

blowing the clarinet and roaring

now this is real music!

so sick of this town with its cold jacket potatoes 

the street is a beautiful red-haired woman

who’s been out all night dancing

lopsided panther 

she winks and hands me a silver coin

the street has been sleeping on the backseat of its car

talking to god and keeping a diary

it’s a long story

the street quietly whispers in my ear

the street is dragging a heavy suitcase

battered and torn

the street comes over and hugs me like a jukebox

it just got out of prison today

 – The Street is a Vortex

Part of the charm of a busker taking to his pen is that finally, and unexpectedly, we get to hear from one whom we always seem to hear, expectedly. The busker is heard, overheard, ignored and adored: and in opening this volume, it becomes clear that our poet is singularly placed to catalogue the contents of a city’s stomach.

He looks rough this morning

I hang around and ask

what happened?

we sit opposite the Mecca bingo hall

scoffing down Lion Bars

4 for a pound

some wankers

just came from nowhere

gave me a good kicking last night

after a while it’s time to move on

Danny champion of the world

that’s what I call him

oh yeah he laughs

getting back up on his feet

well in that case where’s my fookin’ prize?

• Champion 

‘The greatest of poems is an inventory,’ said G.K. Chesterton, in discussing Robinson Crusoe. Mr. Green perhaps encountered this line and took it literally. This Noise Is Free reads as less of a collection of poetry, than it does notes for a collection of poetry.  Indeed, we feel something may have been gained for subtitling the book as such.

Aaron’s jeans splattered in rainbows of paint

the pet snake wrapped around Steve’s shoulder

it’s Betty’s last fag before not returning to the hospital

the pint of ale waiting on the bar for Joan to settle

piles of baked beans from the sign language cafe

plastic bags collected and recycled by Kevin

birds nibbling the crumbs of Sandra’s wages 

Karen’s pram wobbling up and down the alley

a new moon tattoo covering Emma’s old wounds

out of date crisps from Mike’s market stall 

the tambourine man coming around the corner 

the closed day-care centre that once took care of Joan

– Snippets for Town Mural

For one for whom music is considerably more than a hobby, we are surprised to find in the text little trace of musicality. We are quick, however, to admit of an argument in favour of a staccato rendering: given the nature of the subject at hand, any obvious or semi-obvious attempt to fashion the words into a form accommodating the principles of melody, may be to gild a lily best left ungilded, or to shoe a songstrel better left unshod.

For in the scenes and characters that capture the poet’s attention, we see something of the observations of a young Tom Waits, and to a lesser extent, Charles Bukowski. Whereas there was romance in the former, veneration in the latter, and robust good humour in both, in Mr. Green we get something closer to an itemisation of a consciousness, and the items contained therein are all too frequently analogues for wretchedness: the ruined face, the irreparable dream, the divorcee from everything but desperation. 

The diamond child watching me

through the eyes of 17 gold canaries 

the clothes shoppers swooping in tight formations

the egg cress sandwich I shouldn’t have stolen

the evaporating lottery ticket woman

eating the cloud’s silver lining

the street cleaner whistling at imaginary pin-ups

the man being paid nothing to hold up

an advertising board that doesn’t even exist

the apocalyptic newspaper seller

shouting at dogs from his plastic Tardis

the lips scoffing fresh cream buns of gossip

the rushers by rushing into meetings

which they somehow don’t yet know are cancelled

– Hidden Histories 

The style to the content is adequately married, and in their union we see mirrored the itinerant nature of the poet’s life; though in this as in all things moderation is the key – and there are times, indeed, when a seedling idea seems about to germinate, yet the poet’s attention too rapidly moves on. 

No man controls what he sees, but he can control what he writes about. It is this, we feel, that separates the poet from the subject – though he may pick up his guitar and leave a place, he never quite shakes the sense of imprisonment. The busker busks and moves on, but what allows him the two inches of separation is not the utility of travel, which in this case seems less a border-crossing and more a prisoner being moved from cell to cell, but the sentiment of genuine tenderness, which in these works is all too often buried in the pomp of the parade, yet on occasion does present itself as the governing principle, and the nucleus of Mr. Green’s literary efforts. 

 

Wanderer in a torn tracksuit 

he sits by Tesco Extra 

spiky orange hair 

dirty trainers

he keeps nodding off to sleep then

waking up again

by his feet

sits a large brass bowl

round and ancient

I keep an eye on him

then go over check he’s ok

it all depends 

what path you’re taking

is all he will say

to my questions about existence

words floating upwards

smoke rising from the mountain

– Praja 

As the reader reads, he may be troubled with the question of whether this is a collection of prosaic images rendered poetically, or poetic images rendered prosaically. By the end of the book, this question is unresolved, and for the brevity of the work, and the pace at which it unfolds, we may find ourselves quite as nourished as the poet himself, sharing a four-pack of Lion Bars with Danny the champion. 

(Ryan Foster)

Felix Cassiel

Liberties

Victoria Bean

Smokestack/2017

106 pages

A German poet, of appreciable wit, in the wake of the death of the Romantics wrote:

‘We write for or against something, for or against an idea, for or against a party; but women always write for or against one particular man, or, to express it more correctly, on account of one particular man.’

While we can readily imagine the smirk emerging on Heine’s lips, we can also – using that commercial awareness typical of all children of modernity – appreciate the utility inherent in writing in the shadow of a determinate, recognisable foe. Heine, in the manner of the lyric poet, drew on a panoply of rarefied energies in the making of his verse; in his prose he would afford himself some playfulness. 

Today, however, the task of the poet is different; having undergone the trauma bequeathed us by the intrigues of the past century and a half, our emotional stomach has shrunk, and our ability to discern the imperceptible has been, if our art is anything to go by, somewhat economised.

But with new limitations come new opportunities; by channeling energies, artistic and vitriolic, toward ‘one particular man’, we maximise the potential for a lethal penetration. When one is bedevilled, it pays to know said devil. 

Victoria Bean, it seems, is one who knows her devil; and while she does not name him outright, the first poem, ‘Waltz’, makes clear the calibre of the antagonist with which we are dealing:

Hangover heavy

he sags into the chair

snarls answers to 

questions they 

haven’t yet asked:

yes, no yes, 

yes no

yes, no and 

no comment

quite possibly 

and

quite possibly 

not. 

Like many pieces in ‘Liberties’, ‘Waltz’ is a portrait of omission: Bean paints the holes, and around them we trace the facade.

Unsurprisingly, the primary theme of the book is power; the question posed is not who has power, or who hasn’t, but rather: in these conditions, how does power manifest?

The parade of characters we meet herein share a common trait: desolation; of this state they seem partially cognisant, like a dark spot in their periphery vision, yet at the extent of their powerlessness they could not guess; nor are they likely to diagnose it as such. 

‘The most merciful thing in the world,’ said H.P. Lovecraft, ‘is the inability of the mind to correlate all its contents’. And while this inability appears to be crucial to the survival and propagation of the species, Bean posits the supposition that this mercifulness has perhaps gone too far. 

In ‘Blue Love’, we encounter

The man who’s done twenty years has a

blur of blue love

on his knuckles and wants to go straight and talks and talks and falters

only when he recalls

his girlfriend going with his two best friends;

he catches his breath blinks back familiar tears and tries to banish the dissolute image

we can all picture now.

His salt water story falls

a sad slow rain

but he won’t accept a tissue.

And in ‘Untitled’, as in ‘Waltz’, we are positioned at the opposite end of the room to one who has power, and is enjoying the attention it affords him:

He writes no comment

in the air with his finger 

pokes and punctuates

each invisible syllable

to hold their questions at bay 

for as long as he can.

The only individuals who have acquired a sense of power, fleeting as it may be, have done so at the expense of another. In this light, we see the vampiric ecosystem of humanity uncloaked. But we should not be quick to view Bean as a misanthrope.

Pity, hatred and fear make up her palette; the characters that come to life before us are victims – the corruption is bone-deep, yet in spite of the evidence there abides a belief that things should be different. In works like ‘There’s a war on somewhere’, Bean displays a high tolerance for pity, pity so acute it becomes unbearable for the reader:

He punch punishes the soldier he once was 

left hooks his left cheek

splits an already fine line

from a shaving nick this morning

jabs a finger at his temple:

I’m not thick you know

but the shadows of his old sergeant 

father, teacher still tell him that he is.

The work is not all-encompassing; those who read poetry for aesthetic fulfilment will come away feeling undernourished – the focus of the material is monomaniacal; to achieve its desired singularity of effect, some sacrifices have had to be made.

Bean is a skilful deconstructor, and in her attempt to extract the cause of the condition she is occasionally ardent, and very often conscientious, yet it is more often than not that dismay constitutes the sum of her exploration; routinely, she finds little more than the gristle and rust of the human machine. For example, in ‘Not another night’, we are regaled by a desperado as

He describes the space in his cell; 

arms outstretched –

a fisherman recalling a catch.

Says he’ll hit his head on the wall 

to get himself anywhere

but here again tonight.

Shows off knuckles where a ladder of 

rough stitches recount another time 

his hand split apart in protest.

A young woman walks by, his leg 

drives and up and down as she passes, 

stops when she leaves.

He goes back 

to dreading 

tonight.

As the collection unfolds our antagonist moves from form to form; it is the constable, the sergeant, the emergency services telephone operator; it is a half-forgotten memory, a peculiar tone of voice; it is omniscient, a thwarter of hopes, an enabler of unfulfillable desire. And the more Bean seeks its essence, the further away it moves – this creature, which seemed to exist so overtly and specifically in the organisations of the powerful, becomes, in the reader’s consciousness, a chemical fact – a thing present in the transforming and decaying cells of diseased humanity.

Bean returns time and again to the motif of speechlessness; the characters are terminally unable to communicate; their emotions, having no outlet, fester, and go unreviewed; their situation, having no spokesperson, is incomprehensible to their peers. They are, in the truest sense of the word, invalid; and while their impassioned lament may strike an occasional note of sympathy, resulting in a microwaveable dinner, for example, as in ‘Empty cells’, they remain, through the non-transmissibility of their condition, self-contained, self-isolated, and ruled by a self-perpetuating despair. 

‘Bad world for poor people,’ said the similarly invalid Stevie, in Conrad’s ‘The Secret Agent’; and in ‘Liberties’, we hear the extended echo of what Conrad termed ‘the lament of poor humanity rich in suffering but indigent in words’. 

The fate of the speechless is to be ignored. Under these conditions, violence is a natural effect. Bean presents this on a miniature scale in ‘Bone China shadows’:

Sweep the teacups from the table 

give the painted birdies flight – 

only hearts can break

these china platters.

              That’s a thousand pounds 

 he says and

               I’m calling the police.

Shards hurt less 

than lack of 

interest.

Following violence comes resignation, and several of our poet’s creations are resigned to, and stupefied by, their powerlessness – of this, ‘He has nothing’ is a quintessential example:

In spite of

his young years alone 

he smiles

in spite of

his mum’s addiction 

he’s warm

in spite of

a fingerprint found 

he laughs

in spite of

everything we know – 

he has

nothing 

to worry 

about.

So what of the remedy? In the course of Bean’s explorative surgery our adversary has grown less distinct. Does it have a determinate origin, and a singular manifestation?

‘Power is everywhere’, said Foucault, and ‘comes from everywhere’; the problem, perhaps, is not that a particular subset of power (socioeconomic) is monopolised by a few to the detriment of the many, rather that knowledge of power – personal power, how to get it and how to keep it – is so scarce, and is, in fact, not even an object of contemplation for those constituting the poet’s universe – the ‘frightened and furious’ mother, the petty criminal who ‘can’t even pass the time reading.’

Bean herself seems to exercise her power to the utmost within the limitations of her verse; in these studiously-crafted miniatures, which exist for us almost as windows in a rotting corpse, she represents with restrained avidity an empathy that has been tested and tried, sometimes violently, but which still refuses to avert its hardened gaze. 

The result is not an empowering experience for the reader, who vacillates automatically from a feeling of gratitude to one of hopelessness; yet in closing the book we do so with a sense of having enjoyed a privileged glimpse; Bean allows us a peek at the viscera, and, in our role of voyeur, we speculate on the repugnant mysteries contained in its bloody folds. 

To whom or what the viscera belongs is left an open question; it is with unease that we suspect the worst.

Felix Cassiel © 2020

Felix Cassiel

Richard Skinner

Terrace

Smokestack/02.03.2019(?)

33 Pages

‘Art comes to you,’ said Walter Pater, in an essay from his book ‘Studies in the History of the Renaissance’, ‘professing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass.’ 

Over the past century, the school of aestheticism has undergone dissolution; its treasury has been ransacked, and its faculty driven into obscurity. Today, these words of Pater, who believed in the pregnancy of the moment, and in art as its rightful midwife, communicate puerility to the modern ear. The power of the moment is forfeit; the event, composed with a careful manipulation of singularly useless moments, has primacy. The event is a talisman: it is sought after and feared, praised and derided; it dominates the irreligious imagination like a fugitive godhead. 

The earthquake, the virus, the obesity epidemic; the recession, the riot, the shock election victory: sublimated into these phenomenal affairs is the moment. The lifespan of any event is the volume of moments afforded it, in other words, the amount of attention it can appropriate. 

And from this entranced thoroughfare the modern artist can scarcely be distinguished. Utility is the watchword; and that which is not useful in the creation, destruction or avoidance of events is omitted: that goes for mediums, theories, vocations and emotions; our energies, in short, are spoken for: by what we dare not guess. 

The modern artist rails, wails and bellows; he is outraged, hard done by. His mission is a bitter one, and unpleasant, but alas, it must be done. 

From this maelstrom emerges Richard Skinner, who tosses into the air his silken wisp of a volume; with an eager fist we grab it, and are surprised by its contents. 

The modern poet has a great deal to say, and it is very important that we hear it. The modern reader, of course, is quite accustomed to being talked at, sold to, pleaded with. Skinner, it seems, has no interest in that; these poems, crafted with a studied musicality and replete with cultural referents, engage without dramatising, deliver without giving an inch; the voice is elusive – in the manner of Eliot and the modernists, he appears to have effaced the individual. Skinner himself, it seems, as a phantom sits before us, motionless, as if at the other end of a poker table, daring us to ask: ‘What is it?’

We begin on a note of advice; not particularly friendly advice, but not particularly earnest either. ‘The Structure of Magic’ provides directives to a reader, presumably younger than the poet, in judicious conduct. The poem reads like a condensed and quixotic passage from one of Seneca’s letters, and is as declarative as the book gets:

Never be the man who fails to recognise himself,

but if you steal, steal well. Cover your tracks.

The place of salvation is small, maybe just a window, 

and bear in mind that time is only time’s lapse.

Always leave yourself an exit plan

for choice is the only freedom.

Be senescent. Don’t admire. Refuse.

The line about theft reminds us, too, of a much more rigorous and didactic tome, by that high pontiff of modernism, Ezra Pound, when he counsels the poet, in his article ‘A Few Dont’s’, to

have the decency either to acknowledge the debt outright, or to try to conceal it.

Skinner is a man of wide reading, and, like Pound, is not bashful in showing it. In the second poem, we are introduced to Count Pierre, who we find stalking ‘among the colonnades’, surveying the blooms, for he will shortly be bound for Genoa, and from there to England, and for his perilous journey, only the most impressive and robust flower will do. 

We segue from the Tolstoyan landscape to an ‘estate on the wasteland’: Karen Philpott’s estate, to be exact. This Philpott, whose ‘bloodless face’ and ‘unkempt hair’ are to our syrupy teenaged narrator objects of desire, leads us from innocence to experience to death, or rather, to death-in-life: an acquaintance with that blind will moving everything, from boy to tree, through its natural cycle:

They say the yews here can ‘walk’ by dropping branches, 

which then take root and become a trunk.

Diving into the ground head-first, the cemetery is never still. 

They say a yew can walk an acre a year.

But narration implies action, and Skinner is, in the main, not much concerned with action. Here there is no Browning, no knight at the gallop; here there is no event to rise to or to sink from. As the book’s title suggests, our poet is something of an observer, yet even that is perhaps too robust; his diaphanous style is more of a lens, allowing us a glimpse of a dance – a wild and impenetrable frolic of atoms, contrived of ornament and opulent colour, driven by a silent but discernible passion. 

For Skinner, colour exists as a force in itself; it does not gild the image merely, but charges it; there is a painter in this poet, and he tries often to get out. For example, we have in ‘Budgerigar’:

Your breast is a map 

of Madagascar,

a stain of salmon red 

on chartreuse green.

And in ‘Il retrivamento di Giuseppe’:

Their black pantaloons are amazed, 

ochre on ochre. In the fading light…..

…..on a faint horizon, the miry earth, half-

eaten skulls lay whitened in marigold-fields.

As an image-maker Skinner excels; these images, in their restrained but sumptuous solemnity, bring to mind the paintings of the French symbolistes, particularly Gustave Moreau, whose dancing Salome we can detect in spirit in the voluptuous rhythms and fleshy perfumes of lines such as

You sip your mint tea while I study your profile:

the imperious nose, the predatory eye.

We sit a long way from the ruby walls,

the ceiling rose off centre, the white plasterwork far too high. (‘Indoor Pallor’)

And 

How clear the night was.

The orange lamp outlined your head

as an afro halo, which I later embraced.

In bed, I hoped my sleep would be dreamless. 

I longed to surrender

to the faultless workings of days,

the sense of falling. (‘Plaza San Miguel Bajo, Granada’)

To his influences Skinner is quick to pay homage. In ‘Isola di San Michele, Venice’, for example, we find the poet at the end of a pilgrimage:

It took me an age to find you,

your final port of call

obscured by a turmoil of long grass and eucalyptus. 

On the mossy slab, the words:

EZRA POVND.

Each glyph sharp as a knife,

cut to the bone.

The sun beats, peacocks cry,

pansies shrivel in the heat.

Each of these cimitero is like a Chinese character 

legible only from the sky.

Who reads them now?

Just the birds, who, passing over, break flight 

and drop like a stone to the ground.

The dead Pound, whose works are impervious to anything but the most exhaustive analysis, exists in the common consciousness as an oddity, ‘obscured by a turmoil’ of misrepresentations and false data. Pound was, in his final years, self-exiled in Venice – an aesthetic haven, far from the noise of the ‘mass of dolts’ on which he had waged his private war, and lost. ‘You find me in fragments,’ Pound once told an interviewer, Donald Hall; and Skinner likewise struggles with the idea of a fragmented hero; in this way, he seems to imagine the poet’s body scattered across the Venetian cemeteries, communicating to the heavens in Chinese ideogram (Pound had devoted a fair portion of his career to studying Chinese texts, and translating them to English, citing the poems as the optimal transmitters of Imagiste illumination). Yet Skinner does, amid all this, seem to find one crystalline image, an image one can feel with the tips of one’s fingers. 

‘It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works’, Pound advised, and we feel Skinner has found an adequate representation, if only in the sharp, deep-cut glyphs of the mossy slab. 

In much of this volume there is a tangible exultation of heredity; Skinner does not attempt to hide his influences, he opts instead to rejoice in them; and if he has taken without due regard, it is so skilfully subsumed into the superstructure of his art that it has undergone a process of reanimation, scarcely identifiable, but providing continuous energy to its new host.

Perhaps the most enjoyable works of the collection are the outwardly ekphrastic: for example, ‘Il retrivamento di Giuseppe‘ mentioned above, and ‘Manganese in Deep Violet’, which takes its lead from a painting of the same name by Patrick Heron. 

Down on the waterfront I watch 

Africans in green overalls

sweep and clean the quays, 

further out on the Thames

boats bring syphilis and smallpox 

upriver from Dutch colonies.

Much further downstream I step 

into Tate Modern,

look at the Heron and feel the unease 

overlapping water colour, in the Hall

the footfall of probable futures 

quickens, and fear comes rushing in.

In its studied evocation of the operations of Empire, the poem achieves the mood of fin de siecle literature; the bitterness, languor and sense of foreboding, which charged the aesthetic waters of the 1890s, ripple fluidly through each couplet. 

The confluence of red, which darkens from persimmon to cardinal on the canvas, with the poet’s summoning of riverside industry, brings to mind the opening ‘Heart of Darkness’, in which Conrad develops his famous motif: ignorant adventurers, hungry for plunder, sailing over the edge of the world toward, at best, an indeterminate and fearful future, at worst, bloody oblivion.

‘Only the gloom to the west, brooding over the upper reaches, became more somber every minute, as if angered by the approach of the sun.

       And, at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and from glowing white changed to dull red without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd of men.’ (Page 3, ‘Heart of Darkness’, Joseph Conrad, 1899).

Keeping with the theme of century’s end, we see also in Skinner something of the Decadent; in works like ‘Nefertiti’ and ‘Death in a French Garden’, we spy traces of Huysmans; there is, in these verses, a lust for the exotic – our poet is, at times, a lugubrious voluptuary, tabulating the adornments constituting his purview:

Clumps of nettles surrounding the great stones, 

blotches of lichen.

Soup à la bisque, au lait d’amandes. 

Coping of a wall.

White roses, 

blush roses, 

white musk roses, 

damask rose.

Valerian and camphor baths, 

Vichy, Seltzer, Barège waters,

Raspail patent medicine,

Regnault paste,

Darcet lozenges.

(‘Death in a French Garden’)

And in ‘Nefertiti’, the items indexed are not merely material, but of the imagination; the poem is composed of spars of knowledge, data lifted from historical reading, each thought imbued with a sensuality, an expectation of the soft touch of flesh:

Watching all this is Nefertiti,

her bronze brow at odds with the sun. 

She basks in the warmth to stir

the sangue dormido in her veins.

In her eyes, flecks of mica sparkle. 

They have the look of possession, 

like in the eyes of women

for their men and children.

She smells of neroli, of orris butter, 

the roots of Iris – floral,

obscenely fleshy, like the odour 

beneath a breast or between buttocks.

Skinner is a tactile thinker; reading, to him, is undoubtedly an acutely sensory experience. His lyricism is supreme, and his refined sense of musicality, to which he seems to have devoted countless hours, is the beating heart of the collection; its influence is felt in every extremity.

Our time with Skinner ends with ‘Epithalamium’, a wedding song ostensibly in the vein of Donne, but rendered in a more instructive, earthy style than that of the dead metaphysician. Coming as it does after ‘Orpheus’, which speaks of our poet apparently abandoning his bride at the altar:

When I emerged from the shadows, 

I should have seen light,

but saw instead a deeper black. 

Since then, it has been a struggle, 

the mornings weightless, cramped, 

my life stuffed into a sour gift.

I can no longer sit still. That failure dreams me.

This final poem has an air of destitution; the poet’s will is sublimated into the enormity of the moment – what transmits from him is a cipher, which it is our good fortune to be in a position to unpick.

There is a red streak in the west, but mostly the sky is a cold, 

        liquid blue.

Time courses through us like water. Two bodies rise in the night 

sky, Venus and Sirius, the dog star.

Together they are very bright and very near.

You are more distant than stars and nearer than my eye. Lift your 

        eyes gently,

but not too deep, to a place where all the waters meet,

where the birds gather in the shadows, and I will find you there.

Felix Cassiel © 2020

Francis Combes tr. Alan Dent

If The Symptoms Persist

Smokestack Books, 2018

353 pages 

‘Terror’, said Arthur Rimbaud, in 1873, ‘is not French.’ And while certain events before and since may lend the line a peculiar cuteness, in this work, by Francis Combes, terror is less a historic curiosity than it is a physical presence; a sword wielded, and never unsuccessfully, in the attainment of specific goals, and at the expense of the majority. Terror, in any form, is a tool; to think we exist outside the scope of its utility, advises Combes, is a fool’s paradise.

Terror, indeed, is in the west, and western man is at bay. For against the sociopolitical onslaught, devised by unidentifiable heads – of states, of schools – what may compete? In this realm of hopelessness, angst and ire, man, poet, and man-as-poet are at odds, at sea, at wits’ end. 

Yet, for all that is absent from this world of men, of power and ideas, something remains; an urbanity, perhaps, or a delicacy of touch, that presents an image of the Medusa veiled – she whose repugnance is, by the play of light on the corrupted fabric, made terrifyingly conspicuous.

We begin in the city. Our guide leads us off the high street, and into the alleys, where, trudging through the colon of civilisation, we are introduced to a miscellany of wretches, who, besides being homeless, are voiceless, and nameless, except for the voices and names lent them by our poet-guide, as he tells of a man on on his knees, murmuring pleas, and who 

‘…isn’t praying to God

but humanity….’

A reasonable endeavour, we might assume, yet only

‘A few people give him something 

not many

(just enough to keep him going).

But most of those he appeals to

do as God 

they pay him no attention.’

The poet laments not that the man is ignored, however, rather that the act of ignoring is in some way a virtue; for in this arena, wholly animalistic and political, where a man may prostrate himself before the thoroughfare, at the mercy of foot-traffic, and receive nothing but that which will make his prostration worthwhile, nature has written and cast a play in which the majority, though bullied by the director, are nourished by the sight of an underling; this actor, the runt of the company, by his presence nurtures the vanity of his colleagues. The role he fulfils is definite, one-dimensional, and to the group, indispensable. 

In this way Combes proceeds, giving clear indication that we are in the soft hands of a humanitarian. He is more than that, however: in the ‘Beggar and the a Great Power’, for example, the poet displays a verve, a wit honed as if in the loquacious coffee-houses of Paris, or in the competitive atmospheres of her salons. By this epigrammatic style we are arrested; the reward is instant. The poem itself, lest we skip idly by, is shaped, physically, as a beggar begging. The humour of a Combes is rarely distant.

Likewise in attendance, however, is vitriol. In a poem of two parts, ‘Willy 1’ and ‘Willy 2’, Combes begins hopefully, hinting at the mysteries of the human machine, in expressing that

‘Everyone has within him

possible chasms and summits.’

Yet in the interim separating the two, a change has occurred; the blood has blackened. In ‘Willy 2’, we see that humanitarians, like the rest of us, have breaking points:

‘We brought you home

collarless dog.

You betrayed us and tricked us

as 

not even a dog would.’

The weaponisation of words, embittered yet potent, reminds us of Celine; and as with Celine, we find ourselves with the sense of dealing not with a devotee, but with an empath tormented. 

With an appreciation of where our guide is coming from, we encounter, in ‘Sililoquy’, another man of few means, ‘talking to himself and making expansive gestures’. Here, we’re advised, is a gladiator in training, whose inscrutable programme inspires wonder in its witnesses

‘Perhaps he’s rehearsing

a great speech

in which he will throw

his essential truths

in the face of the world’

Though the object of our attention is ‘an old Algerian’, we are encouraged to the belief that this man, against the world – unspecific though that enemy might be – will prove a formidable opponent. Yet the world, astute as it is, and, having read Sun Tzu, ‘for the moment’, alas,

‘prefers to avoid him.

It doesn’t want to meet him

and turns its back on him.’

Our hero’s training is for nought. He’s made to wait,

‘But then

he is used 

to waiting.’

In war, of course, patience is a virtue. However, against this opponent, whose reserve is universal, and whose army is omnipresent, he made to wait risks waiting forever. 

Similarly terse is an offering titled ‘The Age of Gathering’. In thirteen short lines this piece paints a portrait, in documentary fashion, of destitution in the modern age. Using as its model the proto-societies of our ancestors, it speaks of men and women who 

‘are reduced to walking for hours

            in the streets 

their hands outstretched 

in search of food.’

The primary asset of the poem is its emotionlessness; by relating banal observations and making a loose association, this miniature stimulates a series of small but palpable sensations in the mind of the reader; we are led to ponder the trajectory of man’s evolution, his changing relationship with nature, and his cognitive development. By bringing to mind the age of the hunter gatherer, with its dark and occult terror, we nevertheless find ourselves longing for the simplicity, the accord we imagine was theirs; to those early societies, the fruits of the world were available; all that was required was diligence, determination, and, perhaps, a touch of ingenuity. 

Yet for modern gatherers, the field of play is different. These bipeds, emerging from forgotten alleyways, venture forth as if by ritual; the cosmopolis is laden with sensory treasures, teems with the culinary vapours of the globe, yet the participants in our little documentary remain unnourished, and return to the innards of the city ritualistically, a little hungrier, and no wiser. In this steel and plate-glass arboretum, even the greenery, strategically planted at the behest of a local governmental committee, provides no succour:

‘(But even the trees 

do not appear to see them.)’

As is common among postmodernists, Combes has a penchant for shock. His ability to lull a reader, utilising rather pedestrian imagery delivered in the cadence of a tour-guide, sets us up for a jolt, and, occasionally, sends us roaring, outraged, back to the ticket-seller.

For example, in ‘Intimacy’, we are shown, ‘a few feet from the Arc de Triomphe’:

‘a woman, standing next to her igloo tent

on the pavement, 

her little knickers around her ankles’ 

As she

‘carries out with a bit of rag

her intimate

washing.’

The slow-moving serpent of cars is transfixed, its occupants, we imagine, given to disgust, some to horror, a few to helpless voyeurism; while others may stare straight ahead, endeavouring at all costs to forget. But sometimes to forget is impossible; an image may burrow, like a parasite, into our memories, and there feed on our endorphins; notions of security, identity, strategy, may find themselves troubled, undermined by one peculiar, and peculiarly potent, representation. 

In this way, Combes indicates, the dispossessed have a role, though it is not a role they, or anyone, would have wanted. A homeless individual is necessary, in this conception; their utility is psychological, they are as the street-lights or park-benches; they provide succour. By their hunched postures and dripping vestments they affect in passers-by a sense of order, of good fortune; by their ability to shock and disturb we are spurred onward; for darkness, we are reminded, is real, and only by the light of our industriousness, of our hubris and lack of self-reflection, can we keep the night in its place. 

There are times when the poet takes an image and stretches it. Musicality is rarely prevalent in this tome, yet there are occasions when Combes sees fit to indulge. In these instances, the reader enjoys a sense of relief, for he has by this time learned to expect the sucker-punch. ‘At the Palais Royal’ offers such relief

‘Coming out of an appointment with the solicitor

I leant against the railings of the Palais Royal station

to listen to my messages

so I was telephoning

when a young fairy with a face as round as the moon

(of the type of an Italian tourist, or blond gypsy,

obviously stone-broke)

took me by the sleeve.’

Though it is not exactly reminiscent of Joachim du Bellay, nevertheless we are not in the company of an avowed song-maker, pedalling love lyrics in country taverns; rather, our raconteur is Bukowskian, one who turns a bitter and impassioned inward-gazing eye outward. 

To that which we have encountered thus far, ‘Troubadour of the Shops’ is a somewhat different animal. 

‘Now I have to sing of the difficult subject

         Now I have to approach an ungrateful and intractable theme

                 In truth I’ve been thinking about it for months 

                        And always putting it back to another time.

‘Others before me have sung and others will sing

          The beauty of Mother Nature, the ever renewed surprise

                   Of a rainbow, the renewal of love in the spring

                               Or the bloody disaster of a sunset.’

Du Bellay re-emerges in our consciousness; like that late-Renaissance humanist, our poet delivers in unadorned language a visceral declaration, in this case against consumer culture: calumny attenuated only by a resurgent ennui licking at the feet of the metre.

‘Others still have known how to speak of the beauties of the town

       The nostalgia for stations, the streamlined power of the TGV

                The troubling music of the cosmos

                        Or the insolvable mystery of the black holes of the ego

‘But who will sing of the charms of shopping areas

         Who will praise this new beauty never sung in poems?

                   Who will eulogise the high aesthetic achievements of capital?

                                It falls to me today to approach this theme.

‘Perhaps anyone will say that of all people I’m the worst prepared

        In their eyes, my baggage of an out-of-the-way militant

                Sets me up badly for the role of commercial poet…

                           Because the task is demanding and the position sought after.’

It is a measure of the poet’s drollerie that perhaps the most rhythmically pleasing verse in the poem is composed primarily of brand-names:

‘Then, pell-mell, the banners and hoarding

       For Saint-Maclou, and Saint Frusquin… Gifi, Renault,

                Leroy Merlin, Bricorama, Total, Esso,

                       Kiabi, Jardiland, Lapeyre, Babou, Gemo…’

Combes picks up, albeit wryly, the tradition of the chanson de geste.  Cultivated from the 11th to 14th centuries, these songs were made to vaunt the deeds of aristocrats; reaping this harvest of talent and intelligence were the Carolingian overlords, who enjoyed the public promotion afforded by these epic songs, in which their heroic adventures, factual or otherwise, were rendered in the most noble light.

‘The count Rollant sees the Archbishop lie dead, 

Sees the bowels of his body shed,

And sees the brains that surge from his forehead;

Between his two arm-pits, upon his great, 

Crossways he folds those hands so white and fair.’

This, written in the latter half of the 11th century, is a verse from what is perhaps the most famous example of the chanson de geste, ‘The Song of Roland’; a work of indeterminate authorship. We are given a taste in these few lines of the tenor of the age, an age stained crimson, certainly, but one with veneration at its heart, an ideality that seemed to float above the troughs of war, filth and poverty. 

And from this tradition of tragic reverence, our current balladeer strays. Inversion, however, is not his goal; here is violence, but it is invisible; here is reverence, but it is implicit. Unlike those older chansons, made to amuse the egos of warring elites, Combes’s poem flatters the masses, appeals to our sense of injustice; effects which, adequate or not, represent a quick win for the poet; for this emotion, harboured so near the base of the throat, is easy to rouse, being apparently innate, and is surely as old as class itself. 

Under the gaze of our minstrel comes no deed or action, no character, nothing lofty or enviable; it moves not on horseback, charges no enemy. In this vale of tears, digitised and self-drying, innocent blood is not shed but sucked; as the host is transfixed by the circuitry of billboards, his essence is stolen through channels uncorporeal. 

‘At each side of the road the great publicity hoardings 

    With their square shoulders lined up in ranks

         Like soldiers prepared for battle

                 Ready to launch themselves into the conquest of the Earth.

‘In the reddening evening their escutcheons shine 

      They carry at their waists their masters’ weapons

           Coloured and loud, facing the sky they brandish their coats of arms 

                  Like a glove cast at the world they are going to subdue

‘Here it is the new epic of the time of peace 

     The machine gun of the cash till

             For which we can always if necessary by the pen and the sword

                     Launch into new wars.’

In this ‘epic of the time of peace’ there are no conflicts, no stalemates, no need for treaties or pacts; the aggressor, our hero, will face no opposition.

‘And yet they grow and proliferate

    Like life, like a cancer

        This beautiful carnivorous disorder

                Devours everything, changing all it touches to gold.’

Neither sword unsheathed nor galloping hoof embroiders the scene; this creature of appetite, insane with greed, embodied not by sanguine warlords but by brand names, by logos, that hover, that seem to exist of their own accord, whose entreaties, seeping subliminally into the minds of the young – those delicate and burgeoning ecosystems of idea and will – reaps gold from earth, secures for itself the twin supplies of vanity: the new and the returning customer. 

Its ends are met not through physical tyranny but by sheer ubiquity. ‘The Demi-gods are on the move…’ the poet warns us, but be not afeard: these new kings, cloaked in electricity, wish only to ‘introduce order where disorder reigns’.

And hitherto, on the earth, disorder has surely reigned; for confirmation, consult the history books. Subjected to diseases, disasters, and have-a-go demagogues, this derelict race has built castles, cathedrals, monasteries and even pyramids, for sanctuary, for solace. Yet in these times, of what use are such buildings? From what, exactly, need we seek sanctuary? There is on earth but peace and equanimity; and don’t we (most of us) have a little walking-around money, right here in our pockets? The trajectory of the history of human struggle has culminated at a point at which we, children of ease, can finally treat ourselves. 

And dare not be ungrateful, for if we look at the matter too closely

‘The anguish of the void seizes us and makes us quiet.’

No volume of French verse would be complete without a few attempts to seduce the female readership. Of this campaign, the most successful manoeuvre, in terms poetical and otherwise, is Homo Erectus’s Wife:

‘Often, my dear,

I see you battling with things:

an electric plug,

a meter,

a sewing machine,

a computer,

a car engine,

software…

You look at them, you feel them

you turn them over, you take them apart

manipulate them, you get a bit annoyed

and, finally, you are right.

Watching what you do

I think of homo faber,

homo sapiens sapiens

or rather his wife

who, without letting herself be beaten,

(while the man, proud of himself, was coming back from the hunt) rubbed two bits of wood together

in her cave

until the flame appeared.

Yes, you are her descendant..

It’s through people like you

the species makes progress…

As for me

who am no more than homo erectus

as I watch you

to console myself

for my uselessness

I take a fermented drink

and admire you.’

Nor would we feel quite at home in the absence of a sociopolitical crie de couer; this wish, if not already met a hundred times over, is met in burlesque fashion in ‘Tract’. 

‘You the tomatoes that have never seen the earth

You the fish that have never seen the sea

You the lettuces which grow in water and fibreglass

You the salmon that have never swum up river

And have never known the joy of sparkling in spume and light 

You battery-raised hens who have never known the open air

Never seen the sun, never run in the grass

You the bananas, you the avocados, you the melons

Prematurely torn from your family and left to mature far from home

In hangars beneath displays

You the shrimps who have never been in the depths

And know only tap water

All of you, conditioned products of large-scale distribution

Revolt!’

