tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13259937443551814302024-03-19T04:13:58.745+00:00New PoetriesNews, notes, gossip and discussion related to Carcanet's New Poetries anthologies.EJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10828650759873212450noreply@blogger.comBlogger54125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325993744355181430.post-79204948011196429062015-10-09T12:00:00.000+01:002015-10-09T12:00:06.737+01:00David Troupes on Poetry, Comics and Time<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In her article ‘Miremur Stellam: Poetry and Comics’ (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.poetrywales.co.uk/" target="_blank">Poetry Wales</a></i>, vol. 50 no. 1), Chrissy
Williams remarks, ‘trying to unpack the language of comics, the language of
panel transitions and the blanks left for the reader’s mind to fill in, I began
to see more and more similarities between comics and poetry’. Me and her both. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As an undergraduate at UMass Amherst fifteen years ago two
things began in earnest for me: the serious pursuit of poetry, and the parallel
and entirely unserious pursuit of comics. The latter arrived in the form of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Buttercup Festival</i>, a means of
self-distraction-cum-self-expression which has, in the intervening years,
journeyed from the pages of UMass’s student newspaper to the pages of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">PN Review</i> via an array of other student
and independent periodicals. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I consider myself a dabbler in the world of comics, but even
dabbling in comics can throw a revealing light on the mechanics of poetry. Much
of this, to my thinking now, comes down to considerations of not just timing,
but time itself. A quick look at one of my favorite <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Buttercup Festival</i> strips, will suggest what I mean. Series 2 no.
15 (have a <a href="http://www.buttercupfestival.com/2-15.htm" target="_blank">look</a>)
is a two-panelled strip with little action and little dialogue. The joke, if
that’s the word for it, is to suggest that the jay’s moment of poise and
freedom would, if imitated by the protagonist, end in painful, flopping
disaster. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The panel sizes matter: the first is expansive and detailed,
the second tighter and more selective. The first clearly contains more
chronological or objective time, especially if we include whatever implied
misadventure landed the protagonist so high up that tree. But both panels
represent the same amount of what I will call emotional or subjective time: the
brief, isolated moment of the second panel is as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">memorable</i> as the larger, slower context painted by the first. The
untenable, hanging, beaks-up energy on which the strip ends is permanently
arriving, permanently fleeting. The moment is obliterated as soon as we turn
away. That is how sequential art plays with time, making subtle emotional
movements permanently available. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The interplay between chronological time and emotional time
– that is to say between the detail within a panel and the movement between
multiple panels – translated into poetry, becomes roughly the interplay between
line/stanza<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1325993744355181430" name="_GoBack"></a> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">length</i>
and line/stanza <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">breaks</i>. Here’s a
portion of ‘Indian Paintbrushes’, the first of my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Poetries</i> pieces:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now our daughter </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">wakes </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">in her chair</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">and watches quietly the green berries. Up in the weeds </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">stars </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">eat each other like fish. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In composing these lines and deciding on the breaks, I am
thinking entirely in terms of subjective time: the gentle isolation of our
daughter’s waking into its own one-word line; the long, comparatively rich line
in which she looks upwards at the berries and sky, watching them for a spell of
time; the way this focuses again on the exclusive fascination of noticing the
stars. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I don’t want to sound too dogmatic or mechanical about all
this. These elements of comics and poems don’t perfectly correspond, and I’ll
certainly also break lines for metrical or aural reasons. But this awareness of
how time can work in poetry – with a jagged array of line lengths playing
against a regular pattern of stanza length to suggest the way subjective time
moves within objective time – has arrived as much through my engagement with
comics as with poetry. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1184" target="_blank">David Troupes</a></span></div>
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EJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10828650759873212450noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325993744355181430.post-77576072014320089292015-09-25T12:00:00.000+01:002015-09-25T12:00:07.928+01:00John McAuliffe on Adam Crothers' 'A Fit Against'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>A Fit Against</b> by <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1176" target="_blank">Adam Crothers</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The left hand knows what the right rear leg wants.<br />
The centaur’s cento splices <span style="font-style: italic;">Black Beauty </span>and <span style="font-style: italic;">Frankenstein</span>.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">He likes to correct people, tells them Beauty’s </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">the name of the <span style="font-style: italic;">scientist</span>, actually. Gulping </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">horse at the head end means he pumps<br />
out hay at the arse. ‘Hay pressed-o!’ he shrieks </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">to nervous applause. Oh for some bolts, oh
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">for a bow. But he’s no Sagittarius, no. Half </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Libra, half Gemini: a tough couple of births. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">He rarely remembers which came first<br />