Parodying the style of long-dead revolutionaries, this cannonade of spleen unloads on a series of unlikely targets: farms, factories, laboratories – centres of testing, breeding and culling – the vertebrae of the industry of genetic modification. 

‘Down with modern slavery!’ chants the rabble-rouser, storming up and down the supermarket aisles. We are put in mind of Marat, that importunate celebrity of the Terror, vaunted and hunted, and those many lesser pamphleteers, politicking in the shadows of the icons, whose words, which once clung so well to the esprit du temps, were ground underfoot, in the pell-mell disbursement of anguished Parisians. 

Poet to man, man to poet; perhaps their diseases are non-communicable. Before a silent audience, composed of humans, sheep and grapes, each modified for optimum edibility, a poet must consider his position.

As he looks further inward, Combes’s canvas broadens. For example, in ‘Image of Western Man’:

‘But the most numerous are those who have nothing. 

According to his image, western man is a conqueror

but, in life itself, most men from here

are beaten…

The image of western man is always right

it is universal and covers the Earth

while he is quite rare

and altogether in a minority on Earth.’

And in The Seven Wonders of the World:

‘The sixth wonder I name, is our imperfection, our power to never

be satisfied, to always search, desire, to go further, to imagine and 

to invent, to compose songs, build cities and not renounce the

future where we would be a little less imperfect.’

We see the poet bringing to bear upon his mentation the themes universality, identity, desire, and later utilising the specimens of history and mythology, to add texture and polyphony to his crystalline conception. 

What Pound said of Whistler, that he ‘tested and pried and worked in many fashions’, we could say of Combes; throughout the latter half of this volume he chases and is chased by his muse, as he diligently tries ‘to wrench her impulse into art’. He darts hither and thither, absorbing formats where he can; the result is a loose series of poems written in the miscellaneous forms of rap, living wills, manuals, and recipes. 

In ‘The Poem’ Combes revisits the question of his role, and concludes that a poem is something like a

‘a plane tree leaf, yellow

wide as a splayed hand 

falls gently

caressing

this afternoon’s autumn 

face.’

By which 

… ‘ the world

(but it doesn’t know it) 

is slightly changed.’

The poem becomes a natural manifestation, an automatic event in the world of cause and effect. The poet, likewise, is but a link in this eternal chain of happening. 

The section titled ‘Moral Poems’ is perhaps the most musical in the collection. Here, Combes gives himself room to play, to take in the joys of lyricism, meditating lightly on the complexity of nature, and the necessity of transformation. 

For example, in Carnation:

‘Patricia picked it just before we left.

In the folds of her skirt

blood-red cutting

it hides a scent I’d forgotten

a light scent, free and peppered,

an Andalousian, Amazonian and Brigantine scent 

which cultivated flowers never have.’

 In Of Unity & Diversity:

‘To see them close at hand

(once the gardener has pulled them from the ground) 

anyone can recognise

that asparagus

every asparagus on earth

is

different

from every other

and at the same time similar

unique and identical’

And in The Bean Plant

‘in the company of your brothers 

hung along your covering

by the skin of your back. 

the light of day

comes to you filtered through the closed eyelid 

of your maternal envelope.’

The songster in Combes is capable also of the pseudo-nursery rhyme:

‘The rose and the apple

the plum and the pear

and the cherry

in spite of their differences 

are all part

of the large family 

of rosaceae.’

Scattered throughout the next few pieces are some memorable lines, in ‘Parliament of Birds’ and ‘I and the Other’ particularly; yet in the next section, ‘Political Poems’, the tenor changes quite dramatically. 

‘It’s had its head cut off several times

but, as for the Hydra of Lerna, it grew back.

(In fact, its body was still intact.)

However, it isn’t invincible

and sooner or later it will be killed

because our survival

depends on its elimination.’

The ‘it’ is Capitalism, his personal bane, the harrower of his muse. Yet in this poem, titled ‘Capitalism: Wanted Dead or Alive’, Combes again betrays a belief in life, in the primacy of the human above the situation; man to Combes is sacred, ever on the ascendency. Capitalism, and its little sister consumerism, are but twin blips on the horoscope. Yet Combes does not venture to offer anything against this opponent; presumably, because humans are inherently good, just, and righteous (though perhaps a little easily-swayed), it is a matter of course that we will simply pull the plug on this system which no longer serves, and wind up the extension cord. The poet’s view is unhelpfully romantic, and is elaborated in Etiology of the Parasites

‘There are on earth all kinds of parasites

which cling to their hosts

to draw their sap,

their blood, their chlorophyll

or their money…

Parasites are numerous and dangerous

but they are a minority.’

Parasitism, to be sure, is rife; the body of the public represents a rich meal. Yet one of the laws of nature is reciprocity; we give, but every one of us takes. Nature favours the most powerful; he who can give less than he takes will find himself with an advantage; a position of power, and each of us, regardless of status, take all the power we can get. 

Aristocrats, financiers and policemen are listed in Combes’s parasite index; can any of us name a time when those in charge of land, money and law were not generators of ressentiment in the public breast? 

In Epitaph for the Twentieth Century, the poet again frames the powerful as lesser beings, calling out the ‘cockroaches who give orders’, the ‘badly identified bacteria’ – the psychopaths, to whose act, after all these centuries of terror, cruelty and depravity, we should surely by now have grown wise. For Combes, it appears the 99% cannot be elevated without the reduction of the 1%, in terms economic, political, spiritual or otherwise; to venerate the powerless is to disparage the powerful, and the former, it would seem, can not attain any self-respect without the expulsion of the latter. 

In ‘Mythological News’, subtitled ‘after Heine’, we are favoured by an appealing conflation of a Greek myth; that of Io, who was transformed by Zeus into a white cow, and of Europe, who was seduced by Zeus in bull form.

‘Io, Io, my sister,

that the ancient Romans also named Europe

how can you be forgiven?

We know about Leda’s misadventure

that she allowed herself to be seduced by a swan, 

is perhaps a little unnatural

but hardly surprising…

And Semele who succumbed 

to a shower of gold…

Of course, it’s not brilliant 

but the times are hard…’

In Gods In Exile, his famous essay from 1854, Heinrich Heine imagined the flight of the pagan gods from Mount Olympus, at the onset of Christianity; driven first to Egypt, then to Europe, where a few of them took up poorly-paid jobs in the central lowlands, in the farming towns of Germany and Austria. 

These gods – testy, petulant, myopic, found themselves ousted by a singular deity, one who took their wanton violence and made it part of a programme; who erected on the earth the infrastructure of his worship, and filled the gaps with whatever he thought worth taking from that earlier religion; had it refashioned, and outlawed the original. The pagan gods, wearied by the strain of their excess, stood not a chance against the emergent sovereign, whose scheme crossed borders and kingdoms, whose seed germinated in the bellies of the starved and envious. 

How unfortunate, then, for us, that Europe allowed herself an indiscretion with a bull; a mad bull, no less, on the wane and in denial.

‘You must know that you run a great peril in climbing on the back

of such a beast

brutal, jealous, lustful,

who dominated the world and took himself for a god.’

Combes knows, of course, that the world’s throne is fickle; power is supreme, but no power lasts. And our Europe, impregnated, is taken to Crete; there, she brings forth Minos, the future king of the island, and the preeminent sovereign in European myth. 

His mother, our sister, so careless in her choice, so short-sighted – the willing vessel of the spirit of a continent, a continent ruled by terror, by Caesars and Charlemagnes, Napoleons and Hitlers; masters of violence, legislators of cruelty; Europe, the progenitor, who knew not what she did: the poet asks, and we ask, how may we forgive her? 

Felix Cassiel on 

Goran Simić

New and Selected Sorrows

Smokestack Books, 2015

129pp

Fish, blood, guns, and constellations; in this collection of newer and older works, celebrated Bosnian Goran Simić endeavours to blueprint the inner world of the outsider; with recourse to his defining symbols of organic and celestial life he plots the career of the hunted – the romance of the passions, the destitution of the situation – to fabricate the tension of a permanent alien.

Of this book, from 2015, movement is a major theme. So much so that after the opening few lines one acquires the impression of having boarded a train; the destination is uncertain, yet for company there is a fidgety old man who, occupying the window-seat, wastes no time in regaling his neighbour. For our narrator is something of a vagabond, a travelling minstrel, singing his songs of sorrow in a reedy tenor, each verse dedicated to the goddess of ennui.

Indeed, Simić’s awareness of the divine, clothed in one mantle or another, constitutes the spine of this drifter’s skeleton. Or perhaps more accurately, its half-eaten flesh. The relationship with the Higher Power is largely antagonistic, and, occasionally, downright abusive. Yet in reading many of these works one feels that what is under review is not God’s presence, but his absence; or rather, the absence of what may be termed godliness in His comportment. God to the poet is one who

‘…sometimes knocks on my frozen window

and I don’t let him in because 

he has the eyes of a prisoner and always asks: why?’

This reduction of the Almighty to the status of wretch is made in anger, disdain; yet a prisoner must at some point, for sanity’s sake, shake hands with his lot. Thus follows:

‘As if I knew.

I just half-breathe humbly and die the other half 

Looking for the place where the door used to be.

Sleep, Goran, sleep.

Prisoners do not exist.’

Simić’s conversational, atonal method allows for unusual semantic structures, and in the above instance his direction of the reader’s attention away from the word ‘die’ to the word ‘looking’ is indicative of the desperate mind lurching at all costs from the growing likelihood of destruction; it is by utilising passages such as this that the poet reminds us that we function as automata, governed by little except the desire to survive.

And to maintain his own survival the poet appears to have deployed various tactics, primary among them anonymity; in ‘Passport borders’, for example, we are given the perspective of the immigrant confronted by his new nation’s apparatchiks, agents of security that cannot help but view him as a potential rogue element. 

‘Perhaps he didn’t know that I travelled at night,

that my skin was full of odours

of continents unknown to him

and my room full of things meaningful only to me;

I brought an icicle from the North,

fire from the South,

a candle from the East,

wind from the West,

and I didn’t have to justify myself to anybody.’

The immigrant, bearing such a rich array of global accoutrements, must necessarily fall under the suspicion of a neurotic, individualised policing system. Yet there is an artfulness to his collecting; like the ghostly skin of a prisoner which we cannot make out beneath the tattoos, this international truant has rendered himself unidentifiable to blinkered homeland security.

‘My hands are as cold as the TV news, my skin as blue

As the stamp on a birth certificate.’

Thus in ‘Candle of the North’ Simić continues in this vein, and one begins to feel that the poet has spent many a night in unbearable reflection, perhaps atop Zarathustra’s mountain, or in some bombed-out garret in a Bosnian village. In ‘Adam’ however, we are treated to a slightly more youthful expression:

‘Outside my window sad people walk the street

and compare themselves with passers-by.

Outside people wear masks while walking dogs.

Even dogs wear masks. Outside is a mess’

And in ‘To the dining car’ Simić reinforces the hint of underlying innocence, a memory of the maudlin expectations of childhood. 

‘Let’s go there.

We’ll press our noses to the carriage windows 

trying to guess where we are 

but all we’ll see will be our eyes wide open in the glass. 

Like the eyes of dead fish belly-up on the water.

Where we’re headed or whether we’ll ever get off this train 

will lessen in importance.’

This piece, which, in its sentimental treatment of the belief in action, and its refrain of ‘let’s go’, is almost an inversion of Eliot’s Prufrock and other early works, places us on a strange train, populated with strange people; and unlike his fellow passengers, the narrator is not quite the small soul curled up in the window-seat, reading the Encyclopedia Britannica, but rather one who seems to bound up and down the length of the train, this train we’ve no recollection of boarding, and which will stop at God knows where. Yet the focus of our attention, and the object of our immediate desire, is not the destination, but the dining car; nourishment, which is attainable, will usually succeed in taking our minds off of the darkness beyond the windows, or indeed, the darkness we see for a moment reflected in our own watery, amphibious eyes.

‘Dream Nuance’, however, returns us to the perspective of the anonymous; here, we sit across the table from a speechless woman, silent but for the drumming of her fingers, 

‘Can you see me? I ask her. Can you see me at all?

                              She nods. But she is lying.’

She is beyond communication, existing not as a corporeal figure but rather a figment; a femme fatale, a murderess in the imagination of the poet, whose death-agony becomes palpable; this poem is less a critique of the mysterious Other, than it is a howl into a glass jar.

His inability to connect, and his attendant failure to identify the Other as a creature of volition, reflects his own nebulousness; his avenue of honest communication, between himself and the outside, is but rubble. Yet for having for so long evaded us, about a third of the way through the collection, the poet-as-poet finally reveals himself. 

‘O tell me who I am.

For a long time I lived my literary imagination.

For a long time now I have hovered over a bookshelf,

an inkless page. Too many things remind me of death, 

of this planet I dare not touch.’

A certain relief is encountered here, a certain gladness; for now the narrator appears to us in a more definable form; and while he still has no idea who or what he is, we feel secure in the belief that we know a little better, that perhaps finally, we have him pegged.

Yet sharply on the heels of this piece follows ‘My Shadow’, a more thoroughgoing and lyrical expression of the general tenor than all offered thus far; in this composition we find brevity, a refreshing pungency, and in its representation of the diaphanous spirit, this liquid scribe of the alien, it is emblematic of the entire volume. And while suitably energised, we find ourselves again on the back-foot. 

‘Who will eat my breakfast tomorrow morning? 

Who will tell my boss I will be late again?

Who will listen to my fellow workers make jokes?

A shadow is a poor excuse.

‘They know nothing about my shadow.

They know nothing about how day follows day

and I no longer recognise my face in the mirror.

They do not know my shadow shaves every morning

and how every morning I would cut my skin

if I wasn’t afraid I might see

no blood.’

Here we get a firmer sense of the man, a more visceral appreciation for his position; he begins to form before us as one who has worked, one who has probed the craggy plains of the motes in the eyes of the other, and who has, disgusted, turned inward, and, downing his tools in horror, laments bitterly that in the beam in his own eye there is nothing. By the point at which he picks up his pen, his fellow humans appear to him as he seems to appear to himself; organic machines, so many mini-abysses, uninteresting at a distance, and dangerous in close encounters. 

The disconnect is born of necessity:

‘after I wiped with a dishtowel the blood from

the face of an old woman, fearing I would recognise her’

Only one who encountered early the dread of intimacy can use a mask of blood for a buffer. Following this is a series of war-poems, immediate in their effect but rather indistinguishable, with each piece an echo of the one before it; inevitably there arises a sense that our time as audience on this particular train is drawing to a close, and we begin counting the minutes until our stop is due. Yet it is precisely at this point that a wizened yet virile hand reaches over and slaps us; if Simić had not by now quite convinced us of the horrors innate in the warring mammal, he succeeds in ‘Lejla’s Secret’. 

The violence of the imagery is enough to breed insomniacs, yet it is what is left unsaid that torments the faceless neighbours that make up the subject of this piece. Here Simić takes advantage of the idea that we suffer more in imagination than we do in reality, and he wields his power almost joyfully over the somnambulist reader. 

‘What was it she saw in the mortuary that day?

Like contagion that question began to obsess her

neighbours, and the secret of Lejla’s madness 

became our nightmare. Her ghost turned our

basement shelter into a workshop of horror. 

Some believed that she’d recognised the face of

her late husband, others that she had seen a 

corpse sewn from the bodies of different people. 

The rest saw a baby in an open womb. Before

long, fear of our imagination surpassed our fear

of the shells.’

On page 79, however, the poet’s eyes turn away from the gory canvas of the physical war, and return to the noiseless power play; on another train, our narrator is assailed by a fellow passenger, this in the form of a statuesque Madonna, whose cold war policy does not leave a trail of eyeless heads and shorn ears, but chill in the soul of the desirer. 

The collection ends on a rather drawn-out note, ‘Wind in the straight jacket’, which endeavours to tie up whatever ends may have been cut loose in the preceding works. Over the course of its 39 pages, this composition recovers the trod ground such as identity, family and religion in a reconciliatory manner, though not, it should be added, by softening its bite.

The poem lurches here and there, trying to accumulate assertions from every corner of its reality. As a result, the offerings are something in the nature of the pick-and-mix, producing a pebbledash effect; certain strong lines offer nourishment, but we are left wanting more. ‘How wonderful it is to be protected by the cage of words’ he avers, and we his co-conspirators, dipping into the bath of bitterness, cynicism, and alienation, which he has so politely draw for us, find ourselves agreeing, stiff-lipped and rosy-cheeked. Indeed, those nutritious lines are so individual, refreshing, that they strike us almost as life advice.

‘the safest way to go on a crocodile hunt

is to wear crocodile-skin boots’.

And

‘My first pair of glasses 

my parents forced me to wear

to see people better…’

The ignominious spectacle of which was 

‘too big for childish eyes,

seeing people as deer

or as hunters’.

By page 100 religion is less a framework of faith, or a cause for torment, than it is something more practical, a sorting-house for ritualistic human behaviour:

‘what will the confused door say,

that threshold you crossed only once in your wedding dress

but many times in black?’

And 

‘I am afraid the children will wake up

too early for school,

only to find their teacher

in the classroom crucified.’

The latter third of the poem, however, is tighter, more concentrated, and, in essence, declarative. The notion of the sacred has left religion and has been deposited in the figure of a wife, whose body, living or lifeless, must be protected from the cold machinery of the modern campaign. 

‘My darling, I am going to bury you

in our garden, 

so I won’t have to look for you

in others,

where you’d get devoured and digested 

in the bowels of military trucks.’

Yet the trucks are heartless, a product of men, and men a product of nature. Mother Nature is heartless, the Tao Te Ching tells us, and treats all things as straw dogs. Death, for Simić, resides in these trucks, the vehicles of war, yet his argument, we feel, is not with the machines, or the systems that produce them, but rather nature itself: the terror of the situation.

The poem, and perhaps the collection, reaches its thematic and emotional culmination in a single stanza, the impetus of which is a childish cry, an atavistic, helpless retaliation against the impersonal aggression of the Other. In this we find the rage, the desperation of the disempowered, yet we also find a hint of resignation, the solemnity of one, sadly but inevitably, exposed too early:

‘Where is the man? I shouted

Where is the man?

I shouted at the official in clinical attire

piecing together 

a nameless skeleton as if solving a mere problem.’

Felix Cassiel © 2020

Jenny Farrell

A Marxian Reading of Wuthering Heights

The following article, first published on Culture Matters (http://culturematters.org.uk/index.php/culture/festivals/itemlist/tag/Wuthering%20Heights), is a fascinating Marxian analysis of Emily Brontë’s timeless masterpiece, Wuthering Heights, within the context of the social and political upheavals of the times. The novel was published the year before the European revolutions of 1848, and, perhaps more tellingly, two years after the publication of Friedrich Engels’ The Condition of the Working Class in England, and was written during a tumultuous industrial period and at the height of the Chartist movement. 

In this article, Jenny Farrell quite ingeniously argues that Wuthering Heights is, at least on some levels, a sociological allegory with a fundamental political message, though it’s open to speculation as to how conscious this was on its author’s part (indeed, according to a recent, far inferior, article on the novel published in The Guardian, Emily was, so we’re told, a ‘Tory’, even though, of course, that was a very different thing in the 1840s than it is today). 

But Farrell’s thesis immediately chimed in my mind with recollections of the novel and its numerous ambiguous themes. In a nutshell, what else does Heathcliff symbolize –apart from the rebellious Miltonic Satan archetype– but the oppressed proletariat throwing off its shackles by buying back its freedom and overturning the entire social order, in Heathcliff’s case, by buying up its properties, or capital..? 

Yes, Heathcliff’s ‘means’ are mercenary and his ‘ends’ even more so, but although he employs capitalist methods, his motive is not cupidity, his motive is purely emotional, but the only way he can vent his frustrated emotions is through gaining ownership of the properties which were once the backdrop to his own oppression and thwarted love –ownership of his own prison. Heathcliff knows, rather like the Buddhist, that the person doesn’t own the property but rather the property owns the person, and so, in a sense, his rather warped attempt at revenge is a form of self-punishment as much as it is punishment for everyone around him and under his thrall. 

Heathcliff’s revenge against his former oppressor, his tyrannical step-brother, Hindley, is to seize ownership of Wuthering Heights from him but keep him there, dipsomaniacal and powerless, as a kind of ridiculed pet misanthrope; while he avenges himself against Edgar, whom his one love, Cathy, marries (because it would “degrade” her to marry Heathcliff –their different social stations force them apart), by marrying and then abusing his sister, and eventually buying up his home, Thrushcross Grange; then later, he kidnaps Edgar’s daughter, also called Cathy, and tries to force her to marry his valetudinarian son, Linton. Heathcliff’s revenge is nothing short of a one-man revolution. But there are many other subtleties to Wuthering Heights, which Farrell picks up on, that hint at intimations not just of metaphysical and spiritual but also social and psychological transcendence. 

A.M.

30 July 2018 marks the 200th anniversary of Emily Brontë’s birth. Her novel “Wuthering Heights” (1847) is an amazing, creative challenge to the personal cruelties and oppressions based on class, gender and ethnic background which were being generated by the hardening class divisions of English society in the 19th century.

Emily was one of four Brontë children to survive into adulthood. Their father was an Irish clergyman, from an impoverished family, who moved to Cambridge to study for holy orders, became a Tory and received an Anglican parsonage on the Yorkshire moors. Three sisters wrote novels, which they first published under male pseudonyms. Charlotte became most famous for her novel “Jane Eyre”, Anne also wrote fiction, and Emily wrote poems and just one book, “Wuthering Heights”. Their hapless brother Branwell’s claim to fame is a portrait of his sisters, still exhibited in London’s National Portrait Gallery. All Brontë children died before the age of forty – Emily was thirty when she perished of TB.

 

England in the mid-1840s was in the throes of the Industrial Revolution, vividly described by Brontë contemporary Friedrich Engels in his first book (1845) “The Condition of the Working Class in England”. Growing up, they would have been aware from the newspapers they read of the devastation of hand-workers, especially the handloom weavers in their region, and the resulting large-scale impoverishment. Haworth, homestead of the Brontës, lay near the Yorkshire mill towns, badly hit by the Hungry Forties. Their adult lives coincided with struggles against the Corn Laws, factory reform, strikes and the height of Chartism. Ireland was haemorrhaging from its holocaust, the Famine. All this affected the writings of the Brontë sisters, filtering through in one way or another.

Emily’s profound understanding of 19th century England, and capitalism, is reflected in “Wuthering Heights”. This novel shocked the Victorian reader, and its violence still alarms readers today. At its heart is the story of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a destitute, probably Irish child brought home by Mr Earnshaw from Liverpool. A deep bond develops between the children. Catherine is a tomboy, the opposite of the Victorian idea of a female. Mr Earnshaw protects Heathcliff, and insists he be treated as a family equal. Catherine’s elder brother Hindley detests Heathcliff, and torments him physically and emotionally. After Mr Earnshaw dies, this abuse escalates. Hindley, who had been away for three years, returns with a wife and orders the servants and Heathcliff to stay away from the family living quarters:

Hindley … won’t let him sit with us, nor eat with us any more; and, he says, he and I must not play together, and threatens to turn him out of the house if we break his orders. He has been blaming our father … for treating H. too liberally; and swears he will reduce him to his right place.

Catherine and Heathcliff, however, remain inseparable. Cathy teaches Heathcliff everything she learns. In a key episode, they roam over to Thrushcross Grange, home of the Linton family, the largest capitalist landowners in the area. It is very different to the Heights – a Victorian mansion furnished in the most expensive style. Mr and Mrs Linton are absent; Edgar and his sister Isabella are seen violently pulling a dog between them for pleasure, a thing Heathcliff cannot comprehend.

When the Lintons become aware of two onlookers outside, whom they mistake to be after the rent money, they let the bulldog loose on them, and it gets a hold of Catherine. When they are brought into the Linton house, Heathcliff is sent away, whereas Catherine is deemed respectable and treated for her wounds. She stays five weeks and returns a young lady.

Increasingly, Catherine is sucked into the prevalent class values, spending less time with Heathcliff and more with the Lintons. Unsurprisingly for the reader of Victorian novels, Edgar asks Catherine to marry him. However, contrary to Victorian expectations, Brontë makes clear that Catherine’s acceptance signifies her betrayal of Heathcliff, of their absolute loyalty, of their impassioned and classless relationship.

Catherine reveals to the housekeeper Nelly Dean that it would degrade her to marry Heathcliff. Heathcliff overhears this but disastrously does not hear her continue:

He shall never know how I love him; and that not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton’s is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.

Catherine’s bowing to money and convention triggers the tragedy. Heathcliff, devastated, leaves Wuthering Heights, not to return for three years.

The turn of events in the second half of the novel is unprecedented for the Victorian and uncomfortable for the modern reader. Heathcliff has acquired money and an understanding of law. He returns to “settle my score with Hindley; and then prevent the law by doing execution on myself”, but Catherine’s welcome rekindles all the old passion. Heathcliff puts into operation a plan that is designed to beat class society at its own game. He gambles with Hindley, taking his property. He marries Isabella Linton in order to gain Linton property. He treats Isabella brutally, as just what she is in terms of Victorian law – his property. Interestingly Heathcliff tells Nelly about Isabella:

No brutality disgusted her: I suppose she has an innate admiration of it, if only her precious person were secure from injury! … set his (Edgar’s, JF) fraternal and magisterial heart at ease: that I keep strictly within the limits of the law. I have avoided, up to this period, giving her the slightest right to claim a separation; …

Edgar makes clear their new relationship: “she is only my sister in name: not because I disown her, but because she has disowned me.” Who disowns whom is a matter for the reader to decide. The institution of the Victorian family as a harbour of humanity is shattered at every level.

Heathcliff becomes master of Wuthering Heights and many years after Catherine’s death forces a marriage between his weakling son Linton, “my property”, and Catherine’s daughter Cathy, again to acquire Linton property. He even imprisons Cathy to do so. Interestingly, Linton immediately turns tyrant to Cathy:

She’s my wife, and it’s shameful that she should wish to leave me. He says she hates me and wants me to die, that she may have my money; but she shan’t have it: and she shan’t go home! She never shall! …. uncle is dying, truly, at last. I’m glad, for I shall be master of the Grange after him. Catherine always spoke of it as her house. It isn’t hers! It’s mine: papa says everything she has is mine.

With this action, Heathcliff parodies, in a grotesque way, Catherine’s class marriage to Edgar. In the likely event of son Linton’s death, Heathcliff not Catherine would inherit. Everything is turned into its monstrous extreme.

Hindley’s son Hareton, who resembles both the young Catherine and Heathcliff remarkably, is Heathcliff’s fiercest and most loyal defender. And despite himself and his best laid plans, Heathcliff likes Hareton. Heathcliff treats Hareton and the servants at the Heights without much social difference. They all work, live and eat together. Women coming to the house, such as Isabella and later Cathy Linton, are stripped of their property, by marriage, and of their class comforts. They work for their living.

The only person who enjoys a work-free existence is son Linton, whom Heathcliff despises but has educated. When he is dying, shortly after his marriage to Cathy, Heathcliff comments: “but his life is not worth a farthing, and I won’t spend a farthing on him.” Repeatedly, the reader is shocked at the lack of sentimentality. Over and over, we are confronted with the reality of cash nexus and the law.

Hareton, Hindley’s son, is not educated and cannot read, write or use numbers. Again, this is in keeping with the rules of class society – why educate a farm worker? Heathcliff has pared down all his dealings to the bare logic of capitalist rationality. There are no frills, no pretences of kindness. Heathcliff’s tenants too are treated roughly. There is no humanity. It is only in this stark, unmasked form that readers realise this is the true nature of their own society. It is hyperbole, yes, but for that reason all the more effective in revealing the essence.

The union of Hareton and Cathy, which concludes the novel, is a rebellion against a world governed by the iron grip of inhumanity. Although they will overcome the property barrier with their marriage, they will accommodate themselves in the ‘respectable’, ‘civilised’ Thrushcross Grange. And yet there is hope for a relationship of equality, untypical of the Victorian era.

What remains with the reader, however, is the tragedy of Catherine and Heathcliff whose absolute freedom from all the dictates of class and hierarchy was the essence of their relationship. This kind of relationship is doomed. That is the tragedy.

I often think of Heathcliff in today’s world, as the ruling class increasingly reveals its profoundly barbaric nature. There is ever less pretence of culture and humanity. Education and health care are business, the state extracts itself progressively from a duty of care. Politicians set ever-decreasing value on a shallow veneer of humanity. We are seeing the beast for what it is, perhaps most grotesquely in Donald Trump, but certainly not only in him. The difference to Heathcliff is that Heathcliff cannot reach personal fulfilment by living this way. He wreaks revenge on the class system, but the price is his own humanity, indeed his life. Class society is the root cause of Heathcliff’s inhumanity.

Brontë does not spell this out in quite these words. Her very clever and innovative narrative ensures that the reader is taken in by the double, prejudiced Victorian class lens of Mr Lockwood and Nelly Dean. Even Isabella’s letter, the only verbatim document apart from Heathcliff and Catherine’s direct speech, quoted by Nelly and filtered again via Lockwood, expresses her class point of view. Therefore, the reader has to do what readers of the bourgeois press must do daily: read between the lines and presume that we are dealing with half-truths, omissions and fake news.

Heathcliff only responds humanely when he is with Catherine, and in his torment after she dies. They can only be together in death, buried beside each other outside the church: “on a green slope in a corner of the kirk-yard, where the wall is so low that heath and bilberry-plants have climbed over it from the moor; and peat-mould almost buries it.”

The sides of their coffins are open to each other. Heathcliff’s love for Catherine, is his humanity, and it is a world apart from Victorian class marriage. In their relationship of unequivocal equality Emily Brontë anticipates a more humane society, one that reaches far beyond hierarchical systems. It reaches into a time when unequal gender difference is replaced by an equality of personhood. In her subtle, utopian vision, Emily Brontë anticipates a humane society, unrestrained by the class-based laws that Heathcliff reveals to be barbaric.

If the meaning of life is to create conditions that are commensurate with humanity, then Emily Brontë’s remarkable novel highlights this. Her dream is yet to be achieved.

Jenny Farrell © 2018

First published as ‘Emily Brontë, Heathcliff and imagining a classless society’ © Culture Matters 11/8/18

 

The Meaning of the Shovel by Martin Espada

Smokestack Books, 2014

If the ruggedness of the title was not enough to induce in us an expectation, or apprehension, that our open hand is about to be shook by a hard, bitter paw, the collection’s opening stanza offers little in the way of assuagement:

This was the dictator’s land

before the revolution.

Now the dictator is exiled to necropolis,

his army brooding in camps on the border,

and the congregation of the landless

stipples the earth with a thousand shacks,

every weather-beaten carpenter

planting a fistful of nails.

A few poems in, Espada’s primary goal becomes clear; to acquaint the reader with the harshness of the Latin American experience. This is sought via a minimization of the role of the poet, to that of a narrator, or storyteller, leaving no trace of pyrotechnical exuberance; Espada wants our faces pressed firmly against this cold, street-lit, chain-link fence.

Another pickup truck morning,

and rednecks. Loitering

in our red uniforms, we watched

as a pickup rumbled through. 

We expected: Fill it with no-lead, boy,

and gimme a cash ticket.

We expected the farmer with sideburns

and a pompadour.

We, with new diplomas framed

at home, never expected the woman.

Her face was a purple rubber mask

melting off her head, scars rippling down

where the fire seared her freak face,

leaving her a carnival where high school boys

paid a quarter to look, and look away.

From Rednecks.

Rendered in a striking, pared-down style, Espada’s depictions dare us to deny his honesty, as in Do Not Put Dead Monkeys in the Freezer:

I was a lab coat and rubber gloves

hulking between the cages.

I sprayed down the batter of monkey-shit

coating the bars, fed infant formula in a bottle

to creatures with real fingers, 

tested digital thermometers greased

in their asses, and carried boxes of monkeys

to the next experiment.

The exacting imagery reeks of the inevitability of violence, and despite the obvious brutality haunting the poem’s entirety, the promise is not made good until the final stanza;

So I understood

when a monkey leapt from the cage

and bit my thumb through the rubber glove,

leaving a dollop of blood that gleamed

like icing on a cookie.

And I understood when one day, the doctors gone,

a monkey outside the bell curve of the Fear Data 

shrieked in revolt, charging 

the red-eyed mechanical head

as all the lab coats cheered.

In true narrative fashion, this ultimate stanza contains the climax of the piece; the moment of rebellion – ‘shrieked in revolt, charging/the red-eyed mechanical head’, the mechanical head being, from what can be gathered earlier in the poem, the centrepiece of the laboratory; a machine ‘with blinking red bulbs for eyes/and a siren for a voice’ that ‘scared monkeys who spun in circles’. What we have here is an animal screaming a Camusian ‘No’ to the expected acceptance of the terror, and the reaction of those present? – ‘the lab coats cheered’; it is mere sport to them, we can see that the staff are suffering a severe disconnection from nature, they are brain-dead, soul-dead, or perhaps we should not be so hasty – are they not cheering because this abused and fractured creature is doing the very thing that they haven’t the courage to do? This last line contains the only display of emotion (from the ‘lab coats’) in the whole poem, and indeed they are, as the narrator so frankly puts it, simply ‘lab coats’; put-upon assistants toiling for a salary, and to no common good. Maybe in this way, then, the monkey is their hero.

The next poem, The Bouncer’s Confession, maintains the overtones of violence whilst adding a nuance of compassion:

Mostly, I stood watch at the door

and imagined their skulls

brimming with alcohol

like divers drowning in their own helmets.

Their heads would sag, shaking

to stay awake, elbows sliding out

across the bar.

I gathered their coats. I found their hats.

I rolled up their paper bags

full of sacred objects only I could see.

I interrogated them for an address,

a hometown. I called the cab;

I slung an arm across my shoulders

to walk them down the stairs.

The idea of a benevolent bouncer may well make some of us smirk, but we must understand this particular bar – this is not a scene of machismo and high spirits, as the first stanza makes clear:

I know about the Westerns 

where stunt doubles belly-flop

through banisters rigged to collapse

or crash through chairs designed to splinter.

A few times the job was like that.

A bone fragment still floats

in my right ring finger

because the human skull

is harder than any fist.

The characters in this bar, presumably all working class, bear no resemblance to those common men of the Wild West, those who burned each night with every conceivable emotion in the film-set saloons. The happenings this bouncer oversees are those of downtrodden, pathetic men, forcing themselves into oblivion. The bouncer, then, is more like a caretaker, or caregiver, and his confession, we suspect, may be that he isn’t particular satisfied with it:

This time, I dragged a corkscrewed body

slowly down the stairs, hugged to my ribs,

his books in my other hand, 

only to see the impatient taxi

pulling away. I yelled at acceleration smoke,

then fumbled the body with the books

back up the stairs, and called the cab again.

No movie barrooms. No tall stranger

shot the body spread-eagled across the broken table.

No hero, with a hero’s uppercut, knocked them out,

not even me. I carried them out.

Throughout the volume Espada displays an acute awareness of societal limitations, and a person’s ability to overcome them. For example, in A Travelling Salesman in the Gardens of Paradise:

Jardines del Paraíso: The Gardens of Paradise,

or so we’d say, staring into our coffee, whenever

we translated the name of the public housing projects

where my grandmother smoked on the porch,

watching the trade in dollars and drugs

swiftly move from hand to hand

in Río Piedras, Puerto Rico.

The grandmother, observing criminal activity, seems to have attained an unshakeable state of serenity – this may come as a surprise to those of us familiar with an old lady’s propensity for nattering, but here we are faced with a woman who has apparently overcome the burdens of judgement.

One night a visitor called her name 

through the shutters of the window,

going door to door with something to sell:

a car battery in his hands, offered with the pride

of a diver showing off a treasure chest

salvaged from the bottom of the sea.

The last three lines of this stanza introduce a touch of wryness to the subject, is the taking of a car battery really an achievement of human endeavour? The reader may feel the metaphor employed here is but a contrived transposition of an adventurer’s pride onto the face of a lowly thief, but, in Jardines del Paraiso, generosity of compassion is necessary;

He was a tecato, Gisela said, another junkie with a face

from the neighbourhood. The next day my grandmother, 

who believed that even junkies have a place in Paradise, 

called to the same tecato through the window,

handed him her last five dollars, 

and sent him to the store for cigarettes.

There is a certain divineness to the behaviour of the poet’s grandmother, this five dollars is not charity, but a measure of curiosity; we may compare her actions to a quote, often attributed to the 17^th Century poet John Wilmot; ‘All experiments of interest in life must come at the expense of oneself’.

As we read further through the volume, we notice how Espada seems to enjoy startling his audience with imagery, his stories are patterned with a sensuousness, an earthiness that makes the images feel almost tangible:

Sluggish by 9 PM, the hands

would slide along suddenly sharp paper,

and gather slits thinner than the crevices

of the skin, hidden.

Then the glue would sting,

hands oozing 

till both palms burned 

at the punch clock.

From Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper

They bang the radiators

like cold hollow marimbas;

they cry out

to unseen creatures

skittering across their feet

in darkness;

they fold hands over plates

to protect food

from ceilings black with roaches.

From City of Coughing and Dead Radiators 

The refugee’s run 

across the desert borderlands

carved wings of fright

into his forehead,

growing more crooked 

with every eviction notice

From Mi Vida: Wings of Fright

It is this robustness of language that is noticeably absent in Offerings to an Ulcerated God, instead we are presented here with a series of carefully uninspired lines – more prose than anything else, we feel, replicating superbly the sterility of courtroom proceedings:

Mrs. López refuses to pay rent,

and we want her out,

the landlord’s lawyer said,

tugging at his law school ring.

The judge called for an interpreter,

but all the interpreters were gone,

trafficking in Spanish 

at the criminal session

on the second floor.

Note the monosyllabic line endings of the first four lines, stopped with commas and producing an officious, foreboding cadence.

A volunteer stood up in the gallery.

Mrs. López showed the interpreter

a poker hand of snapshots,

the rat curled in a glue trap

next to the refrigerator,

the water frozen in the toilet,

a door without a doorknob

(No rent for this. I know the law 

and I want to speak, 

she whispered to the interpreter).

We do not meet Mrs. Lopez’ husband, and despite her confidence, we fear for her; one half of a poor couple against a lawyer ‘tugging at his law school ring’, – the latter marriage is reciprocal, for the lawyer and the law are inseparable.

Tell her she has to pay

and she has ten days to get out,

the judge commanded, rose

so the rest of the courtroom rose,

and left the bench. Suddenly

the courtroom clattered

with the end of business:

the clerk of the court

gathered her files

and the bailiff went to lunch.

‘Suddenly/the courtroom clattered/with the end of business’ – how unmelodious, this flurry of short vowels evokes the clinical formality with which the case has been dispatched. It is hard not to notice, too, the flippancy of the stanza’s final three lines – ‘the clerk of the court/gathered her files/and the bailiff went to lunch’; the rhythm is akin to that of a nursery rhyme.

Mrs. López stood before the bench,

still holding up her fan of snapshots

like an offering this ulcerated god

refused to taste,

while the interpreter 

felt the burning 

bubble in his throat

as he slowly turned to face her.

And, consistent with the tenor of a nursery rhyme, it ends with a touch of humour; Mrs. Lopez, in a bracing display of audacity, stands up to the bench to express her side of the story. This reviewer doesn’t think it trite to assume the bubble in the throat of the interpreter is shared.

Espada’s engagement with the human spirit is undeniable, much of the work in this collection is infused with a recognition of valour, or at least, the possibility of valour, probably the most thorough example of this would be Inheritance of Waterfalls and Sharks;

In 1898, with the infantry from Illinois,

the boy who would become the poet Sandburg

rowed his captain’s Saint Bernard ashore

at Guánica, and watched as the captain

lobbed cubes of steak at the canine snout.

The troops speared mangos with bayonets 

like many suns thudding with shredded yellow flesh 

to earth. General Miles, who chained Geronimo

for the photograph in sepia of the last renegade,

promised Puerto Rico the blessings of enlightened civilization.

Private Sandburg marched, peeking at a book

nested in his palm for the words of Shakespeare.

Not quite as stylistically Hemingwayesque as previous pieces, this poem is more elusive, and generously woven with arresting imagistic textures (‘many suns thudding with shredded yellow flesh’), we may find ourselves smiling at a General who believes he can deliver ‘enlightenment’ with a thrust of his bayonet.

Dazed in blue wool and sunstroke, they stumbled up the mountain

to Utuado, learned the war was over, and stumbled away.

Sandburg never met great-great-grand uncle Don Luis,

who wore a linen suit that would not wrinkle,

read with baritone clarity scenes from Hamlet 

house to house for meals of rice and beans, 

the Danish prince and his soliloquy– ser o no ser – 

saluted by rum, the ghost of Hamlet’s father wandering 

through the ceremonial ball-courts of the Taíno.

Well, so much for the crusade. With the vocal mellifluence of Richard Burton now urging us onward, we are introduced to Don Luis:

In Caguas or Cayey Don Luis

was the reader at the cigar factory, 

newspapers in the morning, 

Cervantes or Marx in the afternoon,

rocking with the whirl of an unseen sword

when Quijote roared his challenge to giants,

weaving the tendrils of his beard when he spoke

of labour and capital, as the tabaqueros

rolled leaves of tobacco to smolder in distant mouths.

The line ‘rocking with the whirl of an unseen sword’ is rhythmically stunning, and, coupled with the next line, brings to mind the near-Classical heroism depicted in Ezra Pound’s Sestina: Altaforte (‘Hell grant soon we hear again the swords clash!/ And the shrill neighs of destriers in battle rejoicing,’) but this time without the bloodlust; Luis’ passion is in enlivening the masses, which, we discover two stanzas later, came to nothing:

Another century, and still the warships scavenge 

Puerto Rico’s beaches with wet snouts. For practice,

Navy guns hail shells coated with uranium over Vieques

like a boy spinning his first curveball;

to the fisherman on the shore, the lung is a net

and the tumor is a creature with his own face, gasping.

However the final stanza delivers more than the expected consolation;

This family has no will, no house, no farm, no island.

But today the great-great-great-grand nephew of Don Luis, 

not yet ten, named for a jailed poet and fathered by another poet,

in a church of the Puritan colony called Massachusetts,

wobbles on a crate and grabs the podium

to read his poem about El Yunque waterfalls

and Achill basking sharks, and shouts: 

I love this.

The poem, then, is a celebration of lineage, and while it is unclear to us whether or not the young Sandburg is aware of his ancestry, it is not truly that important; we feel perhaps knowledge of the failure of Don Luis’ noble endeavours would do nothing to hinder the young man; life must be celebrated regardless.

One of this reviewer’s favourite pieces in the collection is the slightly surreal and exquisitely cadent Hard-Handed Men of Athens. 

At the wedding of Theseus, Duke of Athens, we play Pyramus and Thisbe. 

The aristocrats laugh at us, real actors on loan from the highbrow

Shakespearean company in the valley, and we snarl back at them.

I am the Wall. I am inspired. I lift Pyramus and Thisbe into the air

and slam them together for their kiss. The beam across my shoulders 

cracks. The crack alarms the carnivorous vegans on picnic blankets 

watching the show. Some think the crack is my leg breaking. Some think 

the crack is a gunshot. Suddenly it’s Ford’s Theatre and I’m Lincoln. 

Or maybe I’m John Wilkes Booth. The jagged beam presses into my neck, 

against the artery in my neck, like the fangs of a vampire hungry for ham. 

One stumble and A Midsummer Night’s Dream ends in a bloodbath.

Boasting only a rudimentary familiarity with Shakespeare’s play, I refrain from any impulse to decode the references. The poem does, however, offer the initiated a veritable feast of symbols and allusions on which to nibble with fascination. The piece also ends in what I find to be among the most memorable tropes in the collection:

We are the hard-handed men of Athens. This dog is our dog.

Federico’s Ghost is a snappy parabolic tale of rebellion in a fruit-picking camp. 

The story is

that whole families of fruit-pickers

still crept between the furrows

of the field at dusk,

when for reasons of whiskey or whatever

the crop-duster plane sprayed anyway,

floating a pesticide drizzle

over the pickers

who thrashed like dark birds

in a glistening white net,

except for Federico,

a skinny boy who stood apart

in his own green row,

and, knowing the pilot

would not understand in Spanish

that he was the son of a whore,

instead jerked his arm

and thrust an obscene finger.

Immediately Espada allows us to realize the inherent virility of Federico (‘stood apart in his own green row’), the arbitrary callousness of the pilot (‘for reasons of whiskey or whatever’) and the inevitable victimhood of the workers (‘thrashed like dark birds in a glistening white night’); the stage is set, then, for heroic action:

The pilot understood.

He circled the plane and sprayed again,

watching a fine gauze of poison

drift over the brown bodies

that cowered and scurried on the ground,

and aiming for Federico,

leaving the skin beneath his shirt 

wet and blistered,

but still pumping his finger at the sky

There is something almost mystical about the line ‘The pilot understood’ – we feel it is here that battle is realized and commenced, with both parties instinctually knowing the rules of combat. And is there a more archetypal image of the rebel than that delivered in the stanza’s last line; ‘still pumping his finger at the sky’? After Federico dies (from the wounds sustained in the incident, we suspect, though the cause of death is unstated) there occurs a number of circumstances involving the smashing of tomatoes at night, resulting initially in anger from the employers (‘threatening to call Immigration’), and then bargaining (‘then promising every Sunday off/ if only the smashing of tomatoes would stop’). The vandalism, however, continues, and, perhaps unavoidably, begins giving rise to tales, courtesy of ‘the old women in camp’ – those venerable coiners of legend, who:

said it was Federico,

labouring after sundown

to cool the burns on his arms,

flinging tomatoes 

at the crop-duster 

that hummed like a mosquito 

lost in his ear,

and kept his soul awake.

This is one of the pieces in the collection that this writer feels captures most acutely Espada’s vision; a young individual realizing their purpose, even if it must be in death; in this case, the rebel-hero will not bend, and the reader grasps from the last couple of lines that his purpose, despite being realized, can never, and will never, be fulfilled.

It is with his rebels that I feel Espada most identifies, for it could be said that his ‘mission’, or part of it, is to oppose poetic formality, by way of shrinking the poet’s manipulation of his subject, thereby giving the reader the straight, undiluted story. One of the most telling examples of this is a line from the poem Leo Blue’s and the Tiger Rose; 

This is a row of dark-skinned men

It looks and sounds like a photo caption, but a photo does what a poem can’t, and thus the craftsman does well to seek out other methods; is the straight story really ever enough? This critic suspects that, like our aforementioned Federico, Espada’s purpose, with all its breadth and intensity, may never be truly fulfilled, though his endeavours will undoubtedly continue to engage and enlighten us.

The volume ends with a solemn but rousing song for the unsung; Alabanza: In Praise of Local 10, a composition dedicated to ‘the 43 members of Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 100, working at the Windows on the World restaurant, who lost their lives in the attack on the World Trade Centre’. I shall finish by including the last two stanzas here.

After the thunder wilder than thunder,

after the shudder deep in the glass of the great windows,

after the radio stopped singing like a tree full of terrified frogs,

after night burst the dam of day and flooded the kitchen,

for a time the stoves glowed in darkness like the lighthouse in Fajardo, 

like a cook’s soul. Soul I say, even if the dead cannot tell us

about the bristles of God’s beard because God has no face,

soul I say, to name the smoke-beings flung in constellations 

across the night sky of this city and cities to come. 

Alabanza I say, even if God has no face.

Alabanza. When the war began, from Manhattan and Kabul 

two constellations of smoke rose and drifted to each other, 

mingling in icy air, and one said with an Afghan tongue:

Teach me to dance. We have no music here.

And the other said with a Spanish tongue:

I will teach you. Music is all we have.

R.G. Foster © 2014

R.G. Foster

One Day in the Life of Jimmy Denisovich by Graham Fulton

The cover of Graham Fulton’s ‘double album’ of a poetry collection is adorned by what appears to be a model train, awash in red, blue, yellow and white, and speckled with worn-down discolouration around the bolts, and inside; a man in a moss-coloured suit, with his ginger head bent dejectedly forward. We must assume this is Jimmy Denisovich. 

The collection’s opening piece ‘Traffic Lights Boy’ starts us off at a positive pace, with quickening rhythm that peaks at a point of ecstasy without ever spilling over into Beat-ish rapture. The poem introduces some of the main themes of the collection; the balance of motion and stillness, the thing’s aesthetic and substance, and the poet’s place in a scene. 

this boy is obsessed

with traffic lights

the way they are      the way they look

the way that red changes to amber

green

the way they wait 

in particular places

on the surface of the planet

The notable absence of punctuation in these opening lines, and the use of blank spacing as a way of governing rhythm, seems like the poet’s way of allowing the reader to get as close to the moment as possible, or at least, the moment as felt by the poet. Also interesting is the line 

the way they are      the way the look

It is as if we have started from inside the thing, the way it is, and have made our way to the outside of it, the way it looks. In this way, it may be observed that aesthetics not only hold equal importance to substance, but that one must make an effort to see a thing, to experience the way it looks. This idea is further evident in the isolation of words such as ‘watch’ and ‘see’ elsewhere in the piece, the action is in the seeing, it is almost as if the poet is attempting to reconcile observation with feeling.

the darkness becoming lightness

lightness becoming darkness

the joy in his brain

the source of everything 

at the centre of something,

‘The joy in his brain’, we assume, is that of the poet, and indeed, the fluidity and cluster of vowel-sounds (at least, in comparison with the sparer usage in previous lines) would certainly suggest that what we are reading is not simply a documentation of things the narrator has seen, but a rhythmic internal monologue, there’s no loitering in the moment long enough to allow for adjectives here. 

The theme of the poet’s position in his own poem is reinforced further on in the volume, namely in ‘The Trees of Paisley Grammar School’. Had this poem been the only example of free verse in the collection, it would seem, to me at least, to have more than a touch of irony:

Something to say

                         about the way

  they move in the wind,

                               the free verse, 

               sway, the leaves, 

the complete greenness

                   of the leaves,

              the dark of the branches,

The use of the term ‘free verse’ to describe the movement of the trees (not to mention the layout of the poem, which looks like the wind-blown motion of branches) seems almost adolescent, as if Fulton was having a dig at someone, the lack of maturity found amongst his contemporaries; possibly the main body of young establishment poets writing today. The fact that these trees are in the grounds of Paisley Grammar School i.e. an educational institution, and, I assume, a rather middle class educational institution at that, would seem to corroborate this. 

           

      a gap

                                                       in the traffic, 

       for whatever time, 

it’s only the rain, wind, 

me, the trees

Here, in the last line of the poem, the poet introduces himself. It seems that Fulton believes the poet is part of the scene, we see the observer as an active participant, a ball of energy, just like the rain, the wind, the trees. 

For me, Fulton’s writing is at its weakest when it delves into sentimentality, in pieces like ‘We Were Punks Once…and Young’ Fulton heads down the well-trod path of the middle-ager yearning for youth. 

everyone else has gone, but

the mad lights are still sparking

and the drums are still thumping

and Tommy,

Jim,

myself

are eighteen and bouncing 

around the long dark dance floor

Fulton’s ability to convey subject in musical cadence is on offer here, with the stresses in ‘sparking’, ‘thumping’, and ‘bouncing’ providing the rhythmic backbone of the poem,  ndeed, we can almost hear the drum work of the likes of Topper Headon in the small auditorium. However, Fulton’s talent for acute observation is not wholly present in this poem, generalisations predominate:

……………………….crossing

and recrossing as if

our lives depend upon it as if

it’s the first night of Earth

with the lager and lime

churning inside

Some of Fulton’s most striking and precise imagery, however, can be found in the penultimate piece in the collection; ‘Closing Time’. Here the poet takes us for a walk around Lindisfarne Priory, alerting us to the 

…sandstone world

                 of altar, chancel, 

curves of shadows, angles of light.

We find ourselves here at a road’s end of sorts; a spherical landscape where the bile and blood  that’s been brewing thus far may settle. An island symbolic of man’s relinquishing of his struggle – and hastily placing it in the care of the ‘Empty walls’, we feel, however, that the poet’s efforts to relinquish are not going quite as smoothly:

And behind me, I can hear,

                       without looking,

the lonely keening from far in the bay.

In this poem we also have some of Fulton’s most musical language:

And beyond the Priory,

a statue of Aidan, 

        the gable of our whitewashed hotel.

Double glazed haven, lounge bar, roof, 

a dark rectangle of bedroom glass, and you

within, reading, or snoozing,

or trying to work the Sky TV, or

boiling an agnostic kettle

to make me an atheist cup of tea –

The assonance of ‘a’ and ‘oo’ sounds are hard to ignore, as is the nice hidden rhyme of ‘TV’ and ‘tea’. In aesthetic terms also, this poem, for me, is the highpoint of the volume, in large part due to the use of capital letters after full stops, and also because of a scattering of line indentations to convey the uneasiness experienced, the changing line-lengths, and the use of two melodic refrain-like stanzas that give a sense of stability to the layout, and allow for the possibility that everything may indeed be ‘quite all right’. 

One Day in the Life of Jimmy Denisovich is a collection of refined lyricism, its consistent use of everyday phrasing will not send the reader to the dictionary, but does allow for a reverence of the commonplace. Fulton is a poet who seems to speak from inside the moment, and some of these poems are endowed with the aim of picking apart time itself, to analyze, escape from, or overcome it. The characters presented in this volume are atrophied, listless, and hesitant – bodies of inactive energy trying to, or not to, navigate the ruthless flux. If the main thrust of One Day goes into detailing this war, then the final poem, ‘Helen Doing the Crossword in Bed’ is the call for ceasefire, with lines such as ‘her thoughts, gracefully, stretching through time’ the poet observes lovingly, and, we suspect, gratefully, the gentle motions of the woman beside him in bed. The poem is a reconciliation, or an attempted reconciliation, reminiscent of Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus, here the poet does seem to, however, take the ‘leap’ that Camus so thoroughly warned against:

everything, every thing

is being perfectly filled.

There is a sense of permanence in these final two lines, as if the poet has forgotten the war depicted hitherto, and has rejected any notion of the ‘absurd’ in favour of the apparent completeness of this particular moment, a feeling of completeness that we know is temporary:

beside me, this second,

the one

just gone

 primitive cartography by Paul Summers

This latest offering from acclaimed poet Paul Summers is far removed, like the man himself, from the working class environs of his North Eastern homeland. This volume is an impressionistic patchwork of the poet’s experiences of Australia; with an aim of depicting the indomitably varied and volatile terrain of a foreign land. And indeed, the volume’s title would suggest as much; this critic began reading expecting the following work to reflect the diversity of this ‘primitive’ landscape. 

anaximander of miletus

is gazing at his navel

So go the first lines of the opening poem, ‘dasein’ (which apparently is a German term, meaning ‘being there’ or more generally, ‘existence’). These two lines assert the direction of the volume; Anaximander, one of the first to attempt to explain astronomical origins, is observing his bellybutton. Umbilical associations aside, this is a starkly introverted opening seemingly at odds with the expansiveness suggested by the volume’s title. We feel Anaximander’s earnestness through the assonance of the second line, and assonant phrasing is used throughout this short poem;

…………….a genesis 

from the nib of a crow-

feather quill. the things

we own or think we own

Summers’ musical capabilities are very much evident in this piece, with a series of strong syllables progressing the rhythm, but never without a sense of uneasiness;

three continents adrift:

just rapture and despair,

between them longing. 

In ‘gossamer’ we are met with a degree of iciness;

a boy in wisconsin 

has murdered his father

Suitably journalistic in tone, the find out that the father was killed with ‘a single round to the back of his head’; monosyllables do their work here, until relief is granted with the rather refreshing:

the lizard is spared,

the kookaburra retreats.

The drawn-out vowel sounds at the end of these two lines offer a sense of mercy, and here, of course, it is mother nature’s mercy, juxtaposed with the coldness of mankind; the latter being the kind of story we glance through in a tabloid rag, accepting it simply as ‘the way it is’, it is moments like the one depicted here, though, that one must ‘be there’ to comprehend, and, perhaps rather agonizingly, in the face of nature’s indifference, an indifference easily grasped through the reading of callous actions printed in papers; a psychopath (or at least, as the media would have us categorize) is indifferent to our pleas, and this, of course, is something we simply accept. Here, though, Summers is seemingly less willing to accept such a thing from nature:

………her spastic leaves

fit in the drip of flesh-warm 

rain. a fly-wing fragility;

The feminine personification of what is here an hibiscus, a rather striking pink-red flowering plant, coupled with ‘flesh-warm’, indicate that this man-poet is longing for respite from an uber-masculine world where sons kill fathers, and the acts are reported without the batting of an eye. This ‘moment contented in its own sparse company’ seems to be not quite that contented, for despite the presence of mother nature’s gentleness at the moment, we sense that this moment has incurred a longing for the company, or at least the touch, of a woman, or wo-man.

As refined as Summers’ sense of musicality is, the melodic qualities he has carefully honed since his last collection begin to get a little repetitive as the reader gets deeper into the volume, which left this critic to wonder how and when the disparate landscapes under observation would provoke a significant change in rhythm, or tenor (the overriding feeling throughout much of the work is one of melancholy, and often, of pining); there is considerable difficulty in comprehending how a country, particularly one as volatile and contradistinctive as Australia, can prompt such an unwavering approach to poetics (as well as the similar rhythmic and tonal structure across the majority of the book, each poem is presented in all-lower case and centralised text, which, in this writer’s opinion, distracts from the poetry itself).

Rather understandably, this volume is quite a departure from Summers’ previous release. The poet has bravely moved away from depicting the class struggle, against which his nose had been pressed since his early youth, and indeed, in the beginning of primitive cartography, despite the jaded underbelly of many of the poems, we feel there is a freshness, a bounce, even, in the poet’s analyses of the minutiae of his adopted country:

un-noted in my pocket-

book of Australian birds,

the magpie’s capacity 

for demonstrative care.

In ‘cupboard love’, and in ‘ingot’, the third part of ‘fitzroy triptych’:

the wharf alive;

a brackish fug

of sweat & curse,

of lanolin and amber

rum. A barra leaps;

each lustred scale

a flake of light.

The common man is never far away, as in ‘tab’:

marty’s dad has the skin

of a corpse, lumps the last

of his pension on another

stable whisper.

These are some of the most pared-down lines in the whole volume, and the poem quite accurately depicts the forlornness of the part-time (or full-time) gambler, whether money is won or lost:

he comes home like a train

but they exit defeated.

Close to the concerns described in Summers’ previous volume, certainly, though, in comparison with the grittiness we’ve seen from his work, the faintly quixotic opening lines of this piece may well make us smile:

all heads are bowed

in the church of the fallen. 

What may also make us smile, and, some of us; quite broadly, is the piece ‘neuropathway 61 revisited’ and the undisguised connotations to Bob Dylan’s seminal album Highway 61 Revisted. Recorded by Dylan at the height of his electric furore, during which he was almost unanimously condemned by those in the folk music community for ‘selling out’, it bade a vitriolic and bittersweet farewell to ‘protest music’, or, as the purists regarded it, his ‘roots’. This is a poem of which the lower case lettering, this reviewer feels, actually enhances the content:

 …………………..we are nothing but energy &

calls to action, a fleet of memories adrift in the humours.

they swerve the chicanes of a glowing web of dendrites;

despite all efforts some collisions are inevitable.

Not quite anthemic, but reminiscent of Dylan’s Tarantula (a book, almost a map of his creativity, written at the same time as the aforementioned album).

What started as only a repetitious rhythm, soon becomes a rather incessant technique, the characteristics of which are an overuse of semi-colons and ‘of’s, for example, in ‘mirage’:

today, the heat haze

makes islands weightless;

a convoy of basalt 

defying gravity,

their footings breached

by a trick of light.

In ‘creek’:

pierces the dullness of muted silt;

like arrows of fortune awaiting flight,

their heads immersed in acts of survival.

cicada drone, the wing-beat leatherette 

of auburn bats, the slow hiss of drying

stones, the finger-snap of startled crabs,

And in ‘siren’:

the islands advance;

drawn by the pull

of your open mouth.

their crop of doubts

ripening like blisters.

a spine of brittle cloud,

each straining vertebrae

stretched to dislocation:

the yank of time, the surge

of wind,

Here we also see a couple of other heavily-used attributes of Summers’ technique, those of metaphor and simile, examples of which seem to grow denser as the collection progresses, for example, in ‘for judith fellows’:

i finger these photos 

like morphine phials

both welcome & not

like midnight’s ghosts

And in ‘interregnum’:

& awkward in their transience

           the shadows bristle

shrinking like philosophy

to the root of their existence

……………………

as blank & immoveable 

          as our fear of departure

Paul Summers seems, to this critic, to have reached an expanse of ‘poetic comfort’; that is, an area in which the poet has found he can survive well, and thus shies away from the possibility of breaking new ground. That he has fallen into this ‘trap’ while in the process of acclimatizing himself to a foreign landscape is rather curious; it may be that Summers’ aim for this collection was to distil the turbulence and history of his new home into one coherent form; an admirable goal, of course, but one which this writer believes can only fail. The effect, ultimately, is one of a rather ‘decorative’ poetic; offering little in the way of active engagement (from the reader’s point of view, in relation to the world depicted in the book). Summers is quite clearly a talented and experienced poet, with an authoritative voice, and with the vision, I believe, to write something of considerable profundity in the near future.  

R.G. Foster © 2014

Michael George Gibson

On English Poetry and Poems

There is some perplexity in people’s minds as to what English poetry and a poem may be. Poetry was, and to some extent, still is, an important part of our culture and sense of nationhood. I therefore propose to make a definition of English ‘poetry’ and a ‘poem’. In fact these terms were not widely used in English until the 16th century: but I think that it is fair to apply them to some things which were made in this land in earlier centuries.

    We have some written stuff from the 8th century onwards which may be called English poetry. In Anglo-Saxon times there were word-things then called ‘lays’ or ‘songs’ which were of essentially the same nature as the things later called ‘poems’. Anglo-Saxon lays and songs were made according to ‘lay-craft’, ‘song-craft’ or ‘word-craft’. The Anglo-Saxons spoke of their lay-craft or song-craft as one in which the parts of the lay or song were ‘verses’. The word ‘verse’ meant a ploughed furrow both in the sense of its line and length and in its turn to make another furrow. These early makers also spoke of theirs verses having ‘feet’ and of their being ‘metered’. Their verses were by and large of much the same length and had much the same amount of stuff in them as the others in a particular ‘fitt’.

    The word ‘rhythm’ was not used in those days but was implicit in the word ‘song’. Their songs were markedly rhythmical – as is the case, one presumes, in all early cultures. This was so that anyone could partake in the song and often the dance that might go with it. This is why the word ‘foot’ was used in describing and defining the craft.

    The metered verses of the Anglo-Saxon or Old English poetry were further shaped by means of a system of internal correspondences of consonants or vowels at the beginnings of some of the words in each verse. This we now call ‘alliteration’. It is clear that in most Old English poetry a verse usually had in it four main beats or pulses which were linked by the initial sounds  of the words rather than their endings – though this was not usually the case for all four beats in a verse.

    In due course ‘end rhyme’ came to be used at the ends of some verses, and this system of shaping poetry eventually overtook the alliterative way during the Middle English period. But the metering out of verse into feet was always done. It is to word-things made up of metered and rhymed verses to which the words ‘poetry’ and ‘poem’ were later applied. There were of course other aspects of the use of language that came into the consideration of the nature of poetry: but these were not fundamental to a definition of ‘poetry’ or a ‘poem’.

    It was several centuries before any very different way of doing things was tried. Towards the end of the 19th century ‘free-verse’ – from the French vers-libre – became a technique of writing. But I hold that the term is illogical, a nonsense.

  The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (1990) defines ‘free verse’ as:

        a kind of poetry that does not conform to any regular

            meter: the length of its lines are irregular, as is its use

            of rhyme – if any.

   

The definition is exact and right except in one respect: it contained a wrong use of the word ‘poetry’, which should be replaced by the term ‘writing’ or ‘word-stuff’, or some such.

    In its original sense a verse, or furrow, was metered out and turned in accordance with a system of related furrows (which of course all accorded with the form of the field). This accordance was and is essential to the craft of ploughing and the craft of poetry. ‘Free verse’ is a contradiction in terms: a verse is by definition metered and therefore not free – it cannot be both.

    There is something of the same sort of confusion in the matter of rhyme. ‘Rhyme’ means identify of end sound in words.’ Anything less – be it called ‘half-rhyme’ or ‘part-rhyme’ or whatever – is not rhyme, it is other than rhyme.

    In the last hundred years writing styles have changed more quickly. Very different things are presented to us as ‘poems’. Trying to find new ways of doing things and new things to make are natural human traits. It is also natural to look for the differences in things and to find words with which to describe and name them in order to discriminate between one thing and another.

    ‘Songcraft’, later called ‘poetry’, was and is the making of word-things according to certain clear, objective, defining and essential rules and techniques of metre and alliteration and rhyme. These things may be called ‘poems’. To avoid confusion, word-things not made according to these rules but according to some different – and, one hopes, objectifiable – rules, should, as things of a different kind, be given a different name.

References:-       The Oxford English Dictionary

                        A Thesaurus of Old English (King’s College, London. 1995)

                        The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms 1996

Geoffrey Heptonstall

Fiona Sinclair. Write Me into Bed with Casanova Craft. Original Plus. 9780957019799. £3

Actually, the romance of the title turns out to be a disappointment. The plaintive voice despairs of ever finding a moment of deep passion, never mind true love. Of course it is from disappointment and frustration that art may emerge as a protest against life’s unfairness. Who wants to read the poetry of a self-indulgent know-it-all?

The conclusion is, by implication, that while Casanova proves perpetually elusive, poetry does not let the poet down. She has a voice. Her tongue, rather than her lips, is the means of satisfying the inner longings of her soul. 

What we hear behind these poems is a living personality. That, rather than sophisticated technique, is what gives the work its vitality. Not that Fiona Sinclair is without technique. The artless confession is carefully voiced. I could say almost that it was craftily worked, except that would make her sound insincere. There is craft but not guile in these poems. Fiona Sinclair is adept at the barbed observation in the well-honed phrase that compels attention. 

She mourns her parents, and regrets the passing of her own life from youth to that dreaded phrase ‘middle age’. Actually, it’s a very youthful poetry, the poetry of someone whose youth has not passed into memory, nor even into active feeling:

You parade her photos before him, 

proof that your mother’s beauty

was not a daughter’s delusion. 

Her mother was always a rival, at least in the poet’s mind. How true that was in actuality none of us can say. But it is a truth felt keenly by the poet. And that feeling impels the writing to strike the right note and make us listen. Writers, Alan Plater remarked, are always trying to impress their parents, haunted by a sense of letting them down when the truth may be that they look down from heaven impressed by their child’s ability to say what you mean and to mean what you say. In a world of general lying the occasional word of truth can change the world.

Geoffrey Heptonstall© 2014

The Bald Truth, Boldly

Dancing With Big Eunice, Alistair Findlay

Luath Press, 2010

£7.99

When I encountered Alistair Findlay’s Dancing With Big Eunice whilst selecting the Scottish Poetry Library’s Best Scottish Poems last year, I was highly sceptical that I would get on with a collection of poetry ‘on social work and social workers’. Lines from Tom Leonard’s poem ‘situations theoretical and contemporary’ came to mind: ‘The passengers are excited./Who will win the word processor? […]/Let the tour of the slums begin!’ Writing about the marginalised, disadvantaged or excluded can be morally boggy ground. 

Perhaps with this in mind, Findlay opens his book with an unusually long introduction, defending his motivation to write it, which seems to have involved less decision than vocation. He was shocked by the ‘white-knuckled rage’ that erupted when he began to write the book after his retirement from thirty-five years of social work. Poems usually become milder and more moderated as the poet edits and tests them over time, but Findlay’s anger at the evolution of the social work system has hardly lost momentum in the writing. This is sometimes a great strength and sometimes a weakness. A poem is a live tug-of-war between instinct, impulse and formal constraint (or between first getting down what’s on the tip of your tongue, and then making it as clear and powerful as you can on the page) and works when those contrary forces are in balance. Findlay’s rhythmic instincts only let him down when the formal scaffolding of the poem or its content aren’t strong enough to contain the torrent of language, as is the case in ‘Snapshot’. 

At his best, Findlay harnesses his passion, and tempers it with structuring forms. These poems work, thrumming like small engines. ‘Mrs McRobie’, the poem I chose for the Scottish Poetry Library, is an impressive feat of containment and potent understatement. It’s a quick-fire thing, crammed with voices; the spiky but regular shape formed by each line overspilling into the next, whilst internal rhymes and strong speech-rhythms hold the whole thing together: ”’Whit kin ye dae, Mr Findlay?’ […] ‘So they took Davie away, and she gret every single day/until they took him back.’ 

In ‘An Early Social Work Training Film, Shot in 1973, starring Robert Mitchum’, Findlay riffs on Edwin Morgan’s ‘Glasgow Sonnets’, borrowing the first line from each of Morgan’s sonnets to begin his own. The compact nature of the sonnet form, and necessity of fulfilling its expectations of rhythm and rhyme have a really interesting effect here: hustling the reader on, making clear how shallow and reductive is the relationship between Mitchum, fictional ‘social worker extraordinaire’, and his faceless client, an alcoholic with an ax. 

‘And then down crumbling stairs Bob Mitchum goes,

the wife and weans following until Angus,

the director, calls ‘Cut! Bob! Fabulous!

We caught their ghastly faces half-exposed.’

For me, child of the era of political correctness, Findlay’s inability to be mealy-mouthed is both admirable and shocking. I find it hard to accept his likening of 

social work managers to ‘Nazi war-criminals’ (‘The Senior Social Worker’); his outrage is most effective when his language is plainer and cooler and his tone more satirical. In ‘No Problemo’, Findlay gets the balance right, and the effect is heart-breaking. He describes crouching with his arm around the shoulders of an ‘eight year old/spit-ball’ who has just been told he’s not going to be allowed to go home ‘while he questions/my parentage, my manhood/my professional credibility. ‘

If Findlay can get away with calling a child a ‘spit-ball’ it’s because whilst this collection is unsentimental, his integrity and compassion warm it from within. These are barely fictionalised, human encounters. As he put it himself in an email to me: ‘direct, strong (often ‘confrontational’) language/emotions is the very stuff of social work practice [..]you would not earn the respect of the people we deal with unless you told the bald truth, boldly!’ 

Throughout this collection, Findlay refuses to let clients or colleagues be stereotyped: ‘you can tell nothing from the outside […] not my job to weep […] (or) criticise’ (‘Outside’). And he is scathing about any hint of excessive zeal on the part of the social worker, or any portrayal of the ‘client’ as Other: ‘the alligators/staring at us, strange creatures, strange vocabularies […] on we dragged them, heading for Jerusalem!’ (‘Social Workers on Tractors’.)

Whilst I was choosing my shortlist for Best Scottish Poems, I realised I would have to find a way to justify my selection, to find a way to articulate what I think makes a poem work. Amongst the many poetry collections I read last year, Dancing With Big Eunice was the only one I read through in a single sitting and started to reread as soon as I’d finished it. If we need poets, we need those whose egos are set aside to write, who explore subjects we didn’t expect to make good subject matter for poetry. We need poets who are compelled to write. They’re rarer than you might think. 

Jen Hadfield © 2011/12

This review previously appeared in The Shetland Times and the British Association of Social Workers News (2011)

 

Simon Jenner on

Sidney Keyes

Sidney Keyes: Collected Poems Carcanet, £9.95

On or about November 2nd 1941, British poetry changed. An overkill, a publicity stunt even. But literary history can be altered by literary accidents – and personalities. Eight Oxford Poets, edited by rising Oxford poet Sidney Keyes, went to press without Philip Larkin. It began a feud with the posthumous Keyes lasting forty years and fissuring the perception of  

a whole poetic decade. Keyes’s neo-romantic stance fuelled his antipathy to the then Audenesque Larkin. It also made him highly influential, so particularly reviled. Writing to Robert Conquest on the latter’s prospective inauguration of New Lines  and Movement, 

Larkin was fuelled by – in 1955 – revenge on ‘our Sidney’. Larkin’s animus against Keyes enshrined the Forties for him. It fuelled Larkin’s bid at recognition in another decade, that might underwrite his existence.

 

They were exact contemporaries. Keyes, born on 27th May 1922, attended Queen’s, Oxford, where he had a wonderfully cross-fertilising friendship with John Heath-Stubbs and Drummond Allison – one poet not influenced by Keyes. After becoming a member of what he termed ‘the O. C. T. U. Generation’, he left for Libya and was killed covering a patrol on 29th April, 1943. His posthumous second volume and Collected Poems inflamed a myth – and Larkin.

‘War Poet’ the ironic title of one of his poems, was a supremely ironic epitaph for such a poet, even one haunted, as one would expect, by rather Rilkean notions of death. A keen internationalist, he loved Klee, Holderlin – and Clare and Wordsworth. He told Richard Church he should have been a 19th century regionalist. Keyes was, firstly, sickeningly precocious, aided by a poet schoolmaster Tom Staveley. Back in 1938 he wrote ‘Elegy’, about his extraordinary grandfather:

 

April again, and it is a year again

Since you walked out and slammed the door

Leaving us tangled in your words. Your brain

Lives in the bank-book, and your eyes look up

Laughing from the carpet on the floor:

And we still drink from your silver cup.

The directness of this ritual commands respect. ‘April again. . . .  a year again’ at the commencement of each stanza whips the paradoxically fast moving funereal rhymes from scutcheoned hearse horses to the ‘smart cobs’ of the dead man’s youth that appear in the second stanza. Recalling his virility and speed are fitter memorials than nodding graveside oratory. The grandfather is omnipresent not simply in a register of smart cobs, silver cups, 

or in the minutiae of burial. His clearly dominant character ‘drives our thoughts’ both like his cobs, in the brisk tempo of the second stanza, and in the ritualistic ‘neither. . .  nor. . .  

nor’ of the poem’s closing lines that suggest a regal slackening of pace, an arrived cob: ‘We shall never forget nor escape you, nor make terms/With your enemies, the swift departing years.’