in the Year of the Second Opinion.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It isn’t immensely important. His lovers<br />
feed him sugar lumps or are arrested. Twilight: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">a coin-spinner guillotines tiny sandwiches. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><i>from </i>New Poetries VI <span style="color: #222222; font-style: italic; line-height: 12px; text-align: right;">© Adam Crothers</span><i> </i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Adam Crothers’ poems plug factoids into statements. ‘The
centaur’s cento splices <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Black Beauty</i> and<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Frankenstein</i>’, declares ‘A Fit Against’,
one of the many sonnets into which he <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fits</i>
his little sonic explosions and non-sequiturs:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It continues, ‘He likes to correct people, tells them
Beauty’s / the name of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">scientist</i>,
actually.’ Why the italics? Why ‘actually’? All a reader can do is stand back and
admire the mad sounds that ensue. And when the centaur’s lower half takes over,
Frankenstein stays in the picture: ‘”Hay pressed-o!” he shrieks / to nervous
applause. Oh for some bolts, oh // for a bow.’</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is playful, creative destruction, the sort which
divides readers into those who might ‘take a fit against’ it, and those who are
happy to be carried along by its associative pot shots. When he refers to the
‘Year of the Second Opinion’, he freely admits that he himself cannot remember
‘which came first’ and, as soon as he says, ‘It isn’t immensely important’,
there is a typical, consequential twist in the poem’s long tail, ‘His lovers /
feed him sugar lumps or are arrested.’</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Crothers’ artful sonnet and stitch-up satire will remind
readers of others, especially 1970s Muldoon with its hybrid mules and unicorns
(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and</i> its centaurs which ‘thunder down
the long road to Damascus”), and also of the poet and one-time Muldoon scholar,
Michael Robbins, whose aliens and predators could easily slip into <a href="" name="_GoBack"></a>Crothers’ rhyme-heavy blues. It’s good to hear that kind of
noise in contemporary British poetry, a noise in which no line is missing Crothers’
particular, fitful, jolting attention to phrase and idiom.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">John McAuliffe's latest book is <i><a href="http://www.gallerypress.com/new-titles-2015/#!/The-Way-In-John-McAuliffe/p/49901015/category=12242012" target="_blank">The Way In</a></i> (The Gallery Press). </span></div>
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EJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10828650759873212450noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325993744355181430.post-31850933599486726392015-09-14T09:55:00.000+01:002015-09-14T09:55:00.058+01:00David Troupes on History and Text<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I was googling the name of a certain hill in Ludlow,
Massachusetts. It’s not a remarkable hill, apart from a bit of outcropping rock
which offers views of the surrounding woods and a few distant hill-lines. It
would only be of very local interest, and the search results were thin, but one
caught my eye: a digitized version of a book published in 1855. </div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A History of Western Massachusetts</i>,
by Josiah Gilbert Holland, is a massive, multi-volume work of tediously
indiscriminate detail. It includes encyclopaedic accounts of the founding
citizens, notable clergy and wartime contributions for each of the dozens of
towns in the state’s four western counties. Brain-bleedingly dull catalogues of
sawmill operations alternate with doubtful but exciting reports of border
skirmishes with native tribes, all of it thickly glazed with self-assured
Protestant moralism and a belief in America’s divine mandate. Reading it – and
I’ve read a lot of it – makes clear just how much has changed in the United
States’ collective psyche. And of course, in other ways, how little has
changed. There is no sense of embarrassment in Holland’s prose – no sense of
regret, for instance, as he narrates the steady dislocation of the Native
American peoples. It’s difficult to say how much regret we own or express now.</div>
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The books reads strangely to a modern audience in other ways
as well. Published in 1855, it can take no account of the American Civil War, a
conflict which in many ways continues to define the nation. There are local
ironies, too. Holland could have no idea that in 1938 four towns, three of
whose histories he had detailed, would come to an abrupt end with the damming
of the Swift River and the creation of the Quabbin Reservoir, the enormous
artificial lake from which Boston, 65 miles away, now drinks. He refers to
Mount Pomeroy and Mount Liza in the town of Geenwich; these are now islands,
rising over their drowned township. </div>
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The books fascinated me. The strangeness of seeing the past
discussed as present, and the further past framed so differently than it would
be now, opened a space for my own thinking, and so for poetry. I began work on
a loose family of poems under the title <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">God
of Corn</i>, four of which appear in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New
Poetries VI</i>. The central preoccupation of these poems – land, and the way
we live in it – is essentially the same as for the rest of my poetry, but the
occasion of this hoary, borey text lets me attempt connections across greater
spaces of time and culture. <a href="" name="_GoBack"></a>If, in these times of
environmental crisis, we are seeing the final flowering of many mistakes, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">God of Corn</i> lets me consider those
mistakes a little closer to their source. The fictive personas I create for
that world are projections of myself, of course, but beginning each poem with a
passage or line from Holland’s text ensures at least an initial quantity of
something foreign, a complicating term in the equation, an intertextuality I cannot
hope to manage. </div>
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Where the bound is sunk, there </div>
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this freedom ends. Yet the man we are </div>