Perhaps ‘Sour Land’, also quite early, fulfilling Keyes’s regionalism, encapsulates his solitary poetics and sly self-portrait, here refracted through Pope:

His lame leg twisted on the spiral stair,

He cursed the harsher canker in his heart;

Then in the turret he would scrawl and glare

And long to pull his enemies apart.

When night came knocking at the panes

And bats’ thin screeching pierced his head,

He thought of copulation in the lanes

And bit his nails and praised the glorious dead.

It ends in the third section by returning to blank verse, lines which Geoffrey Hill – very influenced by Keyes as much of his work shows – quotes in Tenebrae:

Two men are digging not a trench –

A grave for all you know and all you hope.

Remember the weasel questing down the hedge,

The dead crow hanging from the oak.

This is a very ancient land indeed;

Aiaia formerly or Cythera

Or Celidon the hollow forest called;

This is the country Ulysses and Hermod

Entered afraid; by ageing poets sought

Where lives no love nor any kind of flower –

Only the running demon, thought.

Keyes was a master of blank verse, of deft metonymic manipulation, disturbed pastoral. Although Eliot blew wind into longer poems, Keyes individuated themes shared by contemporaries Allison, Larkin, Ross, Douglas. Auden was a common factor, literariness peculiar to Keyes. Hill was his inheritor. Jeffrey Wainwright’s introduction is a model of

analysis and evaluation. But the heroes are a father and daughter. Antony Smith, the headmaster of Keyes’s (and Mick Jagger’s) old school, Dartford, mounted a Keyes conference in 1987. Its success, pooling Keyesiana, led everyone to agree on a permanent site. Shamefully, only Greenwich University accepted the archive. And latterly his daughter 

Sarah Smith wrote her PhD there on Keyes, enriched with a 15 year absorption in the poet and his friends. Her biography is forthcoming. 

Anthony Smith badgered Keyes’s publishers, Routledge, to reissue a new Collected in 1988, with original editor Michael Meyer able to add overlooked poems, mainly blues – another trait common with Larkin. Smith managed to track down Keyes’s runner, and elicit the moving testament we again have here. Alas, Meyer did not agree with the Smiths or the poet’s sister, that more fine poems should be added. There it is, till 2014. But we have this handsome volume, returning Keyes to print – topped with a striking painting by the poet’s grand nephew. Robert Nye thinks Keyes a potentially even finer poet than his admired Douglas. With Keyes’s astonishing assurance and clarity of purpose before us, we can again wonder. Pace Philip, Sidney is ours.

Simon Jenner © 2008

 

Simon Jenner on

George Barker

A Biting Barker

George Barker (1913-91) has suffered an oxymoronic fate worthy of himself. Much of his rhetorically intellectual achievement was overlooked in the days when in the 1940s, he was best celebrated and felt most attuned to an era still misunderstood. And not least by 

himself, with his incapacity to stop burying this achievement with a wealth of puns and poesy. And again in later decades, when his period was forever fixed by the watershed of 

The True Confessions of George Barker (Part 1, 1950); and later work overlooked as the 

prosier effusions of a writer responding to later astringencies, and damned for that too.

Although celebrated as an influential master of rhetoric with colloquially-grounded argument, caricatured as a kind of clearer Dylan Thomas, his own dazzle blinded many to what else his coruscating puns and marshalling of stanzaic extension amounted to. Of course it was partly his own fault, and particularly the occasions when his work convinced one he could never be capable of any such thing. At least Confessions in itself is recognized and read. It’s just symptomatic of Barker’s fate that the stature of the work should be shrouded by its own qualities. Again, the power it calls upon the reader, its claims upon ‘a biting Barker’ as 

Heath-Stubbs celebrates him, in ‘The Triumph of the Muse’ (1958) to deliver his fairground ride, are difficult to stop. Such are his stanzaic leaps and metaphor-bounded calls upon his 

own life that one is swept in the fire of its execution. As criticism, in a time when both poets seemed fading from fashion, Heath-Stubbs’s commentary perhaps lives as the most astute contemporary appraisal of Barker’s gifts, and in this poem, marshalling not a little of Barker’s 

own virtuosity:

But next there came to seek her high decision

A biting barker with a coloured coat,

In tatters slashed – yet oddly, with precision.

A chimera, blent of lion, snake and goat –

Or was it St John’s seven-headed Beast? –

Followed his steps, and had him by the throat;

Half Mephistopheles, half spoiled priest

Or spoiled child – a man none could agree on,

Yet, at this levee, he was not the least.

The muse presented him a loud carillon

Of sounding words, with which the Beast to tame,

And let him find a place by François Villon –

(John Heath-Stubbs, Collected Poems 1943-87 (p. 610))

Such criticism, calling up ‘Holy Poem IV’ (with ‘St John on Patmos of my heart’) neatly encapsulates Barker’s self-dramatised polarities. This demon-doubled poet rises as only the comic double of Barker’s own dramatic self-divide, the oxymoronic double-binds and puns that litter, alliterate and power his arguments. 

Criticism has rightly concentrated on the formation and sustaining impulse of Barker’s qualities from the Thirties through to say, 1951, when the shorter mature poems in News 

of the World hotly followed Confessions (both 1950). But the conscious sequels to Barker’s 

masterpiece are more than overdue for examining on their own gnarled terms, even if this does telescope many collections into glancing half-lights, passing through them.

Some additional grace-notes to Barker’s poetics help to underline the ontology behind the outrageous, though. Eros in Dogma (1944) for instance signalled the kind of punning subtlety lost behind the unsubtle nature of puns. ‘Sacred Elegy V’, stanza IV, contains two such. The end famously expostulates ‘O dog my God!’ God’s palindrome (decently taken up as a whole poem by Carol Ann Duffy in ‘The Dyslexic Philosopher’ some index of Barker’s greater pressure) hides another: ‘O dogma God’, an aural pun worthy of, after all, the title of the 

collection. Earlier in the stanza comes another instance of if not pun, then the mesmeric traps Barker was well aware he was creating. ‘Fiend behind the fiend behind the fiend behind the/Friend.’ This is a dark enough reading, God as a fell sergeant as the trope began. Still, 

reading it twice enacts the kind of reversal Barker springs at the end with his dog/God. ‘Fiend, behind the fiend, behind the fiend behind, the/Friend.’ The line break places the Friend more firmly behind the fiend than the initial visa versa, so one returns to it as a 

resolution. ‘Behind’ becomes an indicative, such as ‘Behind is.’ Again, this is subtler than 

Thom Gunn’s ‘I know you know I know you know I know.’ But even Geoffrey Hill learnt much from Barker (and even more from Sidney Keyes). ‘Genesis’ with its ‘trigger claw’ and much else is thoroughly indebted to Barker’s ‘The private parts, haired like a trigger’ encoded in its overall stanzaic force and Crashaw-coloured fervour; naturally Hill’s High Anglicanism later refracted this through sootier stained glass.

Barker’s relation to the world is often too spell-bound, and like certain fantasists he can live too wholly in the world of metaphor and allusion, not grounding himself in the colloquialisms he so often brought to undercut the too-inebriating Catholic God-yearnings (as Martin Seymour-Smith said of Lionel Johnson) in Confessions. Here, the balance of narrative, rather than sheer meditation as in elegies he wrote of dead-drunk friends – or even of the earlier, platitudinous ‘Three Memorial Sonnets… for two young seamen lost overboard’ of January 1940 – touches the fundament as one might put it, of Barker’s life: ‘we are excreted, like shit’ is an exhilarating breakthrough into a hyperactive Crashaw; indeed one not removed from Francis Thompson’s paler attempts, ‘twixt heaven and Charing Cross’, with which one might 

substitute Soho for the later (lapsed) Catholic. Living in a sometimes metaphrastic world, rather like Sci-Fi, has rendered some of his shorter lyrics – the ‘Cycle of Six Lyrics’, for example – too vague of impact; the translation of one world into another hasn’t quite taken. 

Here, no particularity of incident (death does rather concentrate Barker) strikes away from the lyric body and catches light. This begets a world less energetically resided in by his quasi-disciple Jeremy Reed, who similarly lives in trope, but with less panache if more 

precision (not slashed, however, which would do him much good), and with tenements more locally haunted.

Barker in a sense yielded to his best suit, the longer poem, even the long one, and the three volumes, In Memory of David Archer (1973), Villa Stellar (1978), and Anno Domini (1983) all trek towards a final integrated statement, more public than Confessions, which is the province of the last-named. Anno Domini  is a summa and benediction, religious plea and politically-charged tract in one. After that, he understandably reverted in the posthumous Street Ballads (1992) to shorter forms.

Sometimes Barker’s vision bifurcated as it diversified. Poems of religious rhetoric and increasingly frothy mythic imagery jostle with more surreal or even magic-realist scenarios more loosely handled, fictions calling on a flatter delivery. Subsequently, some limpid poems

emerge of a remarkable imaginative freedom, such as Barker had indeed developed from the 1950s, perhaps fully flowering in Villa Stellar. Vignettes, narratives imagined or reprised, strayed in from his work as a novelist, now suspended. Often these are juxtaposed like a mosaic in a work (like Dreams of a Summer Night) to suggest if not enact imaginative integration. ‘Roman Poem III (A Sparrow’s Feather)’ of a sparrow dying amongst mechanical birds (‘the analogies a re too trite’, recalling The Dead Seagull of 1950) from The View From a Blind 1 of 1962, or some sections of Dreams of a Summer Night (1966). XI envisages a ghosted England ending:

As I approached the Colonel stood up and extended his hand to me

Out of the past, and I held it not briefly, knowing that

Sometimes, but only too seldom, we can take tea with the dead.

In Memory of David Archer is an uneven work, cast in a magma of formal elegiac measures 

and conversation poem, with its litanies and refrains couched as device and (slightly drunk) solo chorus. The first poem with its irregular pulse, varying but usually short stabbing lines envisages a conversation piece oozing out of its formal urn: ‘You lift a hand/to those who 

have gone before us… to whom only death can restore us:’

to lift a hand in farewell

for them at the black hell

neither you David or I

found this a hard thing to do –

for they, most of them, died

in a sort of twisted pride

or as they lifted up

the whiskey in the cup

or turning a handsome head

in honour among the dead…

At this period, 1973, one might be expected to be picking amongst the ruins of a Soho voice. Elegy shifts obliquely but inevitably to one for himself, and the wider shores of dream self-accusation. XXXVII graphically enough depicts his taking out his brother’s eye with 

sword-play:

the stair upon

which her own blood dripped, the hand on the rail,

the dangling eyeball, the lowered head of

the sacrificial offering, the red hand of her eldest

and halved vision of her youngest son,

and she stood still.

Again, ths could have emerged from an earlier novel. Transparent craft contains the delicate myth-forging apparatus, though the habitual mosaic of loss, guilt, atonement and (inevitably 

in a long poem seeking closures) adjustment lives in too many longeurs and frame-jumps. As 

discrete as Barker needed to cast his segments, it’s inevitably in seeking closure that Barker most intensifies, in LIV:

The words are always as

strange and dead as those

fragments and oddments that

the wave casts up on the shore:

I stand in the sea mist

gazing down at the white

words and odd bits of wood

and wonder what they were for.

I think that they were not

ever intended to do

what, when we seek to speak,

we believe that they may:

they cannot bear us up

the frothy words and like

wings at the lame foot

lift us out of the clay.

LIV, like a passacaglia, repeats a litany of wrack – ‘odd bits of sea-blanched wood’ – on Overstrand in this tacked, measured argument with words, registered with a precision shorn, not slashed, of afflatus. Wrack, and ‘all ceremonial evidence/attesting that we love/simply because we must’ induces a religious synaesthasia familiar to most Catholic apologists; Messiaen in music for instance. Barker’s force lies in the manner he circles the singular bits and oddments, snatching more than a detritus of agument, almost figuring Tielhard de 

Chardin in a kind of Catholic Darwinism. The tone is differently nuanched, less personal and sexual than earlier Barker creationism (as it were) – that our freedom to be damned as he also puts it, comes of sex.

Why do I hear them cry

out from the far side of life,

those forms and impulses

unborn beyond the sky?

Why should they hope and seek

above all else to be?

Tonight on Overstrand

I know for one moment why.

 

Archer needs selection, which doesn’t detract from its real successes. Dialogues, Etc (1976), like Poems of Places and People (1971) collects several small-scale success, which itself enshrined longer ruminative poems of his father, most significantly ‘At Thuragaton Church’. Villa Stellar five years on from Archer breathes more contentment, and despite Barker’s attempt to inject the urgency and agency of loss and childhood, reads this. Less uneven and delighful in many instances, it reverts to the ground of Dreams of a Summer Night, but more evenly thewed in argument; pre-figuring Anno Domini in a tonal consistency that Barker often twitches to avoid monotony. Envisaged as a quartet, to record ‘biograhical instances.. and frames of mind’ it tries ‘to describe the changing colours of the memory, as the dolphin might, if it could, try to descibe the altering colours of its skin as it dies.’ Anno Domini literally caught up with this plan. One of his real successes is revitalising his short-lined lyrics with the work of the his children’s books, like To Aylsham Fair (1970) and such work as 

‘January jumps about’. XXXIX or playfully suggests ‘to put the matter a bit too wittily/passing through Hell on ym way to Italy.’ XLIII and XLVII invoke the older elegaic lyricism, occasionally the less successful kind in ‘Cycle of Six Lyrics’, and improving on them. Barker often turns snarling on those who suspect, rightly, lyric pressure has dropped:

If my images seem a little dusty it is merely because the

mirrors get cloudy the more we breathe upon them.. (XLVIII)

And revives himself. LVII with its ‘You want the moon? That is what you will have’, and the final LVIII’s realisation that ‘Inside it is so/quiet that the silence seems inclined to/talk to itself’ moves Barker to familiar, but now poignant perorations.

Quite certainly Barker now wished for an integrated summa. His too easy reliance on multi-faceted sequence called for an intellectually charged corrective. This is perhaps the clue to the grey glinting power of his last major work. Anno Domini opens in small case, like a long 

subordinate clause, recalling contemporary button-holing poems using the title as the opening of a poem, and recalling in these large measures the strategies of Drummond Allison, with his long subordinate clauses dangling over a resolution. It is, in fact, a distended prayer,

unvarying in metrics, broken only in a few sections, continuous over thirty pages, a kind of Kaddish, though infinitely more nuanced and disciplined than say, Ginsberg. The material is more bluntly presented, not unlike an Auden list, again recalling later Auden, MacNeice, or the Audenesque work of such poets as (again) Drummond Allison who recruited his list procedures in comic perorations, as in the uproarious ‘We Shall Have Company’ (1941). Prosier, certainly, but with an underlying grip over the cornucopia of damns and damaged riches pouring into a Thatcherite post-Falklands Britain, with Barker’s now sharply politicised admonitions towards the unemployed. The curious construction is announced in the first paragraph (which then runs on without a break for three pages), which therafter moves in large sentences:

-at a time of bankers

to exercise a little charity;

at a time of soldiers

to cultivate small gardens;

at a time of categorical imperatives

to guess about clouds;

at a time of politicians

to trust only to children and demigods.

Later Barker turns after ‘visions of a blue/Fra Angelican clarity’ to

Turn your hand not away

from the wilfully unemployed

because they employ the state

as not those from whom the state

only too wilfully employs. Mitigate

the frenzy of the erotic system

in the heart of those who outlive

their time; transmute the ferocity

of the fanatic into

a purpose conscious of moral proportion…

Barker here has transmitted a lariat sequence of concerns for the downtrodden of Thatcher’s Britain, his own very personally realised sexuality, and reflections on chiefly the Ayatollah, concerns at which were to be differently refuelled twenty years later. After the 

argufying of the end of Archer, and some of Villa Stellar, not to mention Confessions, this at first sight appears grey and lachrymose, and tensed to its clauses, doesn’t make very easy reading. It’s framed after all as a large-scale plea, and the paragraphs are so large that 

one sinks the sense of the author’s grip in the litany of protest. As if a homeopathic drop of LIV ofArcher had been infused into the welter of political driftwood of the later work. But it is there, and realised on a strange cumulative scale, which does not falter. It’s significant 

too, that Robert Fraser in the Selected Poems of 1995, includes it entire, the only such poem apart from Part 1 of the Confessions. The problem with claiming cumulative strength is that it always sounds like special pleading for boring long poems, and this can’t altogether be 

avoided in Anno Domini. Barker succeeds because he is aware of just such a cumulation, and is impressive because he knows the limits and ends of extended arguments, hasn’t been boring before (windy at his worst), and never relaxes into that flaccidity betraying the Truly 

Boring Long Poem. But the slower rhythm, quite deliberately realised even in a local way, dulls the edge of the Confessions-fed reader. Nevertheless, this is still the acerb, politically aware but not ridden Barker glimpsed in the Thirties, for instance, and in the Confessions, 

but never quite as here.

Earlier, doling out a generality of evils, Barker slips happily into the genealogy of his tropes:

Strike the lamb dumb

if it should Ego sing

and poleaxe the bull

if it should bully the lamb

or bugger the powerless. When

the knife of kisses excoriates

the flesh that it loves the best

let the knife and lover be forgiven

and perhaps even the flesh.

Hide, if you must, your face

from the homicidal maniac

so that, although blind, he sees

you are not gone away, but only

like the moon turned away

from the crime which we cannot

as yet understand, but must,

blind mystery of justice,

believe to be somehow involved

in the exonerating epicycles of your will.

Barker’s powers of analogy and instance are undiminished in the same intellectual force of, say again, LIV of the Archer poem. And he can still be fuddy-funny: ‘Teach us not to despair on Tuesdays/when all things seem to recede/into temporal mirrors…’ But the form, epic and 

ambitious as it is, has attenuated his lyric moment, which causes the force to leak occasionally at the margins. Anno Domini is an exasperatingly rewarding poem. One of its rewards is Barker’s final benediction, yet again like LIV coming full circle like a hellish tape 

loop (or, here, a telegraph pole) after a far wider compass, and now capitalising the word that began the poem:

Why are heroism and devotion like

great works of art? Because

they have no object beyond themselves?

Why do poets stand around

like telegraph poles? Because

all they can do is pass on messages?

At a time of bankers

to exercise a little charity –

 

Steve Mann

on Sally Richards

Stained Glass by Sally Richards, Survivors’ Press 2007

edited and prefaced by Alan Morrison

Thank you Sally for such an excellent and deeply thought provoking solo collection. I’ve just purchased mine and have already read it several times  It is very good value for money. An excellent quality production – compares very favourably with anything I’ve seen in academic libraries over the years – good cover, paper, print etc. As for the poetry – fantastic.The most effective way I could sum up my critical thinking would be to quote a little of your mentor Alan Morrison’s forward, which states:

“…darkly enchanting lyricism..nakedness of spirit…her own distinctive means of expression…often refreshingly confessional…explorative of her own obsessions…”

His comments about Sally’s work and his detecting of both shades of Sylvia Plath and echoes of Stevie Smith are indeed very perceptive. I also especially enjoyed Alan celebrating the following:

“…no poem of hers demonstrates this acumen more so than ‘Mortality’, with its hauntingly beautiful near-refrain: ‘All the while you trace the curve of my spine with your hand/I’m thinking of death…’ This uncluttered directness serves the – ultimate – issue at hand more affectingly than most obliquity can; powerful and lingering, like an inevitable scent. This poem in many ways serves as a modern echoing of the Orphic ruminations in Keats’ ‘Ode on Melancholy’: that we can not experience pleasure without first accepting its bittersweet transience”

So many of the poems are outstanding and have already become favourites of mine. In particular I’m especially drawn into the power of the cosmic hopefulness of:  Aeon (page 38)    

                                      I blinked

                                      the sky turned over

                                      a wave of starlight

                                      rolled

                                      through my hair.

and gripped by the almost overwhelmingly intensity of:   Love (page 27) where the third stanza cries:       

                                                      He’s lost to it; the mire;

                                                      eyes now wild, empty;

                                                      vision displaced –

                                                      cold windows

                                                      to an even colder psyche

                                                      in tatters.

                           

I very highly recommend it to all readers of poetry – to all thinkers of and about poetry – as well as to all writers. Buy it, read it, give it as a present for others to enjoy!

 

James Morrison

 

Stuart: A Life Backwards by Alexander Masters 

(Fourth Estate 290pp £12.99)

Stuart: A Life Backwards is a peculiar book. Billed as the story of “an extraordinary friendship between a reclusive writer and illustrator and a chaotic knife-wielding beggar”, it is part-biography, part-social commentary and, one suspects, at least part-fiction. 

Stuart Shorter, its eponymous antihero, is a self-proclaimed outcast who has spent his 30-odd years limping from one institution to another; his stints in care and at Her Majesty’s Pleasure separated by bouts of homelessness, drug addiction, bungled robberies, and seemingly random explosions of violence. 

Masters, who meets Stuart while working at a rough sleepers’ hostel in Cambridge, initially paints a rather stereotypical portrait of him. With his penchant for Stella and “convict curry”; his dyslexic diary entries; and his tattoo of the word “FUCK” on his right bicep; his character description seems eerily familiar. Yet, as the book progresses, and the unlikely duo grow closer, the author’s mounting fascination with his dysfunctional charge exposes all manner of surprises, some amusing, others deeply disturbing, about how Stuart became the way he is.

As the book’s title suggests, its story is told more or less in reverse; working back from Stuart’s latter-day existence as a bedsit-dwelling campaigner for “the Cambridge Two” (a pair of homelessness workers jailed for failing to prevent drug-taking at their hostel) to his troubled upbringing by his mother and stepfather in a dingy suburb. In Masters’ hands, this oft-used literary device is more than a gimmick: by unpeeling Stuart’s past, layer by layer, he evokes a man whose path to self-realisation – to finally working out how to live – only came after decades of wrong turns. 

One of the book’s most striking features is that, despite his socially conscious credentials, Masters is far from a sentimental narrator. Early chapters adopt a markedly cynical tone, opening with a run-down of various “types” of homeless people, including those who “suffer from chronic poverty, brought on by illiteracy or social ineptness or what are politely called ‘learning disabilities’”. Later, on visiting Stuart in hospital, he observes “silent ladies” lying in “various states of pretend coma”.

This sardonic perspective is reflected in Stuart’s engaging self-deprecation. When it emerges that, contrary to Masters’ conviction that there is no real “reason” for Stuart’s erratic behaviour, he was the victim of sustained child abuse, the author’s tone softens. Yet Stuart himself dismisses this factor – pointing out that many others endure equally horrific childhoods but, unlike him, “turn out decent citizens”. 

The book’s supporting cast share Stuart’s wry view of his own plight. Yet, as with most of the author’s observations, their criticisms are invariably tempered by signs of affection. Recalling her childhood, his sister remarks: “I remember at school we’d have to write in our weekend books what we’d done at the weekend. The others would have gone to the circus or the seaside and I would have been to prison to see Stuart.” 

But it is at the very close, as we recover from the last-minute killer punch, that this accomplished first book delivers its finest juxtaposition of mood. As the life lived backwards comes to a brutal, ironic end, a sweetly uplifting epilogue somehow manages to put a triumphant foot forward.

James Morrison © 2007

This review was previously published in The Literary Review

Dave Russell on

James Joyce

The workings of literature are comparable to those of the human digestive system. The latter must take in a lot of roughage and dispose of a surplus, in order that its overall capacity may be maintained. Until the final stages of digestion are completed, there can be no separation of roughage and nutriment. Just as it is impossible to truncate the digestive cycle, so is it impossible to determine a single stage, or point of focus, for any aspect of a writer’s activity. On the one hand, he may lack objective knowledge; on the other, he may be in several places at once. Add to these problems that of the impossibility of an objective moral stance vis-a-vis gluttony, and the variability of appetite from individual to individual, and some intimation may be derived of the nature of Joyce’s kinesis. 

Portrait of the Artist gives many signposts into the territory of Ulysses, and could perhaps be classed as a supreme guide to the latter. He depicts first of all the idea of the supreme moment of creative intensity. This comes in a description of play-acting: –

“It surprised him to see that the play which he had known at rehearsals for a disjointed and lifeless thing had suddenly assumed a life of its own. It seemed now to play itself – he and his fellow-actors aiding it with their parts.”

He later spoke of ‘pride, hope and desire like crushed herbs in  his heart . . . sent up like vapours of maddening incense before the eyes of his mind.’ This proclaims the inseparability of spirit and matter, consistent with the viewpoint of Swift in his Digression Concerning Madness. The intense significance of the word ‘foetus, is inseparable from the mundance quality of the wood from which it was carved, and the boredom of the uncomprhending schoolboy who wrote it. 

Attempts to impose patterns and regularity are compared to telegraph poles as seen from a moving train. A kindred concept may be essential to define these poles properly, because their purpose is to carry a moving thing, the current of a message – comprehensible when translated at its destination, but giving fatal shocks to anyone attempting importunate contact without rubber gloves. “The telegraph poles held the galloping notes of the music between punctual bars.” the notes may be tethered and kept from their true purpose. 

***

The main features of Joyce’s Hell are the spiritual pain of extension and the abolition of contraries:-

“In hell, the torments cannot be overcome by habit, for while they are of terrible intensity, they are at the same time of considerable variety.”

He questions the survival chances of a homogenous aestheticism:

“The phrase and the day and the scene harmonised in a chord. Was it their colours? No: it was not their colours; it was the poise and balance of the period itself. Did he then love the rhythmic rise and fall of words  better than their associations of legend and colour? Or was it that, being as weak of sight as he was shy of mind, he drew less pleasure frim reflection of the glowing sensible world through the prism of language many coloured and richly storied than from the contemplation of an inner world of individual emotions mirrored perfectly in a lucid, supple periodic prose.”

The relationship of the word-rhythm to external rhythms might break down. Like Sterne in Tristram Shandy, he discusses the problem of a baptism ceremony in this fashion.

“If a layman in giving baptism pours the water before saying the words, is the child baptised?”

If one accepts the premise of the weakness and unreliability of the senses, then it is also possible that some mirrors will be obstructively opaque:-

“The inspirations seemed now to be reflected from all sides at once from a multitude of cloudy circumstances of what might have happened.”

Through his acceptance of the mirror theory, Joyce accentuated his feeling of distance between himself, and God and the Virgin Mary. He diagnoses his limitations:- 

“He had to build up a breakwater of order and elegance against the sordid type of life iwthout him, and to dam up, by rules of conduct, active interests, and new filial relations, the powerful recurrence of the tides within him.”

He suggests that the internal and external tides are of the same element and have the same motivator. If that which was used for the breakwater were redirected, it could engender an overall feeling of peace and unity.

The problem inadequately presented here is an enlargement of the classic fable of the reeds and the oak. I feel that Joyce’s description here falls short because he deals with the idea of coalescence on one plane only. The interaction of tide and anti-tide could be depicted in a contrary and complimentary fashion. This is an extension of hell – seen in the limited terms of earthly exclusions.

Elsewhere he describes the role of the individual soul:-

“Going forth to experience – unfolding itself sin by sin, spreading abroad the bale fire ofits burning stars, and folding back upon itself, fading slowly, quenching its own lights and fires. They were quenched, and the cold darkness filled chaos. Chaos, in which his ardour extinguished himself, was a cold, indifferent knowledge of himself.”

The attitude expressed by the term ‘sin by sin’ dampens ardour in the very process of defining it. The idea of defining the process in terms of waves incorporates into it the inextricable process of the tide’s recession; therefore the process of definition may limit the progress of the soul. 

In Portrait of the Artist, Joyce expresses his fears, but as yet fights shy of going to the words themselves. He takes this next step in Ulysses. In the ‘Proteus’ section, we find the sensations of word, thing, body and soul lyrically synthesised in a description of a sea-shore:-

“These heavy sands are language; tide and wind have silted them here. And there are the stoneheaps of dead childrenm a warren of wheel-rats, sands and stones.”

Words are nebulous when dynamic and static when perceptible. Throughout Ulysses, this interplay is manifest.  Water, the supreme life-giver, is also ‘a sore decayer of your dead bodies’.

Mrs Bloom tell us that “drowning, they say, is the pleasantest death; you see all your life in a flash.” Joyce makes the fullest possible use of this projected synthesis – between total loss and disappearance, and supreme enlightenment. In his role as observer in the Proteus episode, the author combines the roles of beachcomber, lifeguard, and drowning man: “A pointm live dog, grew into night running across the sweep of sand.” The dog depends for its perceptibility on a contrast with the sand, and a consequent possible similarity with the waves:- 

“Their dog ambled about a bank of dwindling sand, trotting, sniffing on all sides – looking for something lost in a past life.”

These physical processes may conceal all, in quasi-geological strata, or may help to reveal it through the processes of erosion. On the other hand, by the processes of mutation, the thing sought for may become united with the sand by dissolution, or it may be the sand itself, never to be recognised because of the vast multiplicity of its integral grains. 

As a background to Ulysses, as to the Iliad and the Odyssey, lies the symbol of a decayed and finally destroyed city. The symbolism of keys was derived from the legends of St Peter, concerning the state of man as an island. The latter makes a frightening comparison with the former. The rearing up above sea-level, and the exhibitionistic erection of barriers may be futile; the delusion of performance could be built up by the fact that the idiot water, going about its routine business, had not yet taken the step of overflowing it.

With our current ecological awareness, we realise that all intact cities may be undergoing a ‘death in life’, that they create the means of their own decay. In itself, a death-stroke has little violence; it takes effect by striking lightly on something vulnerable. Man’s island state may result from a mere delay in the coming of this light touch.

Joyce intermingles the individual and the corporate by reference to Hamlet and Lycidas. In the former we are told of a reminiscence of Elsinore ‘that beetles o’er his base into the sea’. The base could be the noun (foundation), or an adjective, in the sense of corrupt and despicable; the toppling down of a castle of decadence and false values could be an action of supreme cleansing, on a par with the assassination of Claudius. In the latter, we find that “your sorrow is not dead, sunk though he be beneath the watery floor.” Here is a hint at the true nature of our relationships with other people, as a means to facilitate our self-assessment. It seems that Milton used Lycidas to exteriorise, and regulate, his own self-pity. The action of the water has, as it were, peeled off the wallpaper, showing the brickwork underneath: it is the great clarifier of relationships.

However, alienation from this agent can result in a truncated Narcissism. Joyve emphasises the Aquacity of thought. Bloom stresses water’s solidity, docility and ubiquity, pointing out that it forms 90% of the human boidy (p783). He seems to suggest that the spirit of this 90% should find itself in the human mind. When confronted with this problem, Stephen immediately betrays himself as a hydrophobe; he dislikes baths, glass and crystal (distrusting Aquacities of thought and language. He remains convinced of ‘the incompatibility of aquacity with the erratic originality of genius’. He ignores the self-evident truth that water contains regularity in its erraticness, and vice-versa.

“Aristotle’s phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated out into the studious silence of the library, where he had read, sheltered from the sin of Paris, night by night.

The phrases and the gabbling, the thought and the silence, are sea and land, but perfectly interchangeable.”

The word ‘flooded’ could be substituted for ‘floated’ with no radical  change of sense. Any true artist recognises this interhcnageability.

“As we or mother, Dana, weave or unweave our bodies, their natural molecules, shuttled to and fro, so does the artist weave and unweave his image. As the mole in my right breast is where it was when I was born, though all my body has been woven of new sfuff after time, so through the ghost of the unquiet father the image of the unliving comes forth.”

Words are woven and unwoven. Banal associations are welded into the sublime to give them perspective: “‘Come forth Lazarus’ they said – he came fifth and lost the job. The inclusion of banality juxtaposes disparate elements, and makes true intensity easier to achieve, and more accessible to the reader. Joyce uses this procedure to undercut the trite aesthetics of pedantry: “Plato’s world of ideas. All the rest is the speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys. The schoolmen were schoolboys first.”

The ironic juxtapositions cut both ways, depriving our perspectives of their customary protections: “The tip of his little finger blotted out the sun’s disk – must be the focus where the rays cross.”

The statement that “Pyramids on sand are built on bread and onions” at once makes us mock at the fruits of monumedntal architectural labours, and heightens our sense of awe at the true nature of our dependance on those monuments. Perception is distorted, symbols are soiled by greed and misery: most people, Joyce maintains, are guilty of misappropriating sense-data. Although this misappropriation is wrong, it is inevitable, because of the present weakness of the senses, that they should be rationed. 

“Dark men in mien and movement flashing in the mocking mirrors the obscure soul of the world, a darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not comprehend.”

The positive and negative (active and passive) components in the final totality of light are relative and, furthermore, interchangeable. For ultimate freedom, it seems that immediate restrictions must be imposed – this relates once more to the water imagery: “How can you own water, really? It’s always flowing in a stream.” (191) . . . “Can’t bring back time – like holding water in your hand.” (213)

Joyce indeed touches on the maintenance of water works. The physical needs of human beings are inseparable from the formal network of pipes, cisterns etc. Inherent in our safe, detached contemplations is a danger: we may lose much by always observing our elements within the easy terms of restricted codes of observation. Aware of this danger, Joyce does not flee to the safe refuge of delusions, to the exclusion of disturbing modes of connection; rather does he explore them, finding, in the process, both complementary and contradictory modes of association.

As well as being aware of the gap between thought and word, he realises that there is often a gulf between cerebral, clinical vocabulary and the physicalities of reading and writing: “Across the page, the symbols moved in the mummery of their letters, wearing quaint caps of square and cubes.” (Note that he acknowledges the mathematical factor). The gap between deed and ‘most painted word’ is universal and inevitable. 

In Book I, Chapter X, Joyce attacks the common error of confusing spatial continuity with causality. He calls this chapter ‘a pause in the action’. Though occupying the middle of the book, it bears no relation to what precedes or follows. Later, he reinforces this statement with a savage qualification: “. . . related by time and place, they lack vital relationship.” The chapter makes a parody of its own role; in so doing, it curtails the potential sterility of the truncated narrative and the mythological modes of association. 

The nearest parallel section in The Odyssey concerns the legendary wandering rocks. What Homer sidstepped, Joyce thoroughly explored. Homer treated these rocks only allusively: he prudently set forth to his comrades the clear alternatives: the route through the rocks, or that of the whirlpool and the monsters. In pseudo-courage, Homer dodged one alternative. Joyce takes both alternatives. Homer psuhed the rejected altrernative into the background, into the area of hypothesis, for fear that the narrative thread might snap. Joyce’s approach is elastic: he takes into account all the possibilities of something coming to the fore, initially by conventional processes, but later growing to assume the state of a rival vantage-point.

He explored the distinction between the living and the dead to the point of nearly eliminating it: “Pray for the repose of the soul. Does anybody really plant this, and have done with him, like doen a coalshoot?” 

He scorned to place the deceased at any safe remove: like T S Eliot’s, his corpses may begin to sprout at any moment.

Joyce questions concepts of time and space, in a manner evocative of Einstein. In fact, the overall concept of Ulysses could be considered as an application of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Gary Zukav writes: “According to Einstein’s ultimate vision … a piece of matter is a curvature of the space-time continuum! In other words, according to Einstein’s ultimate vision … there is no such thing as “gravity” – gravity is the equivalent of acceleration, which is motion. There is no such thing as ”matter” – matter is a curvature of the space-time continuum. There is not even such a thing as “energy” – energy equals mass and mass is space-time curvature ( 199).

There is in Joyce’s oeuvre as a whole, a movement from linear to cyclical organisation. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, from its tell-tale opening phrase ‘Once upon a time’ to the adult Stephen’s preparation to leave Dublin, exemplifies the forner; Finnegans Wake, whose end takes us back to its beginning, the latter. Ulysses is the transitional text; it gradually abandons linear narration for increasingly curved and cycIical patterns.   

“I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and topping masonry, time one livid final flame.”

“It is vain patience to heap and hoard. Time would scarcely scatter all.”

As well as being the supreme scatterer, our ideas of time impose limits of regularity on the process of scattering. At the end, we might be faced either with an organic synthesis, or with no particles:- 

“In the future, the sister of the past, I may see myself as it is here and now, but by reflection from that which I will then be.”

The present is fragmented motion; our idea of it is an inadequate view of the future plunging into the past. The purported glorious past, degraded present and hypothetical future are but different metaphors for one and the same state of consciousness. 

Joyce’s montage-tinged spatial consciousness stems from his reluctance to register visual impressions according to an inductive appraisal of the moments in time, and duration of periods supposedly necessary for the registration of sense-data. He became aware of the delusive power of the idea of time through examining its relevance to copulation. The protracted prior contemplation of the act, the frequent brevity of the act itself, and the often protracted retrospective reflection on it, are theoretically contrary but referentially identical. If one can accept both sides of the equation, liberation of outlook is attained.

Harry Levin discusses spatial liberation: “If you tried to look directly at the planet, it would disintegrate into tiny fragments, and nothing but consciousness would be left, a million free consciousnesses.”

And yet, if one were oneself one of those consciousnesses, one would realise, through imperceptible contacts and insensible changes, that one was a cell in an immense but invisible mortal growth. This is Joyce’s aim; this is what it means for the artist ‘to refine himself out of existence. Existence here signifies separateness and remoteness. He saw how this factor impinged on the Hellenic civilisation which he used as his backcloth. This civilisation was preserved through the Battle of Salamis, where a phallus-like Persian frontal attack was thwartedf by crushing Grecian thighs. The final result of this operation was the sterility of the ‘cloaca makers’ of the Roman Empire, which Joyce bitterly bemoans as a threat to present-day civilisation. He felt that congealment could only be avoided by interactions seizing each other at all levels. This is the significane of the splendid surrender at the conclusion of the work

In Stephen Hero, Joyce summed up his aims as follows: “Its soul, its whatness, leaps up to us from the vestment of its appearance. The soul of the commonest object, the structure of which is so adjusted, seems to us radiant, the object achieves its epiphany.”  In Ulysses, he showed us that this process must be reciprocal: the epiphany must also achieve the object.