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so desires the farm </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
as he walks by, walking late—</div>
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wants to jump the fence, join</div>
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the fire, stand</div>
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in the crowd of the fire </div>
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and be a part </div>
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of that burning, a part of that having. </div>
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<br /></div>
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(‘The Allotments of Land Were Divided’)</div>
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The tangle of truths and ironies I intend with these lines,
the way the emotion sets off against Holland’s legalistic description of
property allotments with which the poem begins, is both a seeking out of some
decisive folly of the past, and a mirror for my own here-and-how confusion. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1184" target="_blank">David Troupes</a></div>
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EJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10828650759873212450noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325993744355181430.post-8107826715862111042015-09-11T12:00:00.000+01:002015-09-11T12:00:01.355+01:00Nyla Matuk on André Naffis-Sahely’s "A Kind of Love"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>A Kind of Love</b> by <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1133" target="_blank">André Naffis-Sahely</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We loved luxury and ate like pigs, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">but our room, unborn as yet,<br />
was bare; it was a new building,<br />
and when we moved in, the landlord
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">looked us over and said: ‘No noise </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">after eleven please’. Obediently, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">for the most part, we adhered,<br />
and kept the ancient record player
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(among the only things of mine<br />
to survive the neglect and the moths) </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">at its lowest; although money<br />
was scarce, vinyl records were cheap
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">and we took advantage.<br />
Halfway through the tenancy,<br />
I got your name mixed up with </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">another woman’s and, quite rightly,
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">without a word, you took your leave; </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">taking very little except the needle </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">you knew full well was irreplaceable, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">unlike our short-lived kind of love.
</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> <span style="font-size: x-small;">Leicester </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><i>from </i>New Poetries VI <i style="color: #222222; line-height: 12px; text-align: right;">© André </i><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="line-height: 12px;"><i>Naffis-Sahely</i></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 12px;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-CA">Andr</span><span lang="EN-CA">é</span><span lang="EN-CA"> Naffis-Sahely’s “A Kind of Love” is a study of attachment and loss
(love and death) but also a story of indulgence and deprivation, and the poet
has managed to stitch together these correlated themes to present, by the end
of the poem, a twist on what begins as a happily-ever-after narrative.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<!--StartFragment-->
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Excesses
meet enforced stoicism when a couple in love with luxury moves into a bare
room, an antiseptic space in a new building where the landlord requests “no
noise after eleven please,” which hints at a dearth of the night-time
lovemaking noises one might expect to hear from two <i>bon-vivants</i> living under the same roof. An ancient record player is
also played low—foreshadowing already that walking on eggshells may have been
the order of the day, a kind of dance that begs to be transgressed. And
transgressed, it ends up, when the speaker confuses his lover’s name with the
name of another woman; the kind of ‘skip’ to be expected when playing vinyl,
when being so careful that the seemingly mundane, the taken-for-fact, is
entirely wronged. One almost can’t help making such a slip, like laughing at a
serious matter due to nervousness. And in this misprision, full ruination
ensues. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">On
departure, the lover takes the record player needle, the one irreplaceable possession
of the speaker’s which, thus considered, should have been thought at least as
valuable as his lover’s name, but alas, was not. Like devouring a sumptuous
meal (“we ate like pigs”) too quickly, the naming error underscored the
“short-lived kind of love” i.e., one that is impossible to develop further
especially in a place where noise must be minimized after 11. In this poem of reckoning
on a chapter in the past, a living condition (no noise), a word (the wrong
woman’s name) and an object (the record player needle) all conspire to achieve
a totality of qualified, compromised love, “a <i>kind</i> of love.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1179" target="_blank">Nyla Matuk</a></span></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
EJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10828650759873212450noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325993744355181430.post-48785428175547257562015-09-07T12:00:00.000+01:002015-09-13T18:01:03.011+01:00Rebecca Watts on Ben Rogers' "Mackerel Salad"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Mackerel Salad by <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1181" target="_blank">Ben Rogers</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Turned left out of the room, and returned for the security pass. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Conversation about pass, do you need it to get out.<br />
Should it be possible for a building to require you to need a pass to </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> get </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">out. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Pressed button to get into stairwell and then because the light was </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> flashing </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">alternate green and orange you didn’t need the pass to </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> get out. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Turned right out of the building, many going the opposite way, and
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> while doing so planned to get mackerel salad.<br />
Crossed the road to a traffic island, thought about the odds of getting </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> hit </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">by a truck.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">
Odds increase of getting hit if you’re thinking about something else </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> while </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">crossing, including thinking about the odds of getting hit.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">
Crossed the road from traffic island to other pavement, saw an
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> advertisement for mortgages.<br />
Pros for mortgages: the image of yellow flowers on a wooden </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> countertop. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Cons for mortgages: the word </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: italic;">mort </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">means death and </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-style: italic;"> gage </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">means count.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">
Momentary contemplation about the countdown to death while passing
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> a man with dice on his tie.<br />
Entered the usual café and bought the mackerel salad, served by a </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> woman </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">with glasses who didn’t quite make eye contact while </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> smiling </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">so was </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">actually smiling at some air space.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">
Took the mackerel salad to a square in front of a church, thought about
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> wavering prayer and murmuring candles. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Consideration of the paving arranged in circular patterns.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Started to pace round the square following the circular patterns, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> stepping </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">on the individual paving slabs and not touching cracks.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Are they assembled to cater for some sort of ritual.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Do they reflect some sort of astral cartography.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">How did Pluto feel when it was told it was not a planet.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Pluto doesn’t feel things, because it’s elemental.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Thought that it’s hard to know that for absolutely sure.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Decided to ring a friend, and it went straight to answerphone, a </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> recorded </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">woman’s voice neither of us know.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Didn’t leave a message because of having heard sound of own voice on</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> previous occasion and it sounding like someone else.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">On that basis you might not speak at all.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Decided on a bench, sat on the right hand side nearer the coffee stall </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> and </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">ate first fork of mackerel salad.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Man at the coffee stall recommends the white chocolate and cherry</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> flapjack to a woman in a dark red coat, but she doesn’t buy it. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Thought about the different reds, thought about predators in fairy </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> tale. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Read on phone an old post from days ago about someone giving up </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> using </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">their phone for the day the next day, although they will still </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> use the </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">internet.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Thought about being in a wilderness where phones won’t work.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The wilderness had parched olive trees and powdery dirt, as well as</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> stagnant water and reeds nearby to the right and up a narrow path,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> if you can call it that, on the left.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The woman said earlier that this was the last day of the salad.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Thought that some last days go without you noticing, is it better if you</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> notice. Recalled the air conditioning unit in gated car park of a </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> building south-west from the square towards the river, how when </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> passing it it used to have a ticking sound that created the sense </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> time </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">was running out.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The last few times it has stopped ticking.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The sky isn’t a mackerel one because the clouds are too large. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The wind can’t decide where it’s going. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>from</i> New Poetries VI </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 12px; text-align: right;">© Ben Rogers</i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Though I’m not