David Russell © 2020

   

Dave Russell on 

Duane Voorhees

Gift – God Runs Through All These Rooms

Hog Press 2020   ISBN-13: 978-1-941892-44-2

The central core of this collection is the principle of contrariety. In his poem Como, Duane describes himself as ‘Scholar of catastrophe, student of earthquake’. He struggles to find the positive in a seemingly overwhelming negativity: “Journeys over nothing embrace stability.”

This stance has linguistic repercussions. In true Joycean spirit, he breaks key words up into their component syllables; some separated syllables go off on tangents, while others form contraries to the original compound. Puns and homophones can also express contrariety:

“Gardens need more guards—/violets violated, robin eggs all robbed.//Future’s days seem few./Verse can’t restore Universe:/ penalty-clogged pens.//World’s orbit is whirled . . . Peace sounds in pieces, the hole is found in the whole. “

“Accords between meek and might are accordions/ compressed and stretched, stung and tortured between locks and boxes:”

“Some of us are burden, some are bird . . . How divide pacifists from their fists?”

***

“pile/driver process piled/river chaos divide the warrant and the judge from the general and the war/rant”

Many of the poems have a strong graphic feel, such as Escher’s Sharks and Rose Couplette.  He is always ready to experiment with traditional forms: Your Task, Haijin is a series of haikus, although with beginning-and-end-rhymes. 

Duane certainly does not flinch from the funny side of his language games: Airy Poppings –“Super caliph/rajah/mystic/rex: be all atrocious.”

“INSURANCE FRAUD: A COMEDY IN THREE ACTS (précis) 

ACT I. Invalid invalid can cancan, cha cha, go-go. 

ACT II. Patient patient stayed staid. 

ACT III. Con fined, confined.”

‘Unanonymous assassin’ is an interesting coining. He can play clever games with alliteration and syllable manipulation: “who windowed the world exiled the wind” – after all, windows were originally designed as wind-breaks. 

Ethereal  Material: An Echo Tech’s Sfumato expresses cosmic chaos in something like garbled computer speak: technical hiccups can generate some highly original vocabulary: 

“In our hevenell shadoworld 

where mounplains look like rivered deserts 

and stonewind is the same as starsand as fireice 

abovebelow the Styxky in winterspringsummerfall, 

no one can tell earth from pearl. 

“Mornoonight of presentpast:

At this smudgedge moment of Ex(isn’t)ence, 

who of us can distinguish 

one goodbad angeldevil from another?

The collection has a wide emotional range, from dark profundity to jocularity. With In Munster, he takes the Limerick form, and scrambles the lines as continuous prose. 

Some black humour with How to Become a Sword-Swallower. Suit for Every Season is the cleverest poem I have come across using playing card imagery: ‘Clubs for the living, spades for the dead. Diamonds for the rich ones, hearts for the poor.” Also a supreme witticism: “Sailors and gamblers all die between decks . . .’

In A Pathology of my Apathy; Or, The Anatomy of Inaction, he pokes salutary fun at aesthetes’ self-indulgent escapism, resenting the affairs of the world for disrupting ‘the state of Zen . . . cool mediation’.

Its total perspective is truly cosmic, embracing the essential features of Physics and Chemistry. There is strong emphasis on the relativity of time: “We all live in tomorrow’s yesterday . . . We all live in yesterday’s tomorrow . . . my future lies still in my past.” There is even a reference to generational relativity: “at which when did we become our parents?” 

In Buckeye Boys he makes a savage indictment of redneck racism.  Likewise, in Angels’ Allies, he attacks the wave of violence, arson and murder, rife in the United States: “. . . torrents of TV blood and horror/ entombed the country’s slumbering shame and guilt/ beneath accumulations of mud and silt.”

Even in peacetime, he has a bleak view of the brutality of big-city bustle, as in The Collared Man Ponders His Fate:  “. . . pedestrians processed like meat butchered by shadows . . .” A further comment on inner urban squalor in Slumber O Slum.

He also shows no reticence about the seedy side of relationships, especially in Damned on Demand. Hispanic jealousy and potential crimes of passion get lurid coverage in The Don Comes After The Knight. And Juanita? She Stays in Bed. This candour extends to his own offspring, as in Constructive Advice to my Daughter Sarubia – severe but realistic? This contrasts with Sweaters, Gloves, and  Rubber Tires, which warmly celebrates enduring married life, and with Paintbox, Baby, which takes a benign view of muses and poetic inspiration. 

He astutely appraises the role of conflict in the human ethos:

“I said: Patriotism’s the formula for a love that crosses the borders of the personal./ You said: And war is its necessary antidote./I said: Duty’s the polestar of civilization. You said: Warfare, its magnetic opposite!”

In Declaration Manifesto Palimpsest he examines Utopian visions. A Palimpsest involves two layers of writing, where the submerged layer remains visible, and the substance of the two layers can be fused. It begins with the rhetoric of the post-revolution Classless society, and then makes an abrupt switch to ‘We, the ruling class . . .’ and a trenchant parody of the American Constitution/Bill of Rights, which spells out brutally the principle that ‘might is right’. And then a ‘twist’: when a government becomes destructive of the needs of the people, there is a right to abolish it. There is finally a suggestion of a benign constitution. 

As the diametric opposite of these visions, Duane sometimes evinces a deep, pessimistic stoicism, as in Re: “. . . there is no/ remission, no alternative /course, no distinction, no discrimination, no/ recourse, no/ petition, just the endless repetition repetition/ of that single truth,/ fused so tightly in our sockets it can’t be ignored, can’t be/ refused.” Indeed, “tramp we must amidst our dust battalions.”

But then, in Most High, he makes a scathing indictment of an anthropomorphised God, akin to an utterly capricious, self-indulgent film director: “So God proceeded to split CinemaScopic seas from” Technicolor earth.” But then he goes one further, and reverses the principles of creation: “and then mirrored himself in the clay and carved himself from the ribs . . .”, then fell asleep afterwards! That satire is reiterated in Who Says God Is Dead? – “. . . spends His dime in His new chromium karmamachine,/ awaits His electric ice.

Interesting gloss on the expulsion from the Garden of Eden in By Leaving Paradiso.

His cynicism about the Godhead, naturally enough, extends to the Priesthood, as in Grace Means “Gifts Received at Christ’s Expense”: their attitude is thoroughly brutal and extortionate. Their protestations are the purest cant and hypocrisy: “This Assisi coos his sermon to his pigeons,/ who flock from their coops to seek out their new Gideon.”

Concomitantly with this, he can say, in Como: “poets are: Godlings! Who add fingers on the feet—/ who abuse order like cops upon the beat—/ who abandon our good grammar’s delight/ just to make what’s left sound right.” Conversely, The Day Frank Came Alive shows the funny side of a poet’s struggle for expression, his difficult responses to nudges and his complicated feelings about his role models. My Reading captures with extraordinary acuity a ‘live’ poet’s struggle for self-expression, the sense of ‘groping in the dark, and all the sub-texts of stutterings. The History of our Art, Illustrated: From Madonna and Child to Mud on a Windshield depicts the Sisyphean task of exhaustive reading of erudite tomes.  

Good News laments the tendency of the world’s journalist to edit out the awkward and difficult aspects of experience. But in Mean Time, he takes the contrary view: “news in type/ bears no promise/ save of strike/ and head lined gore . . . ink of scribe/ has no memory/ unless petrified/ in blood and stone . . .”

Headlines, and What Happens to our Myths extends this lament in the form of a verbal collage: one line in the form of a mock-headline, the following line in the form of a wry comment or sub-text, sometimes indirect. Again, homophones and punning are used to great effect: “. . . cyclops in smog will O.D. on eye drops . . . giants can’t beat the brains out of science . . .”

In Castiron Ocean, the cosmos and the elements ironically provide metaphors for man’s abuse of the ecosphere. Human beings are (probably aptly) described as Edison’s children, after the great pioneer of electrical engineering. But in An Open Letter to the Critics of The Dawn he can express naïve appreciation of nature as supreme spectacle, supreme theatre. 

One Almost Had It All is a condensed, poeticised life story, from youthful exploration and adventure to middle-aged cynicism. Dogs I Been is a charming panorama of the canine world, with all its many different breeds, and some quasi-human qualities. 

Duane’s feeling of being a ‘divided self’ is encapsulated in this poem, which I feel I must quote in full:

I AM DETERMINED 

I am composed (heroicoward)

of genes and bones, (godevil)

family and habitat, (saintyrant)

disease and chemistry. (patriotraitor)

I’m a mosaic (anxioustoic)

of history and destiny, (assiduousluggard)

passion and intellect, (youngeezer)

language and location. (sawood) 

An amalgamation (coperp)

of planning andcircumstance, (doveagle)

id, ideology, identity, (diamondull)

economics and character. (doveagle)

A confederation (conquerorefugee)

of carbon and quarks, (laughowl)

caste and opportunity, (windowall)

rule and randomness. (wolflock) 

A collage (monogamouswinger)

of gender and pigmentaion, (foground)

of luck and morality, (piusinner)

profession and appearance. (hatchetree)

Jigsaw puzzle (anchoreacher)

of luck and morality, (honesthief)

chromosomes and archetypes. (masculineunuch)

David Russell © 2020

Dave Russell on

A Lonely Man Circling the Earth – Poems by Stevie James

Leeds Survivors Press, 2017; ISBN 978-1-901045-20-8; £6.99

Stevie James, in her own words aspires to be ‘the muse of androgyny’. Several of her poems indeed have a dual aspect, a character with both male and female characteristics. Gender boundaries are explored in depth: in ‘For Julio Galán’, the painter has an androgynous quality – ‘A cigarette hangs from the man’s mouth/In your woman’s face.’ Neo-expressionist Galán certainly gives ample coverage to the erotic – including transvestism. Stevie feels that she is his model/his muse: ‘O guide me into the dress like Dietrich/seamed up between whalebone and steel corsets.’ But the process is definitely two-way, as she says to him: ‘Cast off your gown,/ Go to earth/sequestered in brown loam. In ‘You Tell Me You Love Me’ she can say ‘You tell me I am your son/Lover, daughter . . . Mother-love and father figure’. ‘And This Is Love’ leaves it open as to whether there might be a gay partner.  

Through ‘The Conquering of Gravity’ Stevie expresses her mythical persona; she conquers gravity by dressing up in a range of exotic wardrobe, and entering into an exotic dance; finally she casts off the wardrobe and dances naked. The female aspect predominates, especially in the area of clothing. It must not be forgotten that some of the most straight and macho of males like dressing up in female attire. 

‘And This Is Love’ paints an idealised picture of love, from the blended perspective of participant and outside observer: lovely ‘two-tone’ image of ‘lily white cabaret girl’ and ‘ebony black cabaret boy’. She dreams her true lover would be an artist (presumably, conversely, she dreams that a great artist will be her lover). ‘Dark at Half Past Three’ faces the pain of unrequited love – a something with cosmic dimensions: ‘the moon on her back already//she has a lonely night ahead/in her silver diamanté gown/glowering in space . . .’ Some people say they die for love: ‘the space between us/– beloved and lover –/Is all death asks.’

‘Push Me to the Edge, But Push Me No Further’ defines the limits of devotion to a lover, including self-sacrifice and martyrdom. ‘Unequal Notes’ reveals feelings of lack of correspondence and reciprocity in relation to a lover. These sentiments contrast quite sharply with her willingness to die for a composer she adores in ‘An Angel for Pyotr Ilyich’.

A most intimate evocation of a relationship with a close woman friend comes in ‘Clare in the Night (or White Stilettos)’: Clare wanted to become a nun, and made a pilgrimage to the Church of Santa Chiara (a saint akin to a moon-goddess). She is lured into the bonds of the flesh by Antonio de Barista, who seems to prove feckless and faceless. Stevie has feelings of compassion: ‘I feel too much pity/To remove your skirt/Shorter than the conscience/Of all the men who have been there.’ But she also feels she cannot fully enter the cathedral; she puts some money in the collecting box, then leaves. Does she see something of herself in Clare?

The collection has a rich cultural backdrop, including Russian literature – a ‘phantom lover’ derived from Dostoyevsky, and a touching portrayal of Marina Tsvetayeva in ‘The Dresses’: she identifies intimately with her literary heroine: ‘I join you in time/UNSTOPPABLE’. She identifies with Marina as she tries on all the outfits which can be associated with her.

In ‘High Heels’, she fantasizes about wearing a dazzling evening dress and being a pianist; very sad ‘coming to earth: her soul is ‘Opalescent as the oyster’s wealth/Upon a forgotten sea bed.’ A reference to Alvarez’s study of Sylvia Plath in ‘Mademoiselle’, a lament for a child prodigy who did not seem to realise her potential, and who perhaps committed suicide.

‘Obscured by Orchids’ is a ‘retrospective’ on a past tryst. Interesting gloss on Tennyson: ‘. . . the back yard/From which Lady-of-Shalott-like/Sunlight bounced back/To gash orange on my tomato soup.’ But then she diverges from her role-model: ‘I say to myself ‘I am half-sick of shadows’//But this lady/Belonging Patti-Smith-like to the night/Devours them/Greedily.’ Deeply touching image of making love on a bed of orchids.

There is a musical background – ‘Elliott Carter’s String Quartet No. 5’ and Pyotr Ilyich’s ‘Pathétique Symphony’. From the film and pop world, Greta Garbo and Petula Clark are described in great detail, and with great affection. There is some feeling that Stevie wants to ‘be’ them – take over, ‘clone’ their bodies and souls.

Some stark social realism in ‘Lazarus Rising’, showing the grim underside of a job interview, and unveiling the propaganda in the process: ‘Lazarus (the legendary riser from the dead) is so sweet/Until he remembers it is the next century . . . and drinks to the dregs/The lost opportunities of the 20th Century. The poet can be bitterly ironic in her address to youth, but embedded in that irony is a deep compassion: ‘Rest your shaved heads/In the lap of utility/And know one day your winding sheets/-now rolled into neat bandages –/Will, unfurling, absorb the starch/of all your bipolar expeditions’. This partly challenges the mentality of ‘outward bound’ expeditions, and makes a challenging fusion of Arctic/Antarctic pioneering with the bipolar mental condition.

Some feelings of guilt and self-doubt emerge in ‘I Have Borrowed All My Life from Thieves’. She feels she has done a great deal of ‘cultural plundering’ of the accoutrements and posturings of famous figures from the past; she has felt ‘a slave to envy’, and omnivorous in her approach: ‘I have borrowed the bed linen of the untouchables/And fashioned it into a Fortuny gown/The razor edge of fashion/cuts your pathway.’ Stevie longs to break free from these attachments; but to so is an extremely difficult process: ‘Your strand of pearls is as strong/As barbed wire coiling out the enemy.’

Stevie is quite cynical about the creative process itself, such as in ‘Creativity’, where she finds words ‘weak and timid’ and yearns for a voice ‘torn/with Heathcliffian vigour’. Comparable observations on ‘spoken word’ are expressed in ‘Poetry Reading’. These poems are complemented by Stevie’s description of her reading habits in ‘Eternal Snow’.

This poet can face the depths of pessimism with a statement like ‘Dying was easier after all,/Than the dress rehearsal of life. But she can be truly resilient with a sense of the post-mortem, the eternal. ‘Heaven’ describes angels: ‘They are preoccupied/With god, with wings,/With little missions of mercy/Or gigantic plans of redemption.//The seers and prophets were mistaken/When they thought heaven/A remote whiteness of the cloud.//It is a simple thing/Of black, white, sable and green/Sketched in the softest of pencils.’ Similarly, ‘Light’ presents a biological/cosmological perspective, from the starting point of an amoeba, with not altogether unsympathetic echoes of the Book of Genesis.

The overall feeling is of someone who has struggled successfully to find her own identity: ‘I choked on men’s fantasies far too long –/Now the song is mine, it is mine’ (‘For Marianne’). In ‘Everywoman’s Handbag’ Stevie seems to be convinced that she is the generic voice of humanity. Interesting paradox in ‘My book devoured, not a word read’, and a final focusing on an individual partner: ‘I am the silent prayer on your lips.’

Stevie’s own words on her work are highly illuminating: ‘I would wish the poems to speak for themselves, and hopefully they reflect something of my desire\ dream that everyone should be able to live wherever they choose on the spectrum from male to female and all the ranges in between. I believe gender (as opposed to sex) is far more fluid than our culture has led us to believe. My ‘voice’ veers more to the feminine, but I try, on occasion, to use a male voice – as in the poem The River. ‘For Marianne’ is about the experience of Marianne Faithfull, who as a drug addict lived behind a wall.

‘Some interpretations of certain poems express things I wasn’t even conscious of meaning. But they are perfectly valid, and I would not contradict them!’

Her final assessment of her own mortality (including the title) forms a fitting conclusion to this incisive collection: ‘I shall die in a shroud of silver screen/And when at last I come to eternity/(which waits for us all from the moment of birth/Will a genderless god gather me in and say//I am lonely, so lonely circling the earth/What is a man or woman worth?’

Congratulations to Leeds Survivors Poetry for having produced this volume; it is high time that London Survivors emulated this example!

Copies of A Lonely Man Circling the Earth are available for £6 (which includes postage & packaging) from Leeds Survivors Poetry, c/o 8 Beulah View, Leeds LS6 2LA. Please make cheques payable to Leeds Survivors Poetry.  

 

David Russell © 2017

Amputated Souls

The Psychiatric Assault on Liberty 1935-2011

Anthony James, Imprint Academic 2013 ISBN 9781845404505  £9.95

A work which pulls no punches, concentrating on the use of ECT and lobotomy, and exploring these phenomena in relation to social and political structures, and to important literary figures.

 

Amputated Souls is based on painstaking research, and the consultation of major authorities, such as Professor Colin Blakemore, whose lectures in this area were published in The Listener. According to Blakemore: ‘The present-day use of convulsive therapy stems from a revival of the 18^thcentury opinion that maniacs were best treated by a very severe physical stress, and from the entirely erroneous view that epileptics are protected from schizophrenia by their natural convulsions.’

 

As a definition of lobotomy, he quotes the words of Dr Jacob Bronowski:

 

‘We do not know exactly what the frontal lobes may do. We do not know anything very exactly . . . they make behaviour into patterns. They take the past and pattern it so that it is usable for the future. They organize behaviour. If you do an operation, as people foolishly did, twenty or thirty years ago, in which you cut off the frontal lobes from the rest of the brain, you get an extremely happy animal that you still call a man, but which is quite incapable of making any future-directed decision.’

 

Brain surgery is hazardous to the extreme: ‘. . . while there is now considerable knowledge of the function of individual parts of the brain, the way in which the brain works as a total system in all its varied aspects . . . remains almost a mystery.’ (36)

 

The practice of lobotomy originated in a reaction to an experiment on two chimpanzees by C Jacobsen and J.F. Fulton. The Portuguese neurosurgeon Egas Moniz used this ‘prompt’ to perform comparable experiments on human beings. He claimed that out of 27 operations, 7 recovered and 7 removed. As the author points out, criteria of improvement and recovery can be subjective. Dubious indeed!

 

Because of this ignorance, in the words of Peter R Breggin, ‘Instead of offering human understanding, psychiatry has fabricated biological and genetic explanations . . . to justify a massive drug assault that has taken a profound toll in terms of damaged brains and shattered lives.’

 

Anthony James writes in depth from his experience in a drug advice unit in the mid-1980s, when the abuse of medications, particularly psychiatric ones, started coming to light. He rightly points out that all psychiatric medications can be addictive, and that none of them are without side-effects. It is good to be informed of the British National Formulary (BNF) reference work which deals with these aspects, and is available to the public.

 

Anthony gives a fully detailed report of someone who had been prescribed Largactil.

 

From his own experience, he explores the issue of ‘informed consent’. He had consulted a Dr Smith about depression, and prescribed various medications which proved ineffective. He rejected Dr Smith’s suggestion that he should enter hospital as a voluntary patient to ‘find the right drug’. Anthony felt that he had a lucky escape. Dr Smith was a charismatic personality, and could easily have pressurized him into undergoing ECT. Once in hospital, his status could easily have been changed from voluntary to sectioned patient. He goes on to describe how he was prescribed Chlorpromazine for 5 years, and then gives a tragic account of a voluntary patient who was ‘gently persuaded’ to give her consent for ECT – a sickening story indeed. Christopher Price MP, who wanted to ban ECT made an incisive observation: ‘There is widespread abuse of the consent procedures. If you say that you don’t want this treatment, the doctors say, ‘Oh yes, that is part of your illness, not wanting it.’’

 

‘Therefore, as reliable evidence of incapacity to make a choice can never be found, any society that claims to uphold the freedom, integrity, and autonomy of the individual must always assume that capacity exists, just as a citizen accused of a crime is innocent until proved guilty . . . I would also suggest that the rejection of a particular form of treatment should not have to be ‘cogent’ or articulate: a simple ‘no’ should suffice.

 

We are reminded that that Ernest Hemingway had been subjected to ECT, which induced loss of memory, and possibly his suicide. A.E. Hotchner, a friend of Hemingway’s wife, recalls Hemingway’s own bitter words on the subject: ‘Well, what is the use of ruining my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, and putting me out of business? It was a brilliant cure but we lost the patient.’ This point is reinforced by the author: ‘. . . the Royal Commission that led up to the Mental Health Act was very clear on the point somebody who is mentally ill is not necessarily disabled.’ But such a person could give an impression of being disabled, and psychiatrists could take advantage of that impression, which would render the patient vulnerable.

 

Rightful prominence is given to One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey (1962). Reinforced by the powerful film version released in 1975, this work remains deeply entrenched in popular consciousness.

 

Plath’s The Bell Jar (1963) is largely autobiographical, written in the background of the execution of the Rosenbergs as Soviet spies. Plath is highly critical, through the fictional filter, of her own psychiatrist. Significantly, the real life psychiatrist ignored Sylvia’s desperate plea for her to come to London during the months leading up to the suicide.

 

Faces in the Water (1961) and An Angel at My Table (1984) by Janet Frame. Some powerful work by a writer from New Zealand, a country which has generally been respected for its enlightened and tolerant attitudes. Nobody as articulate as Janet emerged from the UK psychiatric system at that time.

 

Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen (1993). Susanna attended McLean Hospital (which Sylvia Plath had attended 10 years previously). She ‘signed away her rights’ by entering the hospital voluntarily under the false threat of a court order (akin to UK sectioning procedure). Kaysen made a radical step of obtaining her hospital files via a lawyer, and using this as the basis for an attack on the psychiatric system. Her committal was strongly related to fears of youth rebelliousness in the early 1960s.

 

In Two Minds (1967) and Family Life (1972), by David Mercer. The former is a television play, the latter a film, telling the same story ‘although the order in which incidents happen and the characters themselves differ significantly in each work.’ The theme is that of a young girl with a domineering mother who, amongst other impositions, makes her daughter have an abortion, whilst hypocritically proclaiming the criminality of abortion. ‘Is it surprising that someone who is subtly controlled by parental disapproval and by internalized guilt for years begins to feel that she is a robot controlled from a distance?’ A sympathetic psychiatrist is thwarted in his attempt to guide Kate/Janice to independence of mind.

 

The Divided Self, R D Laing (1960). In the author’s opinion ‘Laing’s later work deteriorated as he fashionably described those suffering from psychosis as sane people in an insane world, so that the methods he used in an alternative refuge for patients became increasingly dangerous and irresponsible.’

 

Anthony James unflinchingly outlines the affinities between psychiatric abuses in the ‘civilised, democratic’ Western world and the measures adopted in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Re the UK, he discusses in detail the atrocities perpetrated by Dr William Sargant, who in 1940 established a psychiatric unit where he experimented on soldiers. The Ministry of Defence ordered him to keep his findings secret. He was given a free hand to administer ECT, and some of his patients died. He was never brought to justice.

 

The 5^th chapter relates to the author’s personal experiences. 1974 was a stressful year for him, and coincided with the death of Jacob Bronowski, the expulsion of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and the resignation of Nixon. In his state of depression, he was prescribed several medications which proved ineffectual. Anthony’s psychiatrist, Dr Smith suggested that he went to hospital as a voluntary patient. James challenges the label of Bi-Polar-Affective Disorder.

 

The concluding chapter makes an astute comparison between psychiatric abuse and rape, suggesting that psychiatrists can get sadistic pleasure from their ministrations. A final plea for freedom and independence of thought: ‘If we have blind faith in the authority and expertise of any elite within society, political, medical, or technical, we lose the ability to think clearly . . . There is no clear dividing line between psychotic illness and the inner anguish that we all experience at times.’ There is a powerful reference to Dr Peter R Breggin who claims that some medical staff can get sado-erotic pleasure from administering brain operations.

 

In the words of one reviewer, James Maw ‘Anthony James uses clear language to lay out the story of the inhumane treatments that have blighted the reputation of modern psychiatry . . . This book should be read by anyone who is setting out on a career in psychiatry and has been given the standard texts to study. It will also be of invaluable help to those who were the patients, who so often feel isolated and alone in their experience.’

 

Dave Russell © 2014

Philip Ruthen on

Erin Moure

O Resplandor 

House of Anansi Press, 2010 (Canada)

Acres of Similar Rivets

There are certain certainties to the Erin Moure collection O Resplandor, presented as an experimental text that provided elements of attraction despite its lingering refusal to fully engage, and I with it. Moure, long-respected and seriously award-winning Canadian poet, translator, philosopher, politician of the body, offers text that is strangely limited by comparisons with poetry itself. 

There are subjects to be beguiled by in movements across public worlds of the confessional, philosophic, historic, mystery and myth-making, as Moure constructs sense and sensibility. If, as the publisher’s cover blurb states ‘the act of reading contains all the experiences of the body itself’, should the reader expect the meta-physical? 

No more on this trip will the wall bow down to me

kindly.

No more a beard of earth stilled in the hand’s palm

…Time comes still, when the plough is

about to cut again

…and every familiar comes wearing your cap

over the rocky trail.

(‘Trying to contact a ghost’)

The book, the image and vision it offers on contact without demanding comprehension of words transcribed in a non-native tongue, the sight and touch recalling an unconscious collective remembrance, gives an opportunity for hoped-for harmony: ‘…yet hearing your glad tongue unties a book/I write – but in cuneiform.*’ (‘Optimal Elegy : Aurora Borealis II’). The accompanying warning is however increasingly valid – there will be ‘no surcease’ from the exercise until the full settlement is achieved – to read the book in its entirety, to join consciousness with it – O Resplandor – a slogan, a siren, a text is present yet be ‘translated’, settled. A work in progress, a false start in the public sphere, a statement to challenge and be challenged – what is contained in the reading of this? Is translation a making-clear, or does it necessarily risk creating too many questions?

The versifications of these attempts are selected periodically to elicit a poetic holy grail of unification for a coherency of con-joined subject and form, and intrigue. Attempts being the operative descriptor, as too often repetition plays against the method, exposing the scaffolding as well as process; translation remains embedded in an ethical maelstrom. It is the un-poetic-prose that, in narrative performances, leaves poetry itself highlighted. The language chosen to depict the storm sways with a committed but unaware arrogance of the endless, though soon tiresome, cloning in the telling of itself: ‘Yet I can’t suppress a suspicion that these looped scribbles are the same poem’ (‘CRόNICA SIX’).

The insertion of Jacques Derrida as novelist is at first welcome, then curious – an unintended consequential lead character; a lasting impression is that Derrida would have leapt pages to soak up his own paragraphs, and O Resplandor unwittingly offers repeated springboards to this ambition, until the sequential narrative leading the poetry becomes exposed, and unexpectedly inconsequential. This false or authoritative commentator (Derrida) leaves little room for doubt, a character who craftily promotes a haughty, raised authority, and shows the mentor/student hierarchy – in this instant – unassailable: 

‘If the relation to the other presupposes an infinite separation, an infinite interruption where the face appears, what happens when another interruption comes…a rending interruption at the heart of interruption itself?’ (J.D., on Emmanuel Levinas, penned on a yellow page in a cramped and angular hand)

(‘CRόNICA SIX’)

Even if intended, even if satire of the Derridean domination of language, culture, and thus occupation, this reversal, and insertion, exists as if to highlight the shallower vision of the author compared to what’s gone, or been seen before, or foretold; and arguably undermines the premise of experiment: ‘Two can play at this game of no messages’ (‘CRόNICA SEVEN’).

Self-consciousness perceived then can’t escape, and the basis of the book’s and therefore reader’s production is forced into harder relief, assuming the book in progress has not yet, in full reading or periodic passages, conjoined its premise and its subjects. It has formed an incomplete art, detached; and the ground reaches out to pull it back to earth: 

‘Does it hurt?’ I asked.

She opens her mouth. This means thank you, or no.

(or I am in the river)

(wading fiercely)

(there is no shore)

I crossed to her between the high field and the lights of the city. 

(‘Map of Calgary’)

Facets of conflict between subject and its search for a true form to settle dispute – the translator’s art – fixing the alchemy of language, do achieve a critical fascination. Moure’s attempt is not the settlement, for the book itself is an attractive artistic book, it invites, and the covers, textual inserts and subject-shifts play, set up and demolish the expected, strike ambiguous, non-real, nonsensical attitudes, and force invitations to exclaim – are the references true? What and who is to be true? Or does Moure’s choice of sub-King James Bible-like sound and rhythmic constructs (that I responded to with growing impatience at their regular inclusion), actually tell that the sublime itself is artifice?

Unlike a Modernist smelt to then forge a new artifact, its palate screaming to the ultimate reach of a syntactic physicality, O Resplandor’s acres of similar rivets and pole-brackets deflate appreciation, dulling the senses. A reader may be content to work with the poetry; in doing so, prose and accompanying genres and linguistic stylistics may fall away:

…Without words. It had to be something they’d already talked about.

I realize the absurdity of what I’ve just said. They didn’t know each other, and could not have met. O. had simply sent it to me, and made some kind of mistake in the name. But it perturbs me so much I can’t swallow my coffee.

(‘CRόNICA SEVEN’)

A Pirandello-esque association with ‘Six characters in search of an author’ springs into step, characters that for Moure include Paul Celan, who is asked to carry much weight of reference. Though as quickly, like a ritual joke that can’t be avoided or be explained to the uninitiated, the over-doubling palls the exiting, the surprise happening where a burst of powerful purer poetry explodes above the surface, then subsides with a longing to leap away. Before a further sinking, a lift, poetic sequencing does provide both fuse and motion, carrying and bearing-up the weary traveler: 

Our single shipwreck, transparent

one floor below us silica

rose wrenching the shoulder light

ash those nights

kissed her incestuous

blaze announce

flood of light creasing the window 

(‘Tropic’)

If poetry is a manifestation of a sublime communication, if not the settlement itself, does Moure’s attempt at transforming the translators’ arts into a new communication through O Resplandor consider this, offering as it does combinations between the poetic and a prosaic, prose-driven depiction of the author’s deliberations? I am unconvinced it does. 

Philip Ruthen © 2012; 2013

This review was first commissioned, and published in 2012 by Eyewear, Todd Swift’s blogzine and independent press http://toddswift.blogspot.co.uk/ to which Philip Ruthen sends his thanks and respect.

Philip Ruthen on

Out Is The Word

An anthology of creative writing by members of The Word Is Out writing workshop

Founded at the Social Inclusion Hope and Recovery Project, (SHARP) a statutory service in Lambeth, part of the South London and Maudsley (SLaM). Hospital Foundation Trust 

Edited by Anne Cooper

Funded by a Guys and St. Thomas Charitable fund and was founded 

Hardcover, SHARP 2012

ISBN 978-1-4675-2791-0 Pages: 70 Price: £7.50

It’s no mean feat to publish a vibrant creative writing anthology which also promotes the method and sources of its production – here co-production with the South London and Maudsley Social Inclusion Hope and Recovery Project team (SHARP) (1) – whilst retaining the dignity and integrity of the selected literary works. The Word Is Out workshop writers’ collection has certain advantages that overcome any sense of lingering doubts. The blend of lyrics, short stories and poetry that highlight creativity, that allow the circumstances that brought them together to stroll out of shot, adds to the attraction of this book. (2)

The look, feel and accessibility of Out Is The Word helps merge method with instinctive art, and foregrounds a theme ‘…what a disguise of living a life is’ (Tom Collins, p25). Whether it’s the hardcover version I’m referring to here, or the multi-platform e-book version via Smashwords (a welcome choice and addition to wide distribution and access possibilities), the intention to reach out with the word and its expression from life is to be applauded. With James Ferndale’s  Lambeth cover photo complete with red bus and an Autumn that could be Spring and vice-versa, people in puzzled poses admiring or in awe of something just out of view, in song, story and poetry, the writers show ’…recovery is always about moving over new ground’ (Ben Cooper, p20). 

There are ‘break sideways’ characters dredging for the soul, bring it into light, setting aside the weight of travel for a while to ensure safe passage. They shake off the silt and ‘sideways-ness’ of a mental health system that for much of recent history had become lost in its own insights and method, creating an impersonal ‘purposeless’ regularity.  

In selecting an epigraph from R.D. Laing (3) the creative works have found close affinity to Laing’s rare insight, and themselves.  This epigraph was an inspired choice – the new and the real leaving behind utter despair, holding on to the elemental. The authors’ often-shared experience from mental distress, explicit or otherwise, informs themes of holding fast into the new, a carrying forward of self-esteem from key grounding experiences so that mindfulness memory/possibility can become alive again. The collective unconscious memories of childhood, both of comfort, and opportunity, chime regularly through the pages where: ‘…The mind is a marketplace./…You are there with your own/ business to do and/there is little time./’ (Miriam Valencia, p70).

There is a creative honesty carried through this collection, but no illusions; this synthesis of past with present can be cruel on the individual where the creative writing makes visible what cannot be forgotten, ‘…creativity unleashed by this act was a factor in her breakdown as well as her salvation’ (Helen George, p31); undeterred, the book’s vital message, if it should have one, is where creativity can flourish, then so can the person, and their community. There is something new being expressed that, out of method and language, is dedicated, has belief, has a glow of release.  

And – ‘Recovery’? I’d go further than senior OT lead development officer  Anna Croucher’s Introduction which illuminates the confusion persisting within services on how to implement the ‘buzzword’ of ‘recovery’ into ‘practice’. From a service user/survivor perspective, re-stating a view that the colonisation of recovery by e.g. mental health NHS Trusts has led to such diffusions, is still an important perspective to include in such debates. The anthology could be viewed as emerging into a mediating role. 

The book displays writing as instinct; if it ever was directed as ‘therapy’, this aspect falls away or becomes a by-product in Out Is The Word, where self-esteem and creativity – word art, or word design (as poet, editor and critic David Morley might describe it) re-takes lost ground. I am still surprised it has taken so long to realise the merits of genuine co-production, ‘…collaboratively working with people as peers, handing over control and responsibility, encouraging a different point of view..’. (Introduction, Croucher). 

It’s a method that advances people, rather than slows or stalls system-wide progression, the latter being a view I sense often thought but un-said in public services. Out Is The Word – the nice reversal of the group’s title echoing the reversal in roles, position, creative and working culture: ‘…Every person to his own/Just look up at us/Never a dull moment, never shut up!/…’ (Ruby Govinden, p33).

Anne Cooper and Hanne Lee’s Editorial Note is more diplomatic about recovery than my comment, and vastly important (too modestly titled as an ‘editorial note’) as one of the few, though growing number of ‘service user/mental health system survivor ‘guides not tucked away in reports or training presentations, about the life and times of creative co-production that’s widely accessible to a general reader. The book’s Introduction and steering group Editorial alongside the diverse authors’ works themselves provide another timely call to continue shifting the health and wellbeing services’ cultures and strategies with assistance of confident allies, as are SHARP.

This call will be helped when the web address to access copies and workshop news is replaced with the correct one on the printed book; look for www.thewordisoutwriting.co.uk rather than www.thewordisout.com, or your spiritual surprises may come packaged in a different wrapper!

Croucher‘s plea that the anthology, and workshops should live on beyond the funding is one that’s likely to be heard.

I’ve deliberately chosen not to highlight many individual anthology pieces, wanting to present and review the anthology as an interlinked artefact – with the hope, and expectation, the next reader will discover for themselves something new. 

Phil Ruthen © 2013 

Review first commissioned by the National Survivor User Network (NSUN).

The views expressed in this review are the personal views of the author, and are not intended in any way to represent any organisation’s or network opinions.

Phil Ruthen’s book reviews, poetry, short stories and articles are widely published in the UK and abroad. His most recent poetry collection is Apple Eye Feat (Waterloo Press, Hove, 2012), details at www.waterloopresshove.co.uk and his short story collection Feint Ruled Lines was first published as a Kindle E-book. Phil has also been a Trustee, and Chair of national literature development charity Survivors’ Poetry www.survivorspoetry.org 

The Word Is Out 

Enquiries and further information:

info@thewordisoutwriting.co.uk

Where to find The Word is out writing online:

Website http://www.thewordisoutwriting.co.uk

Anthology available via Smashwords e-book platforms:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/257707

ISBN: 978 130 114 624  Price: $2.50

(1) The Word is out was funded by a Guys and St. Thomas Charitable fund and was founded at the Social Inclusion Hope and Recovery Project, (SHARP) a statutory service in London Borough of Lambeth, part of the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM).

(2) The Word Is Out is a creative writing project delivered by and for people who use mental health services. Everything about The Word is Out, including the name, promotional materials and logo, the choice of workshops and venues were the decision of a group, made up predominantly of ‘service users’. The majority of workshop facilitators are ‘service users’.

(3) ‘What is called a poem is compounded perhaps of communication, invention, fecundation, discovery, production, creation… There is something new under the sun; being has emerged from non-being; a spring has bubbled out of a rock’ – R.D. Laing.

Dave Russell

Tomas Tranströmer – New Collected Poems

Trs Robin Fulton  Bloodaxe Books 2011 – ISBN 978-1-85224-413-2 £12

In  Seamus Heaney’s words: ‘In its delicate hovering between the responsibilities of the social world and the invitations of a world of possibly numinous reality, Tomas Tranströmer’s poetry permits us to be happily certain of our own uncertainties.’

From the start, I found a feeling of exploration – going into uncharted territory equipped with the latest technology. His frame of reference is apparent in the opener, Prelude – ‘Waking up is a parachute jump from dreams’. The natural and the man-made are fused in his imagery – ‘the sun’s turbine’. There is also the fusion of ancient and contemporary in ‘. . . The bronze-age trumpet’s/outlawed note/hovers above the bottomless depths.’ Also mortal life and post-mortem ‘the crash through death’s turbulence’. In Autumnal Archipelago there is a sense of the vast expanses of Scandinavia – animal and vegetable kingdoms fused in the comparison of an oak tree to a petrified elk. Five Stanzas to Thoreau celebrates organic growth. The dedication obviously relates to Thoreau’s book Walden, which celebrates living in a natural environment.

Gogol was inspired by that heart-rending story The Overcoat, telling of someone who was robbed of a new overcoat in the depth of the Russian winter, and subsequently perished from pneumonia. Marvellous sense of the elements: ‘St Petersburg on the same latitude of annihilation’. The elementally human is absorbed into the elemental environment: ‘. . . the man who before was surrounded by the herds of laughter/but these have long since taken themselves to tracts far above the tree-line.’  

Sailor’s Yarn celebrates the near-arctic environment ‘. . . where day lives in a mine both day and night. I like the fusion of biological and elemental in ‘waves like pale/lynxes seeking hold in the beach gravel. Strophe and Counter-Strophe – a panoramic view of sea-travel – the outermost circle, from the arctic to the Congo. Agitated Meditation – reference to a windmill – ‘The grey shark belly is in your weak lamp’. The Stones – literally, one throws flat stones on water to see if they will bounce; metaphorically, one throws stones into the chasms of time. Then, at a deeper metaphorical level, they are metamorphosed into birds – flying ‘until they’ve reached the furthest plateau/along the frontiers of being’. Interesting idea of the air of the past being thinner than that of the present, and of being turned again to stone – ‘with nowhere to fall to/except ourselves’: are we both stone and water.  Context: metaphor transforms the vision of the physical universe: ‘The sky has run through its fibres down in the earth’. Similarly in Morning Approach – ‘The world is still sleeping like a/multicoloured stone in the water’. The phrase ‘Days – like Aztec hieroglyphs’ indicated the predominance of archaeology in his world vision. There is Peace in the Surging Prow – incredibly condensed imagery: ‘this earth/plunges ahead . . . an air current smacks/out of hiding . . .’ The overtly animate is included with references to migratory birds (with a ‘secret helm’) and to insects –compared to a quasi musical phenomenon: ‘Out of the winter gloom/a tremolo rises//from hidden instruments.’ Midnight’s Turning Point – a powerful verbal painting: a microscopic, highly observant ant meditates on a gigantic natural environment. He is described here as riding the oceans on horseback, without his steed’s fee getting wet. He jumps into the sea, ‘a jumping-sheet the compass points hold tight’

Song explores the metaphysical dimensions of a shipwreck. The central ‘character’ Vainamoinen is a god-cum-folk hero central to Finnish mythology, celebrated in the national epic Kalevala. Here is an extraordinary degree of metaphorical transference: ‘gulls/dressed in canvas from the sails of foundered ships/but stained by vapours from forbidden shores’ the artificial impinges on the natural; the prohibition could be man-induced or elemental. ‘A phosphorescent pathway to the suin’. A massed flight of gulls is a leitmotif. Vainamoinen has a jealous double, a rival in love. I can find a reference to a rival, Joukahainen. I wonder how much Tranströmer has modified the mythology (which, of course, is his right). The herring gull becomes ‘a harpoon with a velvet back; there is a timesweep/irruption of contemporaneity with the mention of a diesel engine. . The sea becomes ‘the mirror-world of calms where the birds/were magnified. The figure ‘the filled white sails of distant suns’ reiterates, and modifies ‘the sails of foundered ships’.Elegy is convoluted. ‘There’s a crossroads in a moment’ A tree encapsulates vast spaces and time-spans; vanished cities are hidden in its folds. The third strophe refers to someone disinterred and brought to life; there is an armoured skull, relic of a past conflict, then the crackle of rifles to indicate a contingent conflict; past and present are straddled: ‘. . . the past expands in its collapse/and darker than the heart’s meteorite . . . the albatross aged to a cloud/in time’s jaws’ ‘An absence of spirit makes the writing greedy’ – is this a plea for minimalist expressiveness?. There is then a graphic description of a vulnerable ship, its bows shreddedlike rigging – ‘the cabin’s smashed beneath the torrent’s hooves’ (the ocean transformed into a trampling steed) – yet this turmoil is a component of equilibrium – ‘within us, balanced like a gyroscope, is joy.’ The bows of the ship are transformed into violin bows, and we see ‘the water tundra mirroring itself’. ‘Music’s voiceless half’ excellent: silence is a vital punctuator of any musical form – ‘. . . like the scent of resin round lightning-damaged spruce’ the resin of a violin bow has a vital link to its organic source – ‘. . . runs off to where the Bach trumpet points’ indeed. This remote shore is a place of self-discovery, where one can leave ones ‘self-disguise’ behind.

Epilogue encapsulates the author’s feeling about his country and its culture.  ‘Sweden is a beached/unrigged ship. The sea is ‘distracted, as if listening to something else’. It touches on parallel universes and alternative reality: ‘And beneath the star more and more develops/of the other, hidden landscape, that which lives/the life of contours on the night’s X-ray.’ The contradiction of static and kinetic are forced into synthesis: ‘The houses trapped in a dance of immobility, the din like that of dreams.’ In parallel fashion, literal is fused with metaphorical – ‘like clouds of the past that go/scudding in their souls’. There is then a tempestuous thunderstorm, compared to a military parade with raucous bagpipes – ‘A forest on the march!’ The dead accompany the living in the greater journey of life. There is a situation of cosmic flux: ‘And the world is always taking down its tent/anew . .  the wind hurls earth forward . . . a boulder rolls away in the halls of space.’ Great image of seasonal rotation in ‘the year kicks off its boots’. History and theology meld: ‘God’s spirit, like the Nile: flooding/and sinking in a rhythm calculated/in texts from many epochs.’ This suggests a near-tangible God; but then the reader is reminded ‘But he is also the immutable’.

Section II: Secrets on the Way

Solitary Swedish Houses – ‘A mix-max of black spruce and smoking moonbeams’ – a blend of a house’s structural materials and the natural forces which makes it visible. The smoke could come from mist and/or a domestic fire. Smoke/mist is counterpointed with steam from a recently-built laundry, answering the older house. Later on – ‘Perpetual smoke – they’re burning/the forest’s secret papers. Fauna are present’ literally in the form of an owl and a butterfly, metaphorically in the form of ‘the waterfall’s white oxen; flora in the form of a wood desecrated by bark-drillers. Good transferred epithet with ‘flaxen-haired rain’. Marvellous sense of foreboding with ‘God’s energy/coiled up in the dark’. The Man who Awoke with Singing over the Roofs: a city rises from its slumbers. ‘The dream . . . turns transparent: the dreamer is ‘almost in space’. In Weather Pictures, the sea has a ‘dorsal fin of mirages’, while in The Four Temperaments ‘The probing eye turns the sun’s rays into police batons’; dense, cross-referenced multiple metaphor in ‘A man like an uprooted tree with croaking foliage’; a sense of eternity, of perpetuity: ‘The road never comes to an end . . . All the rolling wheels that contradict death’. With Caprichos, it would have been useful to have a footnote: ‘Capricho’ is Spanish for caprice; Huelva is a city in Andalusia, Spain. Audio/visual blurring with ‘the train-whistle’s flurrying/silver-white bats’. I like the concept of ‘weighs/the last daylight on the balance of her eyes’ and that of a new constellation called ‘The Horse’ having thrown its rider. Siesta could possibly refer to the same city: lovely soporific feeling in ’The city without weight in the midday hours’ and then counterpointed with ‘Sleep where the mill-wheel turns like thunder’. Sleepers are compared with weights in a tyrant’s clock, and there is a disturbing conclusion with ‘locked-in eternity’s pounding fists’. Izmir at Three O’Clock – fleeting vision of beggars in a Turkish city. Secrets on the Way – the most opaque/enigmatic poem so far: daylight suffused a man’s dream without awakening him; darkness struck the face of a man walking in the strident sun, then became all-pervasive. The third person was metamorphosed into the first person of the narrator: ‘I stood in a room that contained every moment’ (all of time encapsulated in one confined space) . . . a butterfly museum. In Tracks, a train halting on its route induces a truly cosmic perspective: a comparison is made by someone in a deep sleep, and then with a severe illness (involving a coma?): ‘everything his days were becomes a few flickering points, a swarm,/cold and tiny at the horizon’. Kyrie also explores the meditative potential of darkness – ‘my life opened its eyes in the dark’, but that very opening makes the poet identify a crows struggling blindly towards a miracle. With A Man from Benin, I was immediately reminded of Prince Henry the Navigator, who pioneered Portuguese exploration round the coast of Africa, and as far as India. There are a few words of explanation in the subtitle; I would welcome more of these throughout the collection. Further exploration of the theme of darkness – darkness both benign and malign: ‘my shadow pounded against the drumskin of hopelessness’. But then the pain passed and a stranger appeared: ‘He was the image of three peoples . . . he was the ambassador./Interrupted in the middle of a speech/which the silence continues/even more forcibly. Balakirev’s Dream – very novel to compare a piano to a spider, though there is some affinity between the wires of a piano and the strands of a spider’s web. ‘Balakirev dozed off during the music’; there is then he goes on board a battleship (somewhat evocative, to me, of Battleship Potemkin). After an Attack is ambiguous; there is a suggestion of a physical assault, but then the adjective ‘sick’ and the noun ‘invalid’ suggest an ‘attack’ of an illness. The boy convalesces somewhere in a tranquil setting; a mysterious figure appears; they seem to observe each other; some emotional tension builds up: ‘Every grain’ (of the cornfield) is there to arouse him.’ The figure seems to disappear: ‘no-one notices’. The Journey’s Formulae is a traveller’s detached, and quite unsentimental observation of the minutiae of peasant life in the Balkans. He is also highly observant of his writer’s/documenter’s role; he may be squeezing in notes under the pressure of a demanding schedule: ‘My wristwatch/gleams obstinately with time’s imprisoned insect’. He is sensitive to the multi-facettedness of the writer’s role: ‘But the writer is halfway into his image, there/he travels, at the same time eagle and mole’.   

Section III – The Half-Finished Heaven

The Couple portrays a possible clandestine tryst. The environment which surrounds the couple seems to become animate: ‘The hotel walls rise into the black sky . . . the town has pulled closer . . . The houses have approached./They stand up close in a throng.’ Art and emotion are fused: ‘. . . their most secret thoughts meet as when/two colours flow into each other/on the wet paper of a schoolboy’s painting.’ A tree assumes animate life in The Tree and the Sky; great reverie notion of snowflakes blossoming in (outer) space. Presumably they will attain enormous size when freed from earthly gravity. Face to Face – confrontation with nature: ‘the earth and I sprang towards each other.’ Ringing – in awe of nature: ‘The churchyard and the schoolyard met and widened into each other/like two streams in the sea’ Metaphorically, artifice controls nature: ‘The ringing of the churchbells rose to the four winds borne by/the gentle leverage of gliders.’ Through the Wood – against the atmosphere of a foetid swamp, a birch tree ‘. . . moulders there/in an upright position like a dogma’. November with Nuances of Noble Fur – highly painterly description of a rural landscape, the grey sky accentuating the colours below it. More animate imagery:’Misty spaces deep in the woods/chiming softly against each other. The conclusion is excellent but flawed: ‘Inspiration that lives secluded/and flees among the trees like Nils Dacke.’ I had to look up Nils Dacke’s details, to discover that he was a peasant revolutionary, crucial figure in Swedish history. A footnote please for the sake of the (lazy?) reader! The Journey marks an unusual focusing on the urban environment, travelling by underground. The reference to ‘stations under sea level’ suggests the Channel Tunnel, or perhaps the dyke area of the Netherlands. C Major relates music to a romantic involvement. The tonic note of C is elevated into a universal reference point. Noon Thaw – an apocalyptic vision of a dramatic transformation of the ecosphere: ‘a kilo weighed just 700 grammes’; some sense of a populace freed from the impact of a natural disaster (eg earthquake or Tsunami?) When We Saw the Islands Again – a boat trip. Espresso – the universal mind-prop: ‘Precious distillations/filled with the same strength as Yes and No’. The Palace – a surreal visit to a precious art collection, which marks a vague frontier between the animate and the inanimate: ‘. . . pictures throng lifelessly . . . struggling figures/in a deaf and dumb world on the other side.’ The definitions of the observer’s consciousness are challenged: Something darkly/set itself at our senses’ five/thresholds without stepping over them.’ In the hall is a sculpture of a horse – ‘An image of power itself/abandoned when the princes left.’ The horse becomes animate, and asserts its independent identity: ‘The emptiness that rode me I have thrown.’

Syros describes ‘left over cargo steamers’, remaining supremely impressive in spite (or perhaps because) of being abandoned: ‘Like toys from our childhood which have grown to giants/and accuse us/of what we never became.’ In the Nile Delta – some acknowledgement of famine conditions – ‘all in want’. The tourist couple go to sleep; the man has a dream in which someone said ‘There is one who can see all without hating’. Ones knowledge of wrong should engender compassion. Lament – the writer’s dilemma: ‘Too much that can neither be written nor kept silent.’ Allegro – Self-healing by playing music. The music, especially that of Haydn, has a calming effect, and a resilience concomitant with its apparent fragility: ‘The music is a glass house on the slope/where the stones fly, the stones roll.//And the stones roll right through/but each pane stays whole.’ The Half-Finished Heaven – artistic endeavour from a cosmic perspective: ‘And our paintings see daylight,/our red beasts of the ice-age studios.’ He relates the individual to the mass of humanity: ‘Each man is a half-open door/leading to a room for everyone.’ Nocturne – the poet is driving at night; the houses he passes become animate – 

‘they’re awake, want to drink . . . it’s now/they clothe themselves in life.’ Some of the sleeping inhabitants ‘have drawn features/as if training hard for eternity’. Somnolence is related to artistic endeavour: ‘I lie down to sleep, I see strange pictures/and signs scribbling themselves behind my eyelids/on the wall of the dark. Into the slit between wakefulness and dream/a large letter tries to push itself in vain.’ A Winter Night – a storm is personified, and then conceptualised – as a text. It is observed by a child, whose eyes are ‘halfway towards speech’. A Caravan travels simultaneously with the storm: ‘the house feels its own constellation of nails/holding the walls together. Final foreboding: ‘We dread/that the storm will blow us empty.’

Section IV – Bells and Tracks – Portrait with Commentary: the subject of the portrait is an interesting anomaly: ‘He always inspired trust. Which is why/people would hesitate to come near him . . . His father earned money like dew/But no one felt secure there at home.’ The poet feels some affinity with the portrait subject. His own identity was extremely elusive to him. When he came face to face with ME, he lost the connection; a hole emerged (black one?) through which he fell. Lisbon: that city has two prisons, one for petty criminals, one for political prisoners. I do not understand the switch to 6 years later at the end of the poem. From an African Diary – statement of cultural difference: ‘It’s a hard passage between 2 ways of life.’ Crests – surreal visuals ‘. . . high blocks as delicate as porcelain . . . And in the evening I lie like a ship/with lights out, just at the right distance/from reality . . .’ Hommages – the anti-poetic wall. Some erudite references: I know that Eluard was a leading surrealist, but his presing a button to open a wall is obscure to me. Archilochos was a Greek poet from the island of Paros in the Archaic period (7^th Century B.C.) Ungaretti was an Italian Modernist poet, Shiki could refer to one of several organisations Japan, while Bjorling was a Swedish opera singer. Again a case for footnotes. This, to me is a highly unsatisfactory poem. I do not see any evocative links between is ‘rural ramble’ content and those highly significant personages referred to. Winter’s Formulae – when does dream become reality, and vice versa? ‘I fell asleep under my bed/and woke up under the keel’ (transported to the sub-aquatic realm?) . . . I fell asleep among the swallows/and woke up under the keel. He refers to ‘life’s clean-picked bones’ – figuratively picked clean during sleep. In stanza 2 a switch to a bus journey – round nowhere other than here’. And that which was ‘I’/is only a word/in the December dark’s mouth.’ The December dark acquires a personality, with power of speech. There are illuminated pavilions in the background. Starling image of ‘A hidden tuning fork/in the great cold’ – is this struck by the December dark? Oak trees are described as giant bottles. In the last stanza there is a reiteration of the aquatic theme: the bus ‘glimmers like a ship . . . the road is a narrow deep dead canal.’ But the bus is in some sense the essence, the spirit of life: ‘If it stopped and quenched the lights/the world would be deleted.’ Morning Birds has the aura of an abstract movie – a casual traveller makes fleeting observations of others’ situations. Ones mind can range freely on what may be going on with the man who buts the paper at the station and the one complaining of having been slandered at the office. The poetic ‘canvas’ is choc-a-bloc with objects and impressions of incidents. The final stanza describes the artistic expression assuming an identity of its own, superseding the personality of the writer. In a way, it crystallises Tranströmer’s relation to his craft: ‘Fantastic to feel how my poem grows/while I myself shrink./It grows, it takes my place./It pushes me aside./It throws me out of the next./The poem is ready.’ About History – again, metaphorical transference between the cosmic and the artificial: ‘The sun which also whispers in a microphone under the covering of ice. It gurgles and froths . . . Conferences like flying islands about to crash.’ More erudition: ‘Goethe travelled in Africa in ’26 disguised as Gide. OK; I have heard of Goethe’s Italienische Reise, and of Gide’s Les Faux Monnayeurs. Goethe’s expedition was partly an aesthete’s pilgrimage, concentrating on art and architecture, with some investigation of the botany and zoology of the area. I see that Gide made a visit to French Africa, and concentrated on the lot of the local people; his Voyage au Congo indicts the exploitative attitudes of the French Colonial authorities, where slave labour was effectively condoned. Tranströmer makes a substantial point here, counterpointing the viewpoint of the art connoisseur and natural scientist with that of the socially aware person. But I feel that the connection could only be made to someone highly erudite; the general reader should be given a prompt. The image of Dreyfus could also be put in context. Indeed he states that ‘Radical and Reactionary live together as an unhappy marriage,/moulded by one another, dependent on one another . . . But we who are their children must break loose.’ He realises that he, as a writer, must break out of those categories: ‘But we who are their children must break loose./Every problem cries in its own language. Go like a bloodhound where the truth has trampled.’ Excellent concluding image of an abandoned newspaper, which freezes/documents facts, but is on its way back to its source as organic matter, ‘on the way to being united with the earth’. And a very sharp perception of the influence of experience on personality: ‘Just as a memory is slowly transmuted into your own self.’

Alone – a car accident separates the poet from ‘My name, my girls, my job . . . I was anonymous/like a boy in a playground surrounded by enemies’. Starling image of ‘a transparent terror that floated like egg white’ and seconds (abstract quantities) growing ‘as big a hospital buildings’. Then ‘the car broke free (from the congestion/from the car-pack). He sits back relaxed with his seat belt and observes someone coming to look at him. In the second part, he is a pedestrian, and contrasts his solitude with ‘people who are born, and live, and die/in a perpetual crowd’. The gregarious life seems to demand some sort of insensitivity: ‘a special expression must develop./Face coated with clay. I remain curious about ‘Everyone is queuing at everyone’s door’. On the Outskirts of Work – I can certainly imagine much of the Swedish landscape ‘penetrated only/by the thin civilisation of the telephone wires’. ‘The moon of leisure circles the planet work’. After Someone’s Death – a bereavement assumes cosmic dimensions: ‘a shock/which left behind a long pale glimmering comet’s tail.’ A statement of mutability: ‘last year’s leaves . . . are like pages torn from old telephone directories –/the subscribers’ names are eaten up by the cold.’ The decay of bodies is echoed in the decay of printed matter. Oklahoma – a tourist gets a strange response from a local shopkeeper (I think), who shows him some tomahawks. There follows a highly cryptic comment from a boy (she shopkeeper’s son?): ‘I know I have a prejudice,/I don’t want to be left with it sir./What do you think of us?’ This feels to me like a coded reference to WASP guilt about the treatment of Native Americans. Summer Plain – an airliner unloads passengers from colder climes. Downpour over the Interior: this seems to depict a tropical rainstorm in the Congo. Brief historical allusion to tribal wars. The leaden, overcast sky lightens, and then the thunder strikes with full force. After it is spent, there is a child’s cry from the distance: A long hoarse trumpet from the iron age./Perhaps from inside himself.’ This is a fused panorama of geographical space, historical time, and shared root memories embedded in the consciousness of an individual. Under Pressure gives some sense of an impending Tsunami – again using artifice for metaphor: ‘The blue sky’s engine drone is deafening./We’re living here on a shuddering work-site . . . Society’s dark hull drifts further and further away.’ Open and Closed Spaces – ‘A man feels the world with his work like a glove.’ The routines of work act as a filter and shield against the raw sensations of the world. But the gloves assume gigantic proportions, which ‘black out’ the entire house. There is a cry for ‘amnesty’. Then there is a vision of a boy flying his ‘wild dream of the future’ like a kite, with a ‘blue endless carpet of pine forest’ in the background. These are literally unconnected images. The connecting threads to me, are the blacked out house being merged into an indefinite but uniform landscape, blending into the night sky, and the blue pine trees having a place in the colour spectrum alongside the black night sky. Another painting poem!

An Artist in the North – potted simulated autobiography of Edvard Grieg, with its gregarious aspects such as leading an orchestra, and his life of artistic solitude: ‘I have brought myself up here to be shut in silence.’ But the silence, and the opaqueness of the surroundings seem analogous to blockages in his creative inspiration: ‘but sometimes a little hatch opens/and a strangely seeping light direct from trolldom’ – presumably facilitating his composition. The elemental hammer blows in the mountain parallel the hammering of the piano keys and the beating of his heart – a triple resonance. The creative flow is about to begin; he can predict the composition of his four hymns. The conclusion ‘we the Bones of the Dead/fight to become living.’ In one sense, the ivories of the piano keyboard are the Bones of the Dead (elephants), and the composer’s struggles, in another sense, restore them to organic life. In the Open – wild nature again, minimally punctuated by a discarded bottle and a rusty implement. Section 2 suggests the poet’s feeling of alienation from the rest of humanity: ‘With you, evil and good really have faces. With us, it’s mostly a struggle between roots, ciphers and shades of light. He proceeds: ‘Those who run death’s errands don’t avoid the daylight./They rule from glass storeys.’ He seems to have some qualms about lacking the panoramic perspective of the death-dealers. 3 refers to an aircraft casting a shadow in the form of a cross. A man on the ground is briefly covered by the cross of the shadow – metaphorically crucified. Then a very astute observation of the other kind of cross – in a church: ‘Sometimes it’s like a snapshot/of something in violent movement.’ A significant shift in emphasis from literal reality here: the cross of the crucifixion was at one remove from violent movement; it was transported and erected to perpetrate a violent act. There could be some implicit malice in the aircraft’s flight, echoing the crucifixion. Slow Music suggests the contemplation of a deserted church. The empty building is suffused with sunlight. The poet observes stones on the water’s edge. 

Section V – Seeing in the Dark

The Name – another nocturnal car journey; this time he falls asleep in his vehicle. He awakens, initially not knowing where or who he is. Then he comes to. The experience was a brief nightmare: ‘the fifteen second struggle in the hell of oblivion’. A Few Minutes refers to the ‘root system’, which seems to embrace tree roots, telegraph wires and the like. A sense of disorientation: ‘It feels as if my five senses were linked to another creature’, Breathing Space July – three men surveying the scenery. One discordant note: the first of them ‘sits in an ejector seat that releases in slow motion.’ By the River – the stream is depicted as something with elemental power ‘. . . that flowed and flowed and pulled with it the willing and the unwilling. The second stanza seems to refer to a lemming-type creature – I don’t understand the reference to ‘stuck together eyes’. In the background of the river’s flow, there is a significant political broadcast, of the meeting in 1967 between Aleksei Kosygin, Soviet Foreign Minister and Abba Eban, Israeli Diplomat, in an attempt to sustain peace between Israel and the Arab states – at the time of the Six-Day War. This fact is firmly implanted in my memory, but might easily be lost on a younger reader – background essential! The political tension is somehow echoed in the movements of the river: ‘some logs/shoot right out like torpedoes.’ There could be a parallel  between the log jams and the impasses of protracted diplomatic discussions. Outskirts – a ‘no man’s land’ building site. Animation imagery again: ‘The high cranes on the horizon want to take the great leap but the/clocks don’t want to.//Cement pipes, scattered around, lick up the light with dry tongues.’ We are faced with a phenomenon of cosmic proportions:’The stones throw their shadows abruptly like objects on the surface of the moon.’ Proliferation too: ‘And these places just multiply’.

Traffic – a heavy truck with trailer is compared to a dragonfly larva; there is an obvious affinity in terms of ponderousness. More nocturnal driving (this is a leitmotiv for Tranströmer). He refers to the chestnut trees, ‘gloomy as if they prepared a blossoming of iron gloves/instead of white clusters’ –

So dire is the situation that the trees negate their own organic identity. Nature prevails: ‘the buildings sink two millimetres/each year, the ground is eating them slowly . . . the seeds try to live in the asphalt’ Night Duty – shift from automobile driver to a piece of ballast in a ship. Could the ship be transporting refugees? Oppression seems to be a contingent factor: ‘The language marches in step with the executioners./Therefore we must get a new language.’ 3 – switch to dry land: ‘The valley is full of crawling axe-handles’ – relics of past conflicts. The locale seems to be an excavation site. The Open Window – nice dreamy surrealism: an electric razor grows into a helicopter. The poet gets into the helicopter to witness the world going haywire: ‘Cellars were pulled up by the roots/came through the air.’ ‘The printing presses crawled’ suggests some hiatus in the processes of communication. Preludes – a vision of upheaval, crumbling visions, the presence of a ghoulish countenance. The future: an army of empty houses/picking its way forward in the sleet.’ 2 – ‘Two truths draw nearer each other. One comes from inside, one comes/from outside/and where they meet we have a chance to see ourselves.’ 3 – a revelatory flat clearance: ‘The truth needs no furniture . . . The empty flat is a large telescope aimed at the sky.’ Upright – his capture, and subsequent release, of a hen evokes sensations of aged family heirlooms. He then contrasts the open world to the taboo-ridden henhouse, after which he switches (again) to his journeys in Africa, the Chari is a river in Central Africa; most of the Sara tribe reside in Chad. The local people as him out in a canoe. I found this poem somewhat disjointed; more reader-friendly thematic connections would have been in order. The Bookcase – back to the theme of family heirlooms. But then some profound reflections on the bookcase’s contents: ‘The dark volumes . . . are like Algerians who stood at the Friedrichstrasse checkpoint and waited for the Volkspolizei to examine their passports. In there lies an old despair . . . they are so thick because they have collected so many stamps through the centuries. The antique volumes evoke the time in which they were printed (including portraits of long-dead men), and one is also reminded that, not infrequently, precious tomes are treated as clutter and lumber. It has an eerie presence: ‘the gleaming membrane on a dark river which the room must see itself in’. It has a totally riveting power. 

Section VI – Paths

To Friends Behind a Frontier – seems to refer to writing to someone in a dictatorial regime where letters are censored. This is obviously an extremely inhibiting factor ‘. . . what I couldn’t write/swelled and swelled like an old-fashioned airship . . .’ The two friends may be able to communicate directly in an ideal state, 200 years from the writing of the poem. From the Thaw of 1966 – almost a double haiku. Sketch in October – mushrooms as fingers of someone buried underground – interesting! Further in: animated artifice: ‘The traffic . . . is a sluggish dragon glittering./I am one of the dragon’s scales. When the sun is in the middle of the windscreen, the poet undergoes a metamorphosis: ‘I am transparent/and writing becomes visible/inside me/words in invisible ink/which appear/when the paper is held to the fire! He is then determined to take a walk in the forest, and find an all-transforming magical precious stone. The Outpost – the poet envisages himself as an archaeological relic, ‘a distinguished corpse from the iron age’. He is in a heap of stones, he becomes the cosmos: ‘I am the place/where creation is working itself out.’ The poet is then transmuted into a turnstile, over which the visiting crowd must climb to view the historic site. Along the Radius – I: the ice-bound river is transposed from ground level to the upper stratosphere: ‘here is the world’s roof’. II: ‘Here is the centre’ (of the earth?). ‘My steps here were explosions in the ground/which the silence paints over . . .’ Looking Through the Ground – he transports himself to some tunnel or cavern beneath a big city; distorted vision of reality: – ‘. . . like aerial photos of a city in war//the wrong way round’. Through the filtering of the media ‘No telling/bones of the dead from bones of the living.’ ‘The sunlight’s volume is turned up (the visual is fused with the auditory) it floods into flight-cabins and peapods (yes: universal power of penetration. December Evening 1972 – the cosmic, generic journalist: ‘Here I come, the invisible man, perhaps employed/by a Great Memory to live right now.’ The elemental struggle: ‘The law of gravity/pressing us/against our work by day and against our beds at night.’ The Dispersed Congregation – could this be a total war scenario? I get a sense that the church is abandoned, deserted. But then the desolation may be figurative, mental even: ‘you live well. The slum is within you.’ ‘vaults and columns/white as plaster, like the plaster bandage/round the broken arm of faith.’ Something aesthetically intact shores up something broken. An animate begging bowl raises itself from the floor. IV – ‘But the church bells must go under the earth./They hang in the sewage tunnels./They toll under our steps.’ A very powerful statement: the church is supposed to be concerned with the betterment of the human condition, so it should reach downwards to meet the areas of real need, and not stay on the aesthetic surfaces of comfort. Late May – average reflections on a sylvan landscape; I do not understand the reference to Solomon. Elegy is quite painterly. Some nice touches: ‘You drank the darkness/and became visible (you drank your way through the night, and emerged with daylight?) A lamp sparking on the asphalt./Beautiful slag of experiences. 

Baltics

Understanding of Baltics is greatly facilitated by the author’s explanatory notes in the preface: ‘here we have not one Baltic but a whole series of them, reflecting the very different experiences of those in whose lives that particular sea has come to play a part – some of these Baltics overlap, while some apparently contradict each other.’ ‘Tranströmer himself has claimed that the writing of Baltics was his ‘most consistent attempt to write music’ – its verbal structure to parallel a passacaglia. ‘Tranströmer has further remarked that Baltics is in part a polemic against his earlier self, against the way in which his earlier poems from the Stockholm Archipelago treated the area as a protected oasis or reserve, whereas Baltics treats the landscape and its life as open to the threats of the surrounding world.’ One cannot be unaware of the rural emphasis in his work, and it is certainly part of the British consciousness to delineate Conservation areas. I – it starts from 1884 – with his grandfather, ‘a new-made pilot’. Again animate imagery: ‘The compound machine long-lived as a human heart’. II – Strange perspective: ‘The Baltic is sighing in the middle of the island also, far within the/forest you are out on the open sea.’ Flashback to the past: ‘We were walking together. She’s been dead for thirty years.’ The elements are ambiguous and self-contradictory: ‘The great current that blows life into some flames and blows others out.’ In that environment ‘everything becomes a frontier’. ‘It’s about war’: a flashback to 1915 and World War I; a drift-mine was captured and neutralized. III – 12th century font in a Gotland church, against a backdrop of conflict: ‘but on the outer walls the battle is raging./And peace can come, drop by drop, perhaps at night/when we know nothing/or when you are lying in a hospital ward on a drip.’  Flashback to 1865; a group of elegant figures on a pier are ‘in the process of being rubbed out’. The obsolete steamer is ‘utterly foreign, a UFO that’s landed’. Jump of 100 years in the next stanza. ‘No man’s water’ is a highly evocative description of the Baltic coast. The a jump to astronomy: ‘The strategic planetarium rotates. The lenses stare in the dark. The night sky is full of numbers and they are fed/into a twinkling cupboard.’Humanity applies mathematical principles in order to comprehend astral bodies. Those distant bodies return the compliment; they become abstract numerical quantities in the author’s mind. Back to a global jump, referring to locusts in Somaliland. Conclusion of despair: ‘I don’t know if we are at the beginning or coming to the end./The summing-up can’t be done, the summing-up is impossible.’ The summing-up shrieks like a mandrake. IV – most remarkable modification of the Ophelia motif: ‘lie down full-length on your mirror image and sink to a certain depth – the weed that holds itself up with air-bladders as we hold ourselves up with ideas.’ References to the Bullhead Toad, and fireflies evoking the growth of grass. V – organisms compared to abstract ideas: Aurelia (jellyfish), they drift like flowers after a sea burial, if you take them our of the water all their form vanishes, as when an indescribable truth is lifted out of silence and formulated to an inert mass, but they are untranslatable, and must stay in their own element.’ ‘Something wants to be said but the word’s don’t agree.’ He mentions the clinical condition of aphasia – inability to verbalise. Words written in the small hours can seem loaded with meaning, but appear vacuous in the full light of day. Then there is a description of a musical composer, with problems similar to those of Shostakovitch.  He becomes a Conservatory Director, then is persecuted, then rehabilitated – after which a cerebral haemorrhage occurs. ‘He wrote music to texts he no longer understood. The poet followed his example: ‘. . . since then I’ve been writing a long letter to the dead/on a typewriter with no ribbon just a horizon line/so the words knock in vain and nothing sticks.’ There is a reference to the 13^th Century King Magnus of Norway. He compares himself to an edible snail. VI – description of extreme hardship in the past family history. The grandmother (as the author knew her when he was 5 years old) learns to cope with drawbacks: ‘She never looked back/but because of that she could see what was new . . .’ He examines a picture of an ‘unknown man’ in a photo album, and wonders whether that person died of TB. He focuses on the island’s (possibly) oldest house, then jumps to the Jewish Cemetery in Prague.

VI – The Truth Barrier

Citoyens – reflections on Robespierre, the French Revolutionary. The Crossing-Place – an animate street that ‘swarms’ and follows the poet. The street has a strength accumulated and generated over a thousand years. The sun is dimmed in the street’s poor sight, but the poet shines and the street can see him.

There follow three prose poems: The Clearing – a ‘metaphysical clearing’ . . . ‘which can be reached only by one who has lost his way’. Powerful image of ‘a forest that is choking itself’. The clearing may be a site of former human habitation. The explanation is elusive: ‘The names exist in an archive that no one opens. Then a very profound observation: ‘The oral tradition has died and with it the memories. The gypsy people remember but those who have learnt to write forget. Write down, and forget.’ ‘The homestead becomes a sphinx’ – yes! Having completed his pilgrimage, the poet must leave. Beautiful testimony to the balance of nature at the conclusion: ‘On the humming electricity post a beetle is sitting in the sun. Beneath the shining wing-covers its wings are folded up as ingeniously as a parachute packed by an expert.’ How the Late Autumn Night Novel Begins – ‘. . . the ferry-boat . . . rattles all the time like an obsession’ The author disembarks, and wanders past some deserted houses. Interesting reflection on the writer’s retentive memory: ‘Some books I’ve read pass by like old sailing ships on the way to the Bermuda triangle to vanish without trace . . .’ Transposition of the sensory passages: ‘I hear a hollow sound, an absent-minded drumming. An object the wind keeps knocking against something the earth holds still. If the night is not just an absence of light, if the night really is something, then it’s that sound. To Mats and Laila – initial reference to the South Pacific, then back to Vaermland (presumably in the Baltic vicinity). References to old engravings (of corporate composition)  Great concept with ‘man-and’, and ‘there was no proper centre but everything was alive’. But the figures in the engravings are not entirely ant-like; each figure has a distinctive face. The primitive engravers are contrasted with Proteus, traditionally the ‘god of elusive sea-change’ (Wikipedia), in this context a ‘modern man’ – illiterate to boot. ‘The hydra of the company’ and ‘the hydra of the state’ do not expect literacy; presumably they would like to keep it at arm’s length to safeguard their power. True life is near clear-cut: ‘Tiredness will stream in through the hole left by the sun . . . For me it’s never happened that the diamond of a certain moment cut across the world picture. No, it was wear and tear that rubbed out the bright strange smile.’ From the Winter of 1947 – I lived through that winter in England; I suspect it was far more extreme in Scandinavia. It seems to refer to the traumas of a housebound child: ‘I sat in bed without eyelids, saw filmstrips/filmstrips with the thoughts of insane people.’ The 4^th stanza, in rational terms, is disconnected, fragmented: ‘I read in books of glass but saw only the other:/the stains pushing through the wallpaper. /It was the living dead/who wanted their portraits painted . . .’ Schubertiana – the view from a New York skyscraper ‘where one single glance will encompass the homes of eight million people’ resembles the observation of the heavens: ‘a spiral galaxy seen from the side’. This survey is made with the music of Schubert in the background. ‘The endless expanses of the human brain are crumpled to the size of a fist.’ Switch to the global flight of the swallow. The Gallery – an extended poem, with the motoring leitmotif – this time including a stay at a motel, which reminds him of a visit to a museum – a surreal dream museum – ‘Tibetan Japanese’, containing accusing voices ‘forcing through the white wall of oblivion/to breathe, to ask about something.’ The faces have an ambivalent relationship with the poet’s consciousness: ‘Some lend each other features, exchange faces/far inside me/where oblivion and memory wheel and deal.//They force through oblivion’s second coat/the white wall/they fade-out fade-in.’ Galleries, galleys and grilles are equated. There follows an array of people – a karate sadist, a shopaholic, one suffering from acute agoraphobia, and a refugee become ‘dumb, petrified, a statue from Sumer’. I see that Karelia is in Finland. Could this be an oblique reference to the ‘Winter War’ between Finland and Russia? Another footnote, please.  There is a flashback to when he was 10 years old, returning to an apartment with the light switched off, but the lift illuminated. He remembers the presence of faces – real, not illusory. Reference to a girl crippled in a car crash, and someone struggling against drowning. There follows some jarring, disparate imagery: a microphone proclaiming ‘speed is power’, comparison of a career with acting in a Noh play: ‘The one who’s failed/is represented by a rolled-up blanket’. The writer assumes cosmic proportions: ‘An artist said: Before, I was a planet/with its own dense atmosphere./Entering rays were broken into rainbows./Perpetual raging thunderstorms, within.//Now I’m extinct and dry and open./I no longer have childlike energy./I have a hot and a cold side.’ The cooling of a planet’s crust is compared to personal growth. People want to penetrate the walls of a house; a reference to ‘the white hiss of oblivion’. ‘Discreet tappings’ suggests internecine communications in a prison. ‘Society’s mechanical self-reproaches’. ‘‘I am the knife-thrower’s partner at a circus!’ He is constrained to silence. He stays overnight at the sleepwalkers’ motel, to be beset again by faces; some are desperate, ‘others smoothed out/after the pilgrim’s walk to oblivion’ – is the pilgrim’s walk the cause of smoothing out? But then: ‘they look past me/they all want to reach the icon of justice.’ This icon seems to be distinct from the pilgrim; or are there blurred identities? People are elusive, interpersonal contact is minimal. Below Zero – a party is transmuted into a railway marshalling yard: ‘cold colossi stand on rails in the mist.’ There is implicit violence in the atmosphere; the poet must move on to another town. The Boat and the Village – he observes a Portuguese fishing boat as a small speck on the horizon; he has a flashback to seeing one being built ‘like a lute without strings’. Seemingly at the time of its construction, there is a political rally – a demagogue in a Mercedes escorted by soldiers. The Black Mountains – a bus is transmuted into a spaceship; again there is a political backcloth: ‘The dictator’s bus was there too,/wrapped in newspaper. He is always a master of paradox: ‘Death, the birthmark, was growing on all of us’.  Homewards: ‘I was like the needle in a compass carried through the forest by an orienteer with a thumping heart.’ After a Long Drought – a rainstorm is awarded the magnitude of Armageddon: ‘Gone are the cities and the sun./The thunder’s in the tall grass.’ A highly cryptic last stanza: ‘It’s possible to ring up the mirage island.’ ‘Iron ore is honey for the thunder.’ The thunder, the drought breaking storm is attracted by submerged mineral wealth. ‘It’s possible to live with one’s code.’ ‘One’s code’, presumably, includes trying to cope with one’s drought-bound life, and being able to accept the storm of radical change and transformation. A Place in the Forest – a severely dilapidated building is a meditation sanctuary, and exceptional place where one is ‘allowed to grieve: ‘There is a tall building which consists entirely of cracks, a building which is perpetually tottering but can never collapse . . . In this play of light an inverted law of gravity prevails: the house is anchored in the sky and whatever falls, falls upwards.’ Funchal – the second, prose poem stanza refers to a long-devoted couple, who went through the positives and negatives of life. Some self-sacrifice involved: ‘. . . to give up blood to the flourishing giant’. The core of experience can transcend the individual who experienced it: ‘. . . things we forgot together – but they have not forgotten us. They’ve become stones, dark ones and light ones.’ Geographical features seem animate: ‘The cape’s enormous dark blue paw lies sprawled in the sea.’ The enduring couple is involved with the mass of humanity: ‘We step into the human whirlpool . . . We become stronger through them, but also through ourselves.’ He honours ‘The innermost paradox, the garage flower, the ventilator to the good darkness.’

VII – The Wild Market-Place . . . Brief Pause in the Organ Recital – the music of a cathedral organ is counterpointed with the hum of traffic. The traffic hum penetrates the cathedral precinct: ‘The outer world glides there like a transparent film and with shadows/struggling pianissimo.’ The composite sound is augmented by the poet’s pulse. Then a visual panorama of the cathedral: the pillars are like strange trees with no roots and no crowns. Then ‘death turns up the lights from underneath’. This focuses the poet: ‘I waken to that unshakeable PERHAPS that carries me through the wavering world. And each abstract picture of the world is as impossible as the blue-print of a storm.’ I take it that storms can have no blue-prints, and that abstract ideals are unattainable. Significant comment on the role of the writer: ‘. . . each one of us has his own encyclopaedia written, it grows out of each soul,//it’s written from birth onwards.’ But it is organic: ‘What’s there changes by the hour, the pictures retouch themselves,/the words flicker./A wave washes through the whole text, it’s followed by the next/wave, and then the next . . .’ From March 1979 – he makes a dichotomy between language and words. Memories Look at Me – memories merge into the background. Winter’s Gaze – exploring a cheery tree, and then an old sewerage system. The Station – a passenger train halts at a station but does not open its doors to release the passengers. Answers to Letters – reflections on time-structures. The poet has stumbled on a letter from 26 years ago: ‘Sometimes an abyss opens between Tuesday and Wednesday but twenty-six years may be passed in a moment.’ He has an accumulation of unanswered letters.  Icelandic Hurricane – ‘not earth-tremor but sky-quake’. Great evocation of despair: ‘I am X-rayed,/the skeleton hands in its resignation . . . I founder and drown on dry land!’ He feels like a butterfly towing a barge; he becomes that butterfly, and finds peace, ‘my own portrait’ behind a glass frame. ‘Outside, a horse of transparent sprinters in giant format charges across the lava plain.’ The blue Wind-Flowers – these appear unexpectedly: ‘They glimmer and float, yes, float, and that comes from their colour.’ Historical reference to a ceremony in Nineveh (capital of the Assyrian Empire) where ‘the crowning crystal chandeliers hung like glass vulture.’ The wind-flowers have far greater evocative power than do these chandeliers: they ‘open a secret passage to the real celebration, which is quiet as death.’

The Blue House – he looks at a house with blue-hazed walls, feeling as if he were doing so from beyond the grave. The structure has existed for 80 years: ‘Its wood is impregnated with four times joy and three times sorrow.’ Bizarre description of an overgrown garden: the weeds are described as ‘pagodas’, ‘upanishads’ and ‘viking fleets’. In the background is the repeating circuit of a boomerang, its flight motivated by someone from before the poet’s lifetime. ‘The house is like a child’s drawing. A deputising childishness that grew because someone – much too soon – gave up his mission to be child.’ Then a reference to a ship and a ‘sister ship’ in the background. Nineteen Hundred and Eighty – flashback to the overthrow of the Shah of Iran.  Black Picture-Postcards – the inevitability of death: ‘. . . death comes/and takes man’s measurements. The visit/is forgotten and life goes on. But the suit/is sewn on the quiet.’ Fire-Jottings – the transitory euphoria of love’s flames in a drab, colourless life. Many Steps – the icons are laid in the earth face up, and the poet, treading into an underground pool, becomes one such icon. Mass feet trample above him. Postludium – someone condemned: ‘I drag like a grapnel over the world’s floor . . . The executioners fetch stone. God writes in the sand.’ Dream Seminar juxtaposes the cold, factual reality of an overpopulated world with the state of reverie, including a visit to the theatre: ‘in mid-play your eyelids sink . . . the stage/before you out-manoeuvred by a dream. The poet then identifies with the theatre director. Reference to the script of a play performed at the theatre, and the dreamer’s deviation from that script: ‘The sleeper’s eyes are moving,/they’re following the text without letters/in another book –’ The manuscript seems to be disposable, perishable: ‘inscribed/within the eyelids’ monastery walls. A unique copy. Here, at this very moment./In the morning, wiped out./The mystery of the great waste!’ Something comparable to the film in a camera being destroyed by a ruthless policeman. Codex – writers personified, ‘Men of footnotes, not of headlines’. An illuminated right hand. Variation on the ‘writing on the wall’ theme, comparing it do an inscription on a shrunken wreck. The walls of his cavernous corridor are filled with the names of ‘all-but extinct artists’. They seem to whisper their names. The corridor phases into a blend of corridor, graveyard and market-place. He has some veneration for the ‘men of footnotes’: ‘they remain in the ecological system . . . They are spared swallowing the morality of power’. They do not really want anonymity or self-destruction: ‘ . . . those who really want to be struck from the list . . . they don’t stop in the region of footnotes,/they step into the downward career that ends in oblivion and peace.’ Carillon –

Opening description of a seedy French pension and its proprietress.  Then an historical flashback: ‘I am Maximilian. It’s 1488. Explanation: ‘Craenenburg Café. In this building the Hapsburg heir Maximilian of Austria was imprisoned by the leaders of the city in 1488 after attempting to restrict their privileges. When Maximilian later became emperor, he took revenge by directing trade to Antwerp.’ As a general reader, I was aware of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian, but I had no inkling of what his captors did ‘in horror’s back yard’. Again, footnote request. I was most impressed by the phrase ‘I can’t turn blood into ink.’ This is an honest statement of the difficulty in verbalising horrendous incidents. He goes through a succession of personae, and wanders around with no sense of direction. Then ‘Unexpectedly, as if I’d stepped on a trip-wire, the bell-ringing starts/in the anonymous tower.’ This immediately suggests to me a curfew, somehow related to Maximilian’s imprisonment. I sense a feeling of divided loyalties; whose side was he on: ‘Christ and Antichrist, hard to tell apart!’ and ‘my inside-out psalm. A sense of mystery: ‘the great unknown of which I am a part and which is certainly more/important than me.’

Molokai – the leper colony. The great enigmas and contradictions of life: ‘Damien, for love, chose life and obscurity. He received death and fame./But we see these events from the wrong side: a heap of stones instead/of the sphinx’s face.’ The outside observer’s standpoint can never identify fully with the central sufferer’s situation.

VIII – For Living and Dead

The Forgotten Captain – a World War II hero rises from the dead after forty years. Through sustained eye contact, he and the poet reconstruct the past: ‘The last boat he captained/took shape beneath us.’ It is then revealed that he died of a haemorrhage. A further flashback to young boys playing with toy ships at the turn of the 20^th Century. Six Winters refers to life in the near-arctic. Svalbard, I discover is an archipelago in the Arctic – the northernmost part of Norway. Everything freezes there; ‘An elite of the dead became stone’. The Nightingale in Badelunda – referring to a beauty/tourist spot, in proximity to an ancient ship-burial site. The motor travel theme returns: ‘the deaf cars race towards the neon line.’ Badelunda is ‘the nightingale’s northern limit’. It is a benign force, of which the poet had been oblivious; now he is fully responsive to it. Berceuse – Tomas goes ‘post-mortem’ –

A mummy laid to rest both in the natural, organic ‘blue coffin of the forests’, and in the man-made ‘perpetual roar of engines and rubber and asphalt’.  A flashback to his burial: ‘The wheelbarrow rolled forward on its single wheel and I myself/ travelled on my spinning psyche, but now my thoughts/have stopped going round and the wheelbarrow has got wings’. Presumably, it will ascend to the heavens. An aircraft will enter (perhaps) the same heavens, and its passengers will survey the panorama of cities beneath them. Streets in Shanghai – he really is a globe-trotter. I was happily startled by ‘I love that cabbage-white as if it were a fluttering corner of truth itself’ and ‘At dawn the crowds get our silent planet going with their running/their tramping.’ Imaginative hyperbole with a tinge of metaphorical truth. Each person having eight faces – in terms of people’s mood variability, not an absurd image. He is in a strange country, where he is ‘totally illiterate’. He has a mass of receipts, some of them illegal. Significant comment on the ageing process: ‘I’m an old tree with withered leaves that hang on and can’t fall to the earth.’ A most peculiar sense of time-warp: ‘We can count/ourselves lucky getting aboard this street!/It’s a thousand years before the birth of claustrophobia.’ Then an image of the crucifixion: ‘Behind each one walking here there hovers a cross which wants to/catch up on us . . .we are bleeding fatally/from wounds we don’t know about.’ Deep in Europe – ‘I a dark hull floating between two lock-gates’. The dead lurk in the background, menacing and censorious. ‘The blackened cathedral, heavy as a moon, causes ebb and flow.’ He the cathedral been blackened by neglect/pollution, or by war? Leaflet – lament for oppressed humanity: ‘We living nails hammered down in society!’. A vision both positive and negative: ‘We see all and nothing, but straight as periscopes/wielded by the underground’s shy crew.’ The Indoors is Endless – funerary ode: ‘Beethoven/hoists his death-mask and sails off.’ Nature and artifice are again blended in ‘The grindstones are turning in Europe’s windmills.’ Vaccine and potatoes are organically related to Peace. Grotesque but exciting incongruity in ‘Privy barrels in sedan chairs like paschas’. There is a suggestion that the location is in the far north, where ‘the channels’ are frozen in the wintertime. Organicisation of time: ‘The snake-clock’s pointer licks the silence.’ Very loaded phrase in ‘the rock-slopes glow with geology’s patience.’ The rock slopes radiate a perspective of geological time. The science of geology embraces vast time-spans. The reference to Erik seems to refer to a Swedish king, famous as a law-giver, who was assassinated, ‘disabled by a bullet through the soul’. The latter part of the poem seems to deal with his death-throes ands his post-mortem condition: ‘He pushes in vain/against the iron-bound tomorrow . . . he’s taken apart, put together . . . he looks into the self-rotating kaleidoscope’. His gaze strikes the poet who is Wandering round Washington DC: ‘White buildings in crematorium style/where the dream of the poor turns to ash.’ There is a double resonance here. The White House was painted white after its burning by the British in 1812. In another way, it is a symbol for the ashes of hopes of freedom and justice. Vermeer – fine art counterpointed against the turmoil of life. The first two stanzas deal with what seems to be a bustling seaport. Then the poet/connoisseur enters the serenity of the gallery to observe two of Vermeer’s paintings: The Music Lesson, and Woman in Blue Reading a Letter – Tomas assumed she is pregnant, though this is a matter of debate. There follows a nightmarish flashback to the stresses of producing these paintings: ‘It’s the pressure from the other side of the wall./It makes each fact float/and steadies the brush.’ He adds – ‘it hurts to go through walls’. It seems he must penetrate the backdrops to the paintings. In the last stanza: ‘The clear sky has leant against the wall./It’s like a prayer to the emptiness./And the emptiness turns its face to us/and whispers/’I am not empty, I am open.’’ This is a reflection on the importance of empty space as a context in which to appreciate the paintings.’ Romanesque Arches – another aspect of artistic sightseeing , in an enormous church. There is an analogy between that building and the writer’s consciousness. ‘An angel with no face embraced me/and whispered through my whole body: ‘Don’t be ashamed of being human, be proud!/Inside you vault opens inside vault endlessly./You will never be complete. That’s how it’s meant to be.’ Female Portrait, 19^th Century:  the model is constricted, with repressed passions; the gilt frame is strangulatory. Air Mail explores to the full all aspects of postal communication. ‘The flying carpet of the stamp is a lovely image of air mailing. ‘My own sealed truth’ – universally accepted confidentiality. He nervously watches the clock while the letter is in transit. Madrigal represents Tomas’s slant on Armageddon: ‘a day will come when the dead and the living change places . . . I have graduated from the university of oblivion and am as empty-handed as the shirt on the washing-line. Golden Wasp – the slow-crawling blindworm makes the introduction. The poet’s beloved has special powers to drive away the evil spirits – and insect pests. But the banishment is only temporary. On to an expression of vacuous piety: ‘We’re in the church of keeping-silence, of piety according to no letter./As if they didn’t exist, the implacable faces of the patriarchs/and the misspelling of God’s name in stone.’ There is than a conflagration, followed by the dominant presence of a ‘pious executioner’. The poem concludes with a discussion, in incredible depth, of the nature of faith and of personal consciousness. ‘The greatest fanatic is the greatest doubter. He is a pact between two/where the one is 100% visible and the other invisible.’ An impassioned plea for respect of depth identity: ‘Those who can never exist anywhere except on their facades/those who are never absent-minded . . . Walk past them! . . . I know the depth where one is both prisoner and ruler.’ The organic forms of blindworm, golden wasp and lupin are presented as symbols of an ideal state, untarnished by human prejudice.

IX – The Sad Gondola

This section opens with a highly informative footnote explaining the background of the two Liszt piano pieces. This approach should have been applied consistently throughout the section. April and Silence seems to reflect the angst of the great composer: ‘I am carried in my shadow/like a violin/in its black case.’ National Insecurity is a surreal portrayal of power gestures: ‘The Under Secretary leans forward and draws an X/and her ear-drops dangle like swords of Damocles.’ One wonders how much human havoc, how many deaths, will have been caused by her signature; ‘the demon merges with the opened newspaper.’ The disaster she has implemented hit the headlines? ‘A helmet worn by no one has taken power.’ Symbol of the cold, impersonal emptiness of power. This idea is reiterated in A Page of the Night-book: those who ruled . . . People with a future/instead of a face.’

The Sad Gondola – as the footnote explains, this incident took place when Liszt was staying with Wagner very soon before the latter died: ‘The gondola is heavily laden with their lives, two returns and one single.’ The elemental power of music ‘Liszt has written down some chords that are so heavy they ought to be sent/to the mineralogical institute in Padua for analysis.’ The heavy chords are compared to meteorites which go on sinking into the earth – through the future right down/to the years of the brownshirts’. Wagner’s music, and perhaps Liszt’s too, inspired Nazism.  III – jump to a hospital in Lithuania in 1990; I do not immediately get the connection. IV – Liszt is an old man, ‘on the way out’ in comparison with Wagner. VI – back to 1990; Liszt’s piano pieces obviously have some deep-seated associations for Tomas with this time and place. VII – after having listened quietly to Parsifal, Liszt plays his piano pieces. His heavy chords seem to make the green power of the sea rise through the floor. VIII – highly enigmatic reflection on the influence of great art over personal growth: ‘Dreamt that I was to start school but came late./Everyone in the room was wearing a white mask./Impossible to tell who the teacher was.’ 

November in the Former DDR – the bleakness of that state is captured with some extraordinary imagery’ ‘the train/that stops at every station/and lays eggs . . . The clang of the church bells’ buckets/fetching water . . . a stone idol moves its lips.’ The ‘bad old days’ are partly over, but perhaps not altogether: ‘November offers caramels of granite./Unpredictable! Like world history/laughing at the wrong place.’ From July 1990 – Tomas has a consistent respect for the post-mortem: ‘I felt that the dead man/was reading my thoughts/better than I could.’ The Cuckoo – I had not realised that these birds are ‘citizens’ of Zaire. Three Stanzas – highly surreal – flying coffin-lids carrying petrified figures out of time. ‘A dripping sword wipes out the memories’ but on the ground swords and trumpets rust. Like being a Child – I can certainly remember primary school initiation ceremonies tying new pupils up in sacks. The Light Streams In – ‘the transparent dragon of sunlight . . . shoreline villas as proud as crabs . . . the raging sea of fire out in space/is transformed into a caress.’ Haiku is a selection of 10 Haikus – visual images of the backgrounds of our existence – power lines, oil tankers, the sun, stars. From the Island 1860 – the individual bonds with the environment: ‘the chill of the strait rose through her arms/into her life’. Time is relative: ‘The moment’s eternally running stain/The moment’s eternally bleeding point.’ Silence – Animation: ‘Starvation is a tall building/that moves by night//in the bedroom a lift-shaft opens/it’s a dark rod pointing to the inner domains . . . the table-silver survives in big shoals.’ A Sketch from 1844 – hyperbolic eulogy of artistic creation on the part of William Turner: ‘he has set up his easel far out among the breakers./We follow the silver-green cable down in the depths.//He wades out in the shelving kingdom of death.’

X – The Great Enigma

Eagle Rock – oxymorons and inversion of the elements: ‘my soul glides/silent as a comet’. Facades – ‘power . . . like an onion . . . with overlapping faces . . .’ Signatures – the white document gleams/with many shadows moving’. More Haiku: ‘wind flows through the house tonight – names of the demons.’ ‘Death stoops over me./I’m a problem in chess. He/has the solution. ‘I’ve been in that place – all over a whitewashed wall/the flies crowd and crowd. ‘Death leans forward and/writes on the ocean surface./While the church breathes gold.’ These are just scattered highlights. I am sure that successive readings of this sequence will reveal a depth of thematic connexity. 

Appendix – Prison

Presumably Tomas was a tutor or visitor to this establishment. The reader could do with a bit of background. 

Memories Look at Me: Autobiographical Chapters

Memories – a brilliant analogy between a growing child and a comet: brightest end = childhood; nucleus = infancy. He finds it hard now to penetrate the nucleus; now, aged 60, he is at the comet’s tail. He explores the problems of memory recall and reconstruction: ‘Our earliest experiences are for the most part inaccessible . . . ‘ He was heavily influenced by his Grandfather’s archaic modes of expression. Grandfather was temperamental but benign. Tomas’ father was a neval officer, who spent very little time at home; he and his mother moved to a lower middle class tenement. They had a live-in maid who was of some artistic inspiration to Tomas. 

Museums – he was introduced to these quite early in life. In the course of his visits, he developed a fear of skeletons. After this, he was attracted to the Railway Museum, and to steam engines. Subsequently again, he developed an intense interest in the Natural History Museum. He found the company of one of the staff, who got him access to the more secret parts of the Museum. He became an insect collector. Overall, a highly enriching experience: ‘I absorbed unawares many experiences of natural beauty.’

Primary School  –  the usual hard times, though ‘being the son of a teacher saved me from blows. He refers to Evacuation; does this relate to the wartime situation? He stood out from the other pupils because of being in a one-parent family. Generally, he was of ‘outsider’ potential, having a precocious interest in sub-aquatic life. His classmates generally did not persecute him, though he was physically molested by an older boy, Hasse. He opted for the passive approach, ‘turning myself into a lifeless rag’ and cultivating ‘The art of being ridden roughshod over while maintaining one’s self-respect’. 

The War – very perceptive: ‘I really counted myself as one of Hitler’s enemies. My political engagement has never been so wholehearted!’ His attitude (as a 9-year-old) was very unusual in neutral Sweden. When very young he read about the martyrdom of Poland.

Libraries – as a child, Tomas’s precocious literary tastes earned him the suspicion of the library staff. He gained illicit access to the Adult Library with the help of his Uncle Elof’s ticket. He early took a turn towards geography. His reading in that area engendered a fantasy about leading an expedition in Central Africa. He was able to relate this fantasy to the war situation in East Africa in 1940-41. Interesting observation at the end:  ‘When my Africa dream returned several years later, it had been modernised and was now almost realistic.’

Grammar School – fairly typical experience in one of these grim establishments – ‘as single-sexed as a monastery or barracks’. Very interesting that the school was used as a location for Ingmar Bergman’s Hets (known as Frenzy (UK) and Torment (USA). He had a school friend called Palle, who was a passionate collector, and who ‘died without having grown up. The teachers remained old in Tomas’s memory, whereas ‘We always feel younger than we are.’ He empathises withe their struggles, imagining them saying ‘I know I can’t be loved but at least I can make sure I am not forgotten!’ He early developed his own ideas of character building: ‘My ideals were English – a stiff upper lip and so on. Outbursts of rage belonged to the Axis powers.’ One teacher, Malle, was persistently cantankerous. This teacher sent disciplinary notes home, which Tomas’s mother challenged. ‘. . . important personal characteristics were magnified in the classroom atmosphere’. Gossip got around about some of the teachers’ private lives and interests. This period of schooling took place in the war years. There was no overt political discussion, but many of the teachers were pro-Nazi. Curious comment about his biology teacher having ‘blotted his copybook’. Tomas’ best subjects were geography and history. Some footnotes here; good to have them elsewhere.

Exorcism – a fifteen-year-old’s night-time traumas: ‘I was trapped by a searchlight which radiated not light but darkness. I was caught each afternoon as twilight fell and not released from that terrible grip until next day dawned. He became obsessed by a film about an alcoholic; he became afflicted with cramp and panic attacks. He then became obsessed by illness and hospitals: ‘. . . it was rather the power of total illness that aroused terror . . . I now experienced the outer world quite differently because it included my awareness of that domination wielded by sickness.’ He felt surrounded by ghosts;’ his life had been turned upside down. Because this traumatic experience occurred when he was so young, he could not use the devices of religion against it. But he grew and lived through the trauma: ‘I thought it was Inferno but it was Purgatory’.

Latin – in an early Latin class, Tomas was knocked to the ground by G, a school bully. Teacher Bocken witnessed the incident. He did not intervene, but Tomas came to feel an empathy with him. Bocken’s attire had ‘a touch of Dracula’; a divided character – ‘At a distance he was superior and decorative, close up his face often had something helpless about it. ‘ He suffered from arthritis and his lessons were sometimes punctuated by outbursts of rage. Concurrently with writing modernistic poems, Tomas discovered a taste for Latin poetry, both in the original and in translation. This was crucially influential: ‘This alternation between the trivial and decrepit on the one hand and the buoyant and sublime on the other taught me a lot. It had to do with the conditions of poetry and life. It was through form that something could be raised to another level. The caterpillar feet were gone, the wings unfolded. One should never lose hope!’ Tomas earned Bocken’s displeasure by giving a wrong answer to a factual question. He was given a ‘warning’ about his negligence. His own writings absorbed the influence of the Horatian Sapphic and alcaic stanza forms. 

 ******

I see in the preface that ‘. . . just short of his sixtieth birthday he suffered a stroke which deprived him of most of his speech and partly inhibited movement on his right side.’So this collection is a supreme example of articulation overcoming adversity and disability.

Dave Russell © 2013

Philip Ruthen on

Sally Richards

Communication is intimate:

‘Emperor Dragonfly’, the latest collection of poetic works from Sally Richards 

Sally Richards collection ‘Emperor Dragonfly’, issued in E-book format by Caparison Books, 2011, is a fusion  of definition and sensibility, a solidity lodging the ephemeral, as inferred in the collection’s title, leading through the opening scene-setting poem ‘Tree Speak’: the sometimes gentle, musical, at times stormy, forceful/’… ‘they have finally met/and now negotiate/their new found connection//’ – yes, communication is intimate, but battling openly.

Fragile spring growth contests with the ‘pirates’ of near-human form, the inferences of battling, an unnatural settlement of earth in how human pleasure overtakes necessity and rhythm –‘blue-sky-days pass/all too soon//’ and the remembrance, homage even of something we have and forget, almost, is where Richards brings us alive again – she has not forgotten on our behalf.

‘Four Journeying – Past Caradoc to Llanrindod: The Heart-of-Wales Line’ p12-13 captures the journeyman relationships, dips down to lift up, whether it be ‘eight months of  their growing/missed…’ for the lone grandmother, who ‘closes her violet blues’, or, the young freed, there’s generosity in fear through Richards’ recognisable, jolting story. Though the shock as the reader is made aware they have similar background is not a cruel dig, but an affirmation that it will be and is alright to let go into a ‘warming future story’ in the poem of ‘A view to the future’ p14. 

The fixing of time is recognised as a task not meant even for the poet, although Richards does this better than most philosopher-poets through the ages, giving a glimpse in ‘Stationary’ p22, catching the impossibility of scent and thought, her ‘grain of sand’ doesn’t slip, it’s recorded to again prompt the past, present, future to be considered in a current universe before the choice – destruction or a certain harmony, that may be ‘tea-stained, crumpled’, but that would be in a ‘then’, not now. The poems bleaken  at this point, sensory rooms are never used, gardens untended, occasional nature is ‘indescribable stodge’, the nourishment plays against the nourishment in the earlier poems. In ‘Abandoned: Mogolinio Children’s Institute, Bulgaria’ p25-28  Richards sets the other side of utopia with that of true remembrance; as also in the present, in our own places, ‘How Can You’ p30 – ‘these streets, these streets’ are not elsewhere, they are here, ‘The Bigger Issue’ p31-32

Richards brings us back – in the poem ‘There is light…where is the tunnel?’ ‘life can only travel forwards/so that must be the way//’ p43-44, and does so with poetic vision: ‘doing time/writing rhyme’ – and the conclusion: ‘…till/pumped-up/you emerge/magnificent/’ p3 Emperor Dragonfly.

An abundant and assertive collection, a print run would be desirable also, I think, for Richards to reach the untold memories waiting to find peace in a growing and avidly appreciative readership. ‘Emperor Dragonfly’ is a collection that affirms the poet’s place in the world and equally affirms poetry’s place in the world as we know it, and could know it. 

Philip Ruthen © 2012

Philippa Rees on

Ian McEwan

An Alternative Review of On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

Gagging…

Reviews customarily carry a post-script in which the qualifications of the reviewer, books 

published, relevant experiences, are sketched; presumably to endorse the appropriate choice of reviewer. So this reviewer will need to come clean. I chose myself and my relevant experiences are those of a lifelong publishing failure. Hence my interest in this hugely hyped

prize-winning success. I want to understand my own failures by shining a torch into the structure and writing of a literary blockbuster.

Books are served up by the Publishing Trade who set the menus, and allow the chefs (the authors) small liberties in the matter of dressings, parsley covers and a dash of lemon. A successful Chef knows exactly what the Trade will buy, and one as consistently successful 

as Ian McEwan has obviously distilled his art to minimum stir-fry effort for maximum gain.

Since the book relies heavily on flash backs (ushered in at insensitive moments) I shall give myself the same latitude in terms of imagining this book’s planning. If you were listing the ingredients of your next best seller to fit the current market what would it contain? Sex, certainly: very few characters (attention spans of publishers are no longer Tolstoyan, even though their readers may hunger for meat): Social Class distinctions (they always score as easily as own goals-England is thumb-nailed by them); Attention to Period detail (gives an air of erudite perspective and the archives of Fleet Street provide all that a man needs in an afternoon, both incidental trivia and date-stamping news) and the introduction of a new, 

and unfamiliar closed shop (Classical Music has the advantage of suggesting culture in an ostensibly knowledgeable writer, and may provide a source of fascination to a reader 

without the experience to question it). So far so good. Now, how to make it original? Turn 

it on its head and make it entirely about no sex at all.

That way you can write prurient, voyeuristic pornography which will not be confined to the top shelf of your local corner-shop but piled high in W.H. Smith. We’re away. It also has the advantage of making any negative criticism seem the carping of a prude. I hope I can demonstrate that prudishness can be literary rather than sexual squeamishness. (Having undertaken the task I could not follow the example of a well read friend who threw the 

book out of the sleeper to Edinburgh rather than allow it to contaminate him further) This 

is a most insidious book.

So, ingredients sorted, what meal will they provide? In what proportion and order will they be mixed- to set a table both aesthetic to consume and satisfying to reflect upon? At the 

risk of an over-extended metaphor any book assumes a hunger in its reader (to follow willingly and trust the Chef not to poison ) some previous experience of food (by which to compare) some hope for new tastes and fresh ingredients (to inform, delight and surprise).

 

Ostensibly about a tragic misalliance between the inexperienced Florence and Edward that builds inexorably towards sexual failure, through a forensic dissection of characters caught in the headlights of the author’s glinting stare,(and un-forgivingly in the period in which they are fixed, as though in plaster) it firmly refuses to be tragic. Cockroaches observed struggling in the cracks between boards are pitiful, and these cockroach characters are observed with the assistance of a nudging boot turning them over and over, delightedly eviscerating. The lucid spare opening gives the reader no choice but to follow the narrow focus on these insects and their helpless predicament. Even the landscape and the food are bent to it ‘thickened gravy…potatoes of a bluish hue….giant rhubarb and cabbages with swollen stalks…thick veined leaves…the sea’s motion of advance and withdrawal…’ We are only at page five, and we are on a compulsory slide into terrifying sex. This is the force feeding of Strasbourg geese.

The books construction is that of a simple a.b.a.b.c rhyme, (now-then-now-then-and the galloping consequence was…) or perhaps the author (having boned up on music) thought ‘first subject, second subject, development, recapitulation, and final Coda’ would cover it. First subject starts in the present (with appropriate news broadcasts to fix period, ‘Harold Macmillan had been addressing a conference in Washington about the arms race….’It continues for three pages via H bombs, Empire, politicians listed, President Kennedy and an ‘escape from the Communist East…by way of a commandeered steamship on the Wannsee’ These overheard snippets (and brief tour through world affairs) penetrate the terrified apprehension of a young bride. A little later the ‘cut and paste’ extract goes on for almost 

a page as the groom  uses his wrapt attention, ‘Trade Gap, Pay Pause, Resale Price Maintenance ‘night of the long knives’…joining Europe’  to fight premature ejaculation. He(the PM)had just sacked a third of his Cabinet in the ‘night of the long knives’ . This places it in 1962, but the name was not used until later! This is an unwise marker to set down. Clearly food and manners elaborately detailed were not trusted to convey period, 

but vicarious news detail, however artificially inserted, would.

Badly bolted on authenticity runs throughout the book;‘ he often left the library….Oxford Street to the Hundred Club to listen to John Mayall’s Powerhouse Four or Alexis Korner, or Brian Knight’ Who cares? Who are they? ‘above the pretty village of Ewelme where Chaucer’s granddaughter was interred.  Ewelme is where Florence, the main character got her sunburnt legs on a courtship picnic, alongside Chaucer’ granddaughter (?) Per-lease!  Lists are endemic; about an incidental character…

‘He had an important (!?to whom?) jazz record collection, he edited a literary magazine, he had a short story accepted, though not yet published by Encounter Magazine, he was hilarious…a good mimic….-he did Macmillan, Gaitskell, Kennedy, Khrushchev in fake Russian,(we’re not yet finished)as well as various African Leaders ( obviously not readily identified in British archives-surely Idi Amin would cover them all), and comedians like 

Al Read and Tony Hancock…’

All this to support the ‘high status figure’ who was ‘maddeningly talkative and clever’ and who, having no consequence to the plot, instantly disappears. The cumulative effect of these over-larded details is to undermine any belief that the author trusts his reader or himself. Many of his readers will have a more accurate memory of the period than the author and could imagine those details themselves. The insistence that the reader will consume his thumping sauces is not only patronising but it is responsible for undermining any subtlety, and growth of compassion. None of his characters are allowed to rise from the dissection slab on which they are relentlessly pinned, by such impersonal facts. They never get off 

the page.

The philosophy don, Violet, (Florence’s austere mother) is another insect ‘a sometime 

friend of Elizabeth David, managing a household in the vanguard of a culinary revolution, 

while lecturing to students on monads and the categorical imperative’…’the fresh hardback books…the new Iris Murdoch (she was Violet’s friend) the new Nabokov, the new Angus Wilson’ Long words, posh books, enough said. We have a clichéd Blue Stocking (who reads the book of the month)

Her florid businessman husband is equally boxed ‘just the sort of opinions you might expect from a businessman…Harold Macmillan was a fool, .a bloody fool…a pathetic bloody fool’ So, no room for growth, all businessmen are alike. The likelihood that these two would have co-existed stretches credulity to breaking point, if they were not cardboard figures wheeled 

on and off to pack pages.

By contrast the family of Edward have some struggling hope of flight; the portrait of his 

tragic dotty mother, and his stoical dutiful father struggling with poverty; the instinctive conspiracy to protect her and themselves by collusion in pretence, suggests an innate sensitivity. This is not only killed ‘She was brain-damaged and he was not. He was not his mother, nor was he his family, and one day he would leave and return only as a visitor’ but 

it never redeems Edward’s later reflections, or gives pause to his self-absorption. So why bother to draw, so well, what equally is then crushed?

The suggestion that Edward and Florence reflect contrasting ‘classes’ (and are the victims 

of class) ends up being only the contrast of circumstance and money. His father is a dedicated headmaster, for whom education is paramount, her mother an insensitive blue stocking. This equating of money as indicative of class trivialises almost the entire pretext of the book. The long descriptions of chilly North Oxford privilege (for Florence), the details of country yokel (for Edward) which could have sharpened tragedy, or explained mutual attraction, ends up as incidental self-indulgence. The writing is lean, smooth and expert which makes its application to empty rhetoric somehow more immoral, quite apart from its subject matter.

If one cannot like or care about any character, and the author seems determined that we shall not, why should one read this book? I believe the intention is deliberate; that we will follow the gruesome details of the sex, without the guilt that would accompany watching people we liked and cared about. This is why the book is pornographic. The inevitability of what happens is established by the end of the first section (pg33), in which all the brutal anatomical words have been highlighted;’ mucous membrane; glans; penetration; engorged, so the full horror steams ahead, but like any sexual tease it is held off (for 40 pages) to increase the pressure on it while we take a titillating detour through Section/Subject two and how the pitiful pair met. We are being taken for aroused fools, who having been 

aroused can be counted on to follow through, even in the absence of any hope of surprise, revelation or sympathy. This is why the book is voyeuristic, not waving, but dragooning.

The author knows this and explicitly gives that knowledge away. In another section he talks about words ‘…the power of words to make the unseen visible…. The term dissolved intimacy, it coolly measured …by a public standard that everyone could understand’

No doubt there are many who enjoy pornography, and this opinion will increase sales. From the almost universal ‘wonderful…exquisite…devastating…brilliant…compelling’ reviews it would seem nobody has looked at the ignorance of an important part of the subject matter, namely the classical music by which Florence’s social class, and personal ‘worth’ is elaborated. We are to believe that despite her sexual frigidity, and clumsy terrors, in her own world she is a kind of master, a pro. How does the author recognise that? Presumably 

by being qualified to judge. The handling of music is worth examining for what it illustrates about the cynicism of this book.

Lets start with ‘the sprightly argot’ legato, pizzicato, con brio’ So much for the words at 

the top of any score, and move on to playing ‘Florence’s playing was sinuous and exact….known for the richness of her tone. One tutor had said he had never encountered 

a student who made an open string sing so warmly…’ A warm tone on an ‘open’ string is caused by the quality of the instrument, not the playing. Apart from loud or soft the player cannot influence it. A ‘stopped’ string, particularly on the high notes of the e string or the low notes of the g would indicate warmth of tone. ‘She was always confident and fluid in 

her movements-rosining a bow, restringing her instrument’ Restringing is like threading a needle, and requires fiddly adjusters, and testing tension and tuning- hardly ‘fluid’ and rosining is like sharpening a knife, anybody can do it. This is facile ignorance.

We are to believe that this violinist has weathered the stiff competition of the Royal College where everyone is battling for opportunities and recognition (Even the block-buster quasi-documentary film of the period ‘Shine’ makes that clear) yet….

‘When…in a rehearsal of the quartet…she had a difference of opinion on a phrasing or tempo or dynamic…..she did not argue, listened calmly, then announced her decision…

she knew her stuff, and was determined to lead, the way a first violin should…’ It shows a complete want of understanding about how chamber musicians interact and what their 

work requires. A Leader recalls tempi, entries, balance, after mutual discussion, rehearsal and agreement (pencilled into the score) but does not dictate a decision to an ensemble 

of equals. With that opinion of the role Florence would never get a second rehearsal. After ‘Vikram Seth’s ‘An Equal Music’ (an extraordinary analysis and understanding by a non-player) this is inexcusable, and arrogant. Is sex meant to be driving us so hard we will not notice? 

It gets worse.

‘It was the opening of a Mozart Quintet……playing it had meant drafting in another viola player… and when ……they sight read it through, naturally the cellist in his vanity fell for it. If the opening phrase posed a difficult question for the cohesion of the Ennismore Quartet – named after the address of the girls hostel- it was settled by Florence’s resolve in the face of opposition, one against three…(my emphasis)

Apart from the obvious ‘one against three’ (A quintet has five players so it should be one against four- God help us) the pretentious ‘ naturally the cellist in his vanity’ implies all cellists are vain or the work in question, (later lumpenly identified as the D Major, played years later) will be guessed at (out of ten possibilities), and the cellist’s likely enthusiasm (for just a few opening bars) shared. Let alone the unlikelihood of naming a quartet- the most unstable of ensembles- after a prosaic residential hostel. He knows nothing about music or musicians, but drip-feeds any old detail.

Patronising condescension continues in the guided tour we get of the Wigmore Hall ‘The Green room, the tiny changing room, even the auditorium and the cupola could hardly account for her reverence…as if she had designed it herself. ‘One night she actually stood at Benjamin Britten’s side…songs by Haydn, Frank Bridge, and Britten himself…the boy treble.. and Peter Pears who slipped her a ten shilling note….she discovered the practise rooms where legendary pianists like John Ogdon, Cherkassky thundered up and down….’ 

No professional violinist would remain so dewy eyed or so undiscerning as to list knowledge common to any casual listener…let alone as a string player focus on keyboard players and boy trebles et al. It is phoney phoney, and an insult to a half knowledgeable reader.

Phoneyness strikes one at every level, and crudity in ill-judged implausible choice of words that leap like a needle in the eye. This happens at intervals, as though Mc Ewan lapses in concentration. When Florence is desperately trying to hold on to the wisp of a destroyed relationship by suggesting a sex-less union, she mentions ‘Mummy knows two homosexuals who live together ‘as man and wife’. But then she adds ‘In Oxford, in Beaumont Street’.. 

and further. ‘They both teach at Christ Church’ Since by this point we have had a lot of ‘mummy’ and we know exactly where she lives (Oxford), would anyone at such a juncture need or be likely to throw in the rest? Since the person she is talking to has also done a 

lot of time with mummy in Oxford? It simply doesn’t wash, not in the context. 

Nor does her educated mother (however unmusical) referring to the long term playing (of a professional) as ‘screeching’. A popular misconception of violin practice lazily and implausibly applied. Edward ‘descends occasionally from the remoteness of his squalid family home’. We have not yet had the full forensic on this sad household, but in case when we do we may be tempted into care the character that is entirely immune to it splatters it with ‘squalid’. He wouldn’t. But the author undertaking to do it for him, renders the later layered description of the home (one of the best) and its habits superfluous when they are offered.

I remember London in 1963 for it was my first impression of this country. I recall vitality, protest marches, Carnaby Street pizzazz, Mary Quant skirt lines, vibrant street markets and 

a sense of optimistic excitement everywhere. None of the new music, new clothes, new food seems to have impinged on the two ‘students’ depicted in this book. I suspect that the vitality of the sixties (now evaporated) has evaporated from memory in the author, which is why the portraits of time place and character all seem false. They are false to the period, the smell, and the fresh winds of that time.

The absence of integrity in the lifeless characters, the laziness in which gobbets of arbitrary detail are tossed into the pot, and above all the hyped success of this work is a dispiriting portrait of both contemporary publishing and assumptions about British readers. Unless they are putting up with British Rail sandwiches, for want of alternatives.

In the March edition of Prospect Magazine Philip Henscher wrote a perceptive article about the ‘State of the Nation’ novel in which he says ‘Where these books fail, I think, is in their point of departure. Too often I felt that the author had started not from memory and the painstaking reconstruction of long-forgotten sensations…They started, instead, from journalistic accounts of a period, from their own nostalgia-laden record collection…’ This seems as true of this book as it is of Sebastian Faulks’s ‘Engelby’ a tortuous trail through period detail, as though the author substitutes unfocussed reminiscence for story. It does not seem true of foreign writers, or immigrants, who remain unafraid of tragedy, emotion, poetry and in using all tell a tale with confidence. If this is true then perhaps British born novelists are not only planning their books for the ho-hum indifference of publishers, but 

are themselves the products of a society caught in an endless stretching yawn.

If I am right, there is no hope for me.

Philippa Rees © 2008

Philip Ruthen on

Sally-Ann Murray

open season – Sally-Ann Murray, HardPressd 2006, Dolbridge, Durban. South Africa. 83pp

ISBN 0-620-37102-1 murrays1@ukzn.ac.za

The blue whale’s oral cavity is propped into awning expanse by pointed poles, disturbingly reminiscent of the female genitalia, and underfoot – flesh gouged by boots of climbing fishermen. Two men ‘pose’ as if contemplating a construction site. Here, and within the pages of Sally-Ann Murray’s poetry collection, are the deconstruction sightings of Durban as a port city within its peoples’ lives, and her South Africa. There is awe; but the apparent mystery of the unknown or unknowable of the people and the country is not a mystery. The ageless battles of subjugation move through her poetry of real history, histories of indifference towards other’s lives, and battles with and against poetry. Murray reaches – as intrinsically depicted by her choice of whaling scenes for her collection’s front cover – art, reverence, uncertainty, and horror.

This is not a history book, or an imprint of times past, or snapshots of now. Whaling always recalls for me Charles Olson’s ‘The Maximus Poems’ and it is this sense of cultural collision, reflection and the pushing beyond the present that Murray’s poetry of  places translates across boundaries and contingent politics. These are impetuses behind my attempt review the collection, and seek the causes of the collection’s relevancies.

Idioms, the ‘found’ in place, are not discarded in this poetry as being simply the remains of a society depicted in turmoil. They enter narration, the narrator, are transferred, and enabled to demand a hearing for the reverberations – personal and political – that emerge from the transference. I use here the expression ‘transference’ for the poetic or aesthetic tensions in movement arriving in poetry from an unsettled stance of ‘inside-out’ – the poet/academic/politician/woman/rooted yet moving above or through the lands: 

‘As she gets older it seems he/

wants her poems/

more perfect/

so/

wants her poems/

less.//

Something about/

utterly transparent/

and/

completely achieved/

and/

finely balanced.’//

(‘Imperfect’)

Sally-Ann Murray, I think, provides in ‘open season’ a robust response to multi-dimensional existing, when I consider Damon Galgut’s more detached reminiscence, or the putting of words into mouths of female characters in ‘The Good Doctor’. There, the expression of women having many different lives takes the author part way in surveying both himself and a populace, but with an uncomfortable gaze.

The form of the work occasionally overwhelms Sally-Ann Murray, as she is attempting to advocate with poetry, and argue with and against the role of poetry itself in contemporary time. She seems suspicious, and rightly so in my view, of word designs, but often finds boundaries in poetry’s ability to express thought and feeling; individual poems have produced effects leading to over-similarity with others in the collection. Rhythms, constructions can become a holding back of experiment in some poems, yet elsewhere, where the words stretch and enter from transference, they encourage empathy. If 

Sally-Ann trusted poetry more, allowing her work to roam by a loosening of form and structure, I feel this might be another route to overcome any sense of stricture. 

The similarity of effects caused me less irritation than I might have had with other poets, whether that was because of content, shifting perspectives – and Murray can present differently, originally, playfully from linguistic possibilities – but I felt she stepped aside too often and too knowingly due to her own irritation with poetry, the academy, and their politics. This is not to say the repercussions from her work are not causing tremors in the institutions.

Where Murray’s poems are the history of the poem/poetry, the veneers can crackle as ‘polished poems’ become – in their self-conscious move to realisation or re-installed political morality – the aesthetics of progression:

‘As long as I can remember (well, long/

as memory goes), I have been a killer/

of sorts, and for real, though not everyday,/

…You may beg to differ.’//

(‘Vigour Mortis’)

By this final poem in the collection, ‘Vigour Mortis’, the domestic or domesticated epic is ironically as truncated as an ‘open season’. Murray shows that the epic, in life and poetry, causes endings and damage amongst the provisions even as it attempts to build:

‘…In the dark, the stream of traffic sounds wet,/

a riverine rush that moves across a plain of flooded light.//

Nothing can force the river to give its passing judgement/

But never imagine that we bridge above the old warning/

And do not attempt to cross when the waters are in spate.//

(‘Mbilo’)

‘…I watch you lug your own beach baggage home/

and place the pieces – paired, grouped, alone./

Not poem, not totem, this unbalanced cairn,/

But sea-silent fragments racked against your ruin.//

(‘Brighton Beached’)

Here is a collection forming a question, from an award-winning poet with extensive publication in local and international arenas – writing which complements her life, and also her work as Associate Professor of English at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. 

Is poetry the ‘good doctor’ of cultural form and conscience? Sally-Ann Murray is honestly undecided.

Philip Ruthen © May/September 2007. A version of this text was first published by The Poet’s Letter on-line magazine, May 2007 www.poetsletter.com, and is reproduced by kind permission of the editor.

Philip Ruthen on

Help Us Somebody – The Demolition of the Elderly

Bob Dumbleton

The London Press, 2006 www.thelondonpress.co.uk Genre: Social comment. Price: £5.95  Pages: 180 ISBN: 1-905006-14-4

One of those points in time of convergence found me listening to the Rt Rev. James Jones on Radio 4’s Thought for the Day, just a short while after re-reading Bob Dumbleton’s important living document and collective indictment on contemporary ‘urban regeneration’, social reform and social housing. Demolition of 1940s pre-fabricated housing is and has been occurring across the UK within the ‘urban renaissance’ of town and cityscapes. The various factory constructed and assembled on-site houses were erected largely as the response of the incoming Labour Government to a housing crisis at the end of the Second World War, with well over 150,000 being built, and an  expectancy of short-term usage only. Many communities exist today contentedly living in these original pre-fabricated buildings. Writing on the general tenet of replacing ‘obsolete’ or ‘unhealthy’ housing Bob Dumbleton acknowledges that in almost every respect it’s a progressive move, but ‘for others it is an upheaval too far. These are not easy deaths. Fear is a cause. Drawn out anxiety aggravates the diseases of age. And people get very tired as the process takes several years’ (Introduction p 1). This publication addresses another socio-economic taboo – regeneration can be bad for your health. And foregrounds the ‘d’ word – resultant death. 

The testimonies, and therefore evidence, presented in Help Us Somebody informs of the ironic ‘use of state power to make unequal people more unequal – as in ill, and dead’ (p 151). The author, collating alternate evidence and experiences of people primarily in Newport (Gwent), and Bristol since the late 1990’s, presents a systemic picture of institutional abuse (my term) toward people, particularly elderly people, placed in horrendous dilemmas concerning the roofs over their heads, where corporations’ choices become non-choices.

Bob Dumbleton, as volunteer housing activist from the 1960s, socialist, radical and retired academic from Cardiff University, advisor to the Welsh Tenants Association, has extensive, deep-seated connections with and of real people in real life, converse to the sense of webs of disconnection spun by local authorities’ implementation of state housing plans.

To find a publisher for this book, however, was another task in itself, the rejection slips accruing as the text was viewed as ‘falling between two stools’ – neither stridently political, nor polemic, or being an academic thesis. I think these rejections – although unwelcome of course – show that the book’s careful stewardship of contributors’ words and lives has not been compromised. The personal and political are there, the analysis is there. The perspectives of coming to terms with an undaunted complex system imposing its own pressures on its staff to deliver up the regeneration projects, the local people’s responses and resignation, and the lessons not learnt from recent history provides a documentary good faith. As does the author’s own chronicling of opposition or despair directed at him from tenants at times, for being a seemingly powerless advocate. Jacqui Handley, a Newport resident, exemplifies the brooding tone of life:

‘Time’s Moving On’

Memories

Can I wrap them in soft tissue so they don’t break

Can I box them up

Can I take them all with me.

Will I still remember

When I don’t hear my creaking floorboard

Nor my gate, which gently creaks

Or my dripping tap that helps me sleep

They will be gone

Today, I will move// 

(p 179)

The unacknowledged causes of death from regeneration and demolition, and widening associations of people enduring ‘the unreasonableness of modern encounters’, gave me the means to link the theological argument of James Jones to radical politics. God, shown by his reference to Isaiah, requests a relationship with mankind based on reason and debate, as ‘to be given space to explain yourself and to be understood is the oxygen of life’. The right to articulate a defence against being suffocated from systemic pressures enforced by officials, capital-based personal and company interest, formalistic law and complex technological mapping inhibiting human contact becomes all the more vital. When rights are ignored or are just not there – whether the right to stay put, or for personal health and well-being considerations to be put foremost, for example, un-reasonableness can enter.

There is a stark message that regeneration can kill, can cause illness. And the extent of this, now, and over past generations is difficult to say, because governments and researchers have done little work in this area. The debate – according to the canonical or ‘established’ authorities in statutory power and academies – is largely uninformed. But uniformed by whom? Where have the funds been directed to find out? Where are the funds, and the will to find out? Who have they listed to, read about, visited, ‘followed up’? There is a body of evidence there already, in papers, articles, and in the mass of projects and communities, but alternate evidence means a need for its appraisal, and a consequential change in regeneration cultures. A step too far perhaps for the Government, local authorities and developers to consider? Similar situations arise in the re-settlement of, for example, people from psychiatric institutions into supposed community care – probably in contemporary times and in as recent times as the 1990s. Few of the lives lost and the causes were fully recognised and the documentary evidence largely un-collated.

I think of the London News programme on TV recently, the campaign by worried residents in the London Borough of Lewisham to protect their rights to maintain their lives in the 

pre-fabricated buildings erected during and after the Second World War. 

Quickly becoming aware of more examples of similar ‘clearances’, Bob Dumbleton’s book is timely, and necessary. And, to echo a phrase from the evening’s BBC TV Newsnight debate, ‘authenticity is everything’: 

…..Time’s running on now not long to go

I’ve tried to cope

But I know when the door knocker hits the metal door 

This will not be my home anymore.   

(from ‘Time’s Moving On’ p 179).

The extracts of poetry from the poem by Jacqui Handley eloquently end the peace. 

Philip Ruthen © December 2007

 

Declaration of interest: Philip Ruthen was a student, and was also tutored at UWIST, Cardiff, 1983-1987 by Bob Dumbleton; paternal grandparents lived in a prefabricated house in the North of England, the Prefab believed now to be demolished. 

References:

Thought for the Day Date: Wednesday 12 December

Presenter: James Jones Subject: To be given space to explain yourself and to be understood is the oxygen of life.

Canvassing prefabs in Lewisham Sunday, August 26, 2007

Posted by The Brunswick Blog at 6:55 PM   Paul Elgood Liberal Democrat Councillor for Brunswick & Adelaide ward of Brighton & Hove City Council and former Parliamentary Candidate for Hove & Portslade in the 2005 General Election. 

How we built Britain – Modern south: Dreams of Tomorrow 

Ep6/6 Sunday 15 July 9.00-10.00pm BBC One

www.bbc.co.uk/bbcone

Residents Calling For Prefabs To Be Saved (from News Shopper) Lewisham

Online Edition News Shopper

www.newsshopper.co.uk by Samantha Payne 2007

The Waste Land – A Biography of a Poem (2022)

Mathew Hollis

Faber & Faber

ISBN 9780571297214 

pp 524   £25

Literary Modernism, it could be argued, is now one hundred years old. The Waste Land and its predecessor -by a short (Caslon) typeface— Ulysses, were both first published in 1922. The former, a hotchpotch of esoteric imagery, exotic quotations and mythological allusions, was originally lumbered with the working-title He Do The Police in Different Voices -a ‘lift’ from Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend- by its author, a reserved and snobbish bank clerk known to his friends and family as ‘Tom’ and towards whom his ‘co-revolutionary’ James Joyce never really warmed. If the dam to this chimaera was T.S. Eliot, then its veterinary midwife was the proto-fascist, Ezra Loomis Pound -two displaced Americans finding common cause in the much-heralded arrival of a ‘new’ form of poetry and, by extension, the advancement of their own artistic careers.

This ‘biography of a poem’ (and act of homage) has been compiled by one of Eliot’s editorial successors at the publishing house of Faber & Faber, Mathew Hollis, and it represents a remarkable feat of scholarship. 390 pages of exceedingly sympathetic exposition, historical narration and critical appreciation PLUS another 136 of Acknowledgements, Notes on sources, Notes, Permissions, Index, Text of the First Edition and Notes on the text of the First Edition. A genuine labour of love, then. For a long time, the recognised authority in this heavily-dunged field was Grover Smith, author of such classics as T.S. Eliot’s Poetry and Plays: a study in Sources and Meaning (1956) and his own The Waste Land (1983). Hollis’ tome looks certain to supplant them as the standard textbook of its generation. It declares its allegiance early with an undisguised admiration: ‘There was not a thing that was incoherent or banal about the craft that Eliot applied’ (which is, to say the least, a matter of opinion).

Hollis’ latest book provides us with a whole raft of new Waste Land trivia. That it was mostly composed on a Corona typewriter, a ‘wretched old one’ carried over by suitcase from Harvard in 1914 and with its mechanism, by 1921, worn desperately thin. That it was written between various locations: the Eliot’s London flat, the Albemarle hotel, Margate, and the Pension Sainte-Luce, Lausanne -where the poet was undergoing psychotherapy from his Swiss doctor, Roger Vittoz. That at the time of its composition both writer and editor were learning musical instruments: Eliot, the mandolin; Pound, the bassoon. That the ‘Albert and Lil’ sequence (from ‘A Game of Chess’) was ‘pure Ellen Kellond’ – reference to the Eliot’s long-term maid who, according to Hollis, ‘accepted low wages and large responsibilities -including nursing the both of them- that no one else would’.

Another factor that this reviewer had previously been unaware of was Eliot’s indebtedness to his friend and Harvard contemporary, Conrad Aiken’s, The House of Dust which had appeared two years prior to his own Magnum Opus. The two books share much of the same tone and, indeed, there are parallels in some of the phrasing. After The Waste Land’s critical success, Aiken would continue to nurse a sense of grievance:

eliot is the cruellest poet, breeding

lyrics under the driest dustpan, mixing

memory and desire {…}

aiken kept him safe, covering

dearth with forgetful verbiage…

Eliot’s rate of alcoholic consumption is something which has received very little scholastic or biographical attention (and neither does it here). He confided to his second wife, Valerie, that his ‘Journey of the Magi’ had been completed (in 1927) ‘after Matins’, with the aid of ‘a half-bottle of Booth’s gin’. In January 1921 (around the period of his commencement of The Waste Land) he boasted in a letter to an American friend that he found life in England more comfortable than that of (Prohibition) America: ‘I can get a drink of very bad liquor of any sort when I want it, which is important to me’. Virginia Woolf would tell a story of him being drunk and incapable. The opening sequence of ‘The Burial of the Dead’ was originally conceived as a re-telling of an alcoholic evening in Boston -with depictions of louche revelry and an ejection from a bordello. The writer’s American roots continued to tether him (‘St Louis affected me more deeply than any other environment has done’ -T.S.E., 1930).

The Waste Land has long been regarded as an alienated reaction to the horrors of the first world war. Yet neither of its begetters felt any especial engagement with that conflict nor served -though both of military age- in a branch of any of the armed forces. Post–Bellum, Eliot was placed in charge of ‘settling all the pre-war debts between Germany and Lloyds’ bank. This despite his having written (to his partially-estranged mother) against ‘that appalling document the Peace Treaty’ (with its punitive array of reparations conducive of so much suffering in inter-war Germany and contributary, in time, towards a renewal of hostilities).

It is difficult at times not to enjoy the irony of the quietly-prejudiced, buttoned-up ‘Old Possum’ (Pound’s nickname for him) Eliot and his openly antisemitic collaborator finding themselves at the mercy of successive publishers -Leonard Woolf at Hogarth, Horace Liveright and Albert Boni at Boni & Liveright, New York- linked by a common Jewish ancestry. Or to be unappreciative of the hypocrisy of two men with decidedly misogynistic views (Pound craved for what he called a ‘male review’ and Eliot ‘distrusted the Feminine in literature’) labouring under the (female) editorship of magazines such as Poetry, Little Review, The Egoist and, eventually, The Dial.  The critic Ian Hamilton commented wryly that ‘No one in The Waste Land -though the poem is obsessed with sexual behaviour (‘A Game of Chess’ and ‘The Fire Sermon’ are concerned with little else) -actually enjoys sex’. He had a point.

In 1922 Pound -whose comments and deletions undoubtedly improved Eliot’s drafts- was still recovering from the critical mauling he had sustained for his ‘flippant’, ‘absurd’ and ‘incredibly ignorant’ translations from the Latin poet, Propertius. Eliot had himself been attacked for his ‘cleverness’ and was viewed in many quarters as little more than an ironist. They both, certainly by then, knew how to game the system. Eliot effectively demanded The Dial Award ($2,000 and created the previous year to honour ‘a service to letters’) before he would countenance publication in that American journal. Neither was he above playing several periodicals against each other in order to raise (additional) publishing fees and stimulate advance publicity. He would sneak in a (World Premiere/British) appearance of The Waste Land in the newly-founded Criterion -of which he, co-incidentally, was the recently-appointed editor. The ‘Old Possum’ knew how to exercise commercial legerdemain.

At the eleventh hour -just before publication- Pound composed three ‘squibs’ (as he called them) which almost made it into the first edition. The opening lines from ‘Sage Homme’ are:

These are the poems of Eliot

By the Uranian Muse begot;

     A Man their Mother was,

     A Muse their Sire. 

Hollis doesn’t expatiate on these: he either does not know (or has chosen to gloss over) that the term ‘Uranian’ was late-Victorian code for ‘homosexual’.

Eliot seems, from the vantage point of his aged eminence, to have become ambivalent about the work which ‘made’ him. ‘The Notes to The Waste Land should not be taken at their face value’. They were, he considered, ‘a remarkable exposition of bogus scholarship’. Certainly, they appear to have been adopted at the last moment both as ‘padding’ (when the MSS was queried as ‘inconveniently short’) and as a sort-of pre-emptive strike for ‘spiking the guns of the critics’ -as he put it. If so, there can be little doubt as to their effectiveness. It is fascinating to find (and yet again Hollis does not provide us with this information) that Eliot’s own personal copy of Miss Jesse L. Weston’s volume of the Grail legend, From Ritual to Romance (1920) -to which he referred in those same notes as being ‘indebted’- has a number of uncut pages. The Notes continue: ‘Miss Weston’s book will elucidate the difficulties of the poem {…} and I recommend it’. Perhaps he either had it by heart (unlikely!) or had kept two copies of it? He would confide to Ford Madox Ford (in 1923) that there were only approximately thirty good lines in the poem and ‘The rest is ephemeral’.

It seems almost churlish to suggest faults in what is in so many ways a splendidly modern production. Hollis can occasionally appear slightly gushing and might conceivably be a little too prepared to accept The Waste Land as an accomplished, integrated Masterpiece -rather than the disparate, near-chaotic mess that it so often demonstrably is. And this despite his own, highly-capable, disassembly of it. Although she is given some attention, he undervalues the contribution -for good and ill- of Vivien Eliot (subject, herself, of a revealing biography: Seymour-Jones’ Painted Shadow). Co-editor, with Pound -who heartily disliked and subverted her- ‘inspiration’ and encourager to, and cuckolder (with the philandering philosopher, Bertrand Russell) of, Eliot -she has been treated harshly, both maritally and historically, ever since her committal to an Asylum by Eliot in 1938. In parting from her brother-in-law, Henry, in 1921 she used words which might, perhaps, have been better-employed to his brother, her husband. ‘Goodbye {…} And be personal, you must be personal, or else it’s no good. Nothing’s any good’.

By definition, a ‘biography’ should cover a whole life and not just its conception and protracted gestation. Quite how a 433 line ‘poem with notes’ attained its present pre-eminence is another story -and one not really told here. Once we have ascertained that Pound and Eliot were not ‘Nice, rounded people’ ,

‘I think it might be a good thing to hang Roosevelt and a few hundred yids IF you can do it by due legal process’

(E.L. Pound, Rome, April 1943)

‘Having only contempt for every existing political party, and profound hatred for democracy, I feel the blackest gloom’

(T.S. Eliot, London, April 1921)

then we might just have to re-think, make real decisions about, the value of their contributions. Or perhaps April really was the ‘cruellest’ month! There can be little disagreement that in their (slightly limited) sphere of twentieth century English literary history, Eliot and Pound were Titans. But what their credentials are for founding a continuingly influential approach to Creative Writing’s ongoing methodology ought, surely, to give us pause…

‘Complimenti, you bitch’. Pound to Eliot, 1922.

‘il miglior fabbro’ (The Better Craftsman). Inscription for Pound by Eliot, 1923.

Ez Po and Possum

     Have picked all the blossom,

     Let all the others

     Run back to their Mothers.

Pound, 1935.

This symbiotic Mutual-Admiration Society would continue with Eliot finessing a redemptive Bollengen prize in 1948 for his erstwhile editor – who was languishing in an institution for the criminally insane and undergoing assessment as to his mental capacity to face an indictment of ‘Treason’. A few months later Eliot would win his own prize, the Nobel. His first wife, Vivien, had died the previous year (of a suspected drug overdose). Inexorably, the iron had entered his soul: Emily Hale (his Muse, confidante and, he said, the ‘Hyacinth Girl’ of the poem); John Hayward (his long-term flatmate, permanently confined to a wheelchair -unmentioned here); Vivien herself -he would abandon them all, swiftly, efficiently, heartlessly. None of which makes him a bad poet: a rather pathetic human being, perhaps. No one without a genuine poetic sensibility could have written The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, but, by 1922, Pretension, Entitlement, Aridity, Despair and Aversion had fully taken hold. The Waste Land is still, truly, a poem for our times.

Kevin Saving © 2022

Peter Street

Charlie Grey

 

It was Tuesday 8^th when Tony died. It was his birthday too. Who ever did it must have had a warped sense of humour.  Saying that he would have loved it himself. He was like that. I think it’s why we got on so well. It was his unpredictable sense of humour. We go back a long way. We shared the same school, same teacher and the same desk. We were both five years old when we met on that first day at Holy Infants. From the word go, he called me Ben.  I was christened Brian.  Everyone else called me Brian. That’s what I mean about there being something different about him. We became inseparable. Sadly, I wasn’t  there the night when they, who ever they were, put two bullets in the back of his head. An execution the police called it.

 

Looking back, he never smiled once that week. For someone who is, was, the life and soul of the party that was quite something.  He certainly lived up to his name of  “joker.” He really believed a laugh a day kept the doctor away. That was his motto.  Maybe one of his jokes, pranks, call it them what you will, backfired

 

Fun was the way he led his life. He was one of those people everyone got on with….Yet, he must have upset someone. Who? Who or why would anyone want to go and put a couple of bullets through his head is beyond me and that’s what I kept telling the police. Worse still the police didn’t think it was a case of mistaken identity.  That was the first thing I asked. No. They were certain he was the target. They went through his house like a dose of salts. Nothing. His bank details were spot on.  Everything about him was spot on.

 

I wondered if it had something to do with those two kids, who him and Charlie Grey caught thieving from the old ladies car. I couldn’t get my head around, how he boasted to all and sundry how he would actually enjoy smashing their fingers to a pulp. That wasn’t like him at all. He deplored violence. Also what frightened me was the way he said, “They’ll think twice before doing an old lady again.”

He had a glint in his eyes and sly smile, the like which I’d never seen before. I kept thinking this wasn’t the boy I grew up with. I blamed Charlie Grey. I told the police as much.

 

For the last two weeks of his forty five years it was all Charlie this and Charlie that. Yes, they had known each other in nursery, and their mothers had been close. But he’d been off the scene for forty years or so and then he suddenly  turns up out of the blue and then very quickly they are best friends. Of course I was jealous. Strange how Tony wished he had a boxers face like Charlie Grey.  Me and Tony had known each other for almost forty years. Neither of us had ever been in a bit of bother, in fact we could count the number of fights we’d been involved on one hand.

 

Fighting wasn’t us, its why I didn’t get this thing he had about wanting ‘A boxers face’ I just didn’t get it. So why, after all those years would he chose Charlie as his best friend? Who looked and acted every bit of the gangster he was. Why did Tony need to be with someone like that? 

 

Sheila, Tony’s wife was the one who found him with his hands tied behind his back. The police think he was shot while kneeling. She’s not stop crying since finding him. Another thing: strange how Charlie, out of the blue had become their next door neighbour and that was just a couple of weeks before the shooting. Sheila said Charlie had been brilliant how he had been supporting her, admitting she couldn’t have got through it on her own. 

 

I never understood why she never phoned me, I was there waiting at the end of the phone for her to contact me; just once would have made me happy. I’ve always been there for her.  But Sheila and Charlie went way back well before she met Tony. After she and Charlie finished and before she took up with Tony, I must have asked her half a dozen times without any luck.

 

I think the reason Charlie came around was to see about getting back with Sheila but she was had been too much involved with Tony. Besides it was far too soon ( if ever) to think of a date . It was so obvious Charlie still held a candle for her from all those years ago. It’s probably the reason why he moved next door to her and Tony. Funny, how just a couple of months after the Tony killing, again on the 8^th the same happened: though this time it was Charlie lying there with two bullets in the back of his head.

 

This time there was no Coppers knocking on the door just big men dressed head to foot in black, bursting twhile shouting, “Police don’t move in.”

 

A plain clothes one sergeant stepped forward, first intruding himself very politely before holding out a dirty cloth and indicating a gun, the very same gun I’d bought from a man who knew a man. 

Peter Street © 2015

Shards & Figments: Poems by Nathalie Buckland, Lismore(Australia),2013 Pp 73, ISBN 978-0-646-90619-5

Reviewed by Jaydeep Sarangi 

 

“If you don’t already know Nathalie, you will after reading this exquisite self-expose and privileged insight into life, hers and yours.”—John Bird

Poems in  Nathalie Buckland’s maiden collection read naturally and consistently and are  remarkably enjoyable and exciting. This enjoyment and ecstasy in the variety of subject and style is what the collection stands for. Poems appeal to our senses, we unwittingly follow a call from within.We soon become part of the poetic process and together, we move on—the poet and the reader. There is the pleasure in the recognition of a shared moment followed by a heightened awareness and anxiety. These  poems can be read, studied, thought about and  reveal deeper meanings of life’s daily acts:

“But always the sun, the sun, the sun

pulls me back

to this place of my heart, Australia,

home not of my childhood,

but of my children.”   ( ‘Migrant’. P.3)

 

Nimbin and surrounding areas are part of what is known as the “Rainbow Region” in Australia . Nimbin is a peaceful  village that welcomes all people to enjoy. It is a vibrant place  where so many talented bards live. Rob Harle and Tamaso Lonsdale have already participated in the blossoming literary  ties between Australia and India. Nathalie has also contributed her poems in Indo-Australian poetic connections. Nimbin for Nathalie is Lake District for Wordsworth and Puri for Jayanta Mahapatra. Nathalie is a committed artist and her commitments are in multitude. :

“Embraced by soft music, air conditioned,

paintings and subtle delicate craft

glow in poignant contrast.” (‘My Nimbin’, P.6)

Here, an indomitable gusto turns the key to a chamber of elevated thoughts. Images are woven one into another with rare brilliance and effortlessness.  Nathalie, a conscious soul-maker,  does not find it difficult to articulate her poetic matter into a corpus that beautifully invites her reader’s interest. No matter what we touch and we wish to know about, we simply end up in the enigma that her words forge:

“the log has no memory

of seed , seedling, sapling

of life as  a forest giant

now felled ,sliced, chopped

morphing to ash(.)” ( ‘a fine and private place’. P.20)

One grandfather of Nathalie was a patron of famous Irish genius W.B.Yeats. Poetic inspiration for Nathalie is like ‘ink in the vein’. She is an elegant poet and her language is simple and sharp:

“I see her shadow

she comes

I will endure,

I am a mother.” ( ‘Daughter’, P. 07)

The beautiful ambiance of a poem is born out of a  prophetic  sensibility of the mind—a fine poem is a colourful rose that  paints a feeling that it holds something more to open, even as it blooms petal by petal before the reader. A powerful poetic imagination enlivens even rusty metals and bricks; such imagination is like an intoxicating drop of wine that fuels the  art of creation. Nathalie’s  engaging lines establish her as an artist for all seasons.

Nathalie’s images are both abstract and concrete. They leave things open for readers. The result is a lyrical moment of ecstasy. She shows us things from new perspectives .She reminds me of  Rizio Yahanan  Raj who writes about the potential, and the magic and charm of the female:

“I am a woman; I posses

occult powers to breathe life

into your old coffers of whim.” (Exchanges with the Thinker, ‘Wind’, 24)

Like Rizio, Nathalie says, “My grail is Woman.” ‘Right’ is a euphonious equivalent of ‘might.’ Nathalie  follows the tradition of Gwendolyn Brooks, Sylvia Plath and Langston Hughes  a ‘fabric rare and strange’. Her poetic self gasps in ‘chamber of maiden thoughts ’ to search for her emotional root proclaiming it as, sap of art  is her heritage. Sap is liquid in a plant that carries food to all its parts. It is a source of vitality for the poetess  to voyage within. Back cover comments are like entry keys to unfold a mysterious casket of delight. The cover design by Rob Harle adds value to the poems. As a whole, this collection is a reading wonder!

Jaydeep Sarangi ©

Associate Professor

Jogesh Chandra Chaudhuri College(Univ. of Calcutta)

30,Prince Anwar Shah Road,Kolkata:33,WB,India