sure whether to laugh or cry, I am with the speaker all the way to the
penultimate line of ‘Mackerel Salad’. I’ve turned into the corridor and spun
back into the office with him before I’ve even decided whether to read the
poem, and now you mention it I’m not sure whether we can get out without the pass,
which is a mildly disturbing thought, because if the technology, with its
inscrutable flashy-light logic, is in charge, and the power fails, how would we…
But stop. One must not let one’s anxious thoughts speed along to their pre-set destinations
of doom. One must take regular lunchtime walks and practise allowing such
thoughts simply to drift, like clouds, across the blue sky of one’s awareness.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The poem reflects
on and experiments with states of control and letting go. The very act of
narrating a lunch break seems defiant: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Take
that, office job – I am creative – see how I observe and render into sentences
the curious details of daily life, even while sandwiched in your dominion!</i>
The speaker imposes narrative order onto this borrowed hour, documenting post
hoc his actions and thought-topics: ‘<span lang="EN-US">Crossed the road to a traffic
island, thought about the odds of getting hit by a truck’; ‘Took the mackerel
salad to a square in front of a church, thought about wavering prayer and
murmuring candles’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet h</span>e also gives us some thoughts unmediated,
allowing them to evade narration, to hang there in the poem’s consciousness,
without pursuing them: ‘Are they assembled to cater for some sort of ritual. /
Do they reflect some sort of astral cartography. / How did Pluto feel when it
was told it was not a planet.’ No question marks, because no searching for
answers. Such equanimity, however, is hard to maintain; the slip into extrapolation
leads too easily to conclusions, which can be fearful: ‘On that basis you might
not speak at all.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The speaker is a
creature of habit (the imposition of control again) who’s nevertheless experimenting
with spontaneity (freedom from pre-conceits). It’s ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the usual</i> café’ and ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the</i>
mackerel salad’, but ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a</i> square in
front of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a</i> church’, suggesting this
particular lunch spot is unfamiliar. His pacing is ritualistic – neurotic even
– but creative thoughts are liberated by it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Competing with
these instances of liberation are life’s pervasive provocations to eliminate
potentiality through decision: whether to ring a friend, whether to leave a
message, which bench to sit on, which side of the bench, flapjack or no and if
so which flavour… It’s no wonder the mind throws up a vision of a wilderness –
some sparse place where we might avoid the onslaught. But fresh anxiety follows
fast on this image of loneliness – the fear of time running out, provoked by
the sudden recognition, in the memory, of a change in a familiar sight and
sound, which then takes on a darker significance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">How far we’ve
travelled, in only a few steps. The poem mirrors how the mind works: the syntax
of thought compressed in the race to keep up with itself; notions that are
vivid though not fully articulated, juxtaposed with sentences that arise fully
formed from we know not where.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I love it. Which
is why the last line feels wrong. Should it be possible for a poem representing
the flow of consciousness to have a last line. No! The poem should go on as
long as we have mind to read it, for the cessation of the flow of consciousness
is the one event we definitely can’t apprehend consciously. Here only is the
artifice exposed: the poem is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not </i>consciousness,
and must end somewhere.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">That it abandons
its project with the wind’s disorientation is apt. In this image, indecision is
a feature of liberty rather than constraint: the wind ‘can’t decide’ because it
isn’t capable of decision, and in its mindless swirling lies its power. Or is
the emphasis otherwise – is this rather a triumphant realisation – that while ‘</span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">the wind</i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> can’t decide where it’s going’,
can only blow about insensibly, </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">he</i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> is
infinite in faculty?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1186" target="_blank">Rebecca Watts</a></span></div>
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EJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10828650759873212450noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325993744355181430.post-11741460968239804162015-09-04T12:00:00.000+01:002015-09-04T12:00:08.544+01:00Claudine Toutoungi on John Clegg's "Lacklight"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Lacklight </b>by <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1172" target="_blank">John Clegg</a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">At first we didn’t call the dark ‘the dark’;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">we saw it as a kind of ersatz light,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">a soupy substitute which shucked the hems<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">and wrinkles from our objects. That was nice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And later on we came to love the dark<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For what it really was –admired how<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(unlike a candle) it could fill a room,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(unlike a torch) it focused everywhere,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(unlike a streetlamp) it undid the moths,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(unlike a porchlight) anywhere was home,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(unlike a star) it couldn’t be our scale.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In utter darkness, we were halfway down.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Then came the age of lacklight, loss of measure,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">darkness turned inside to cast a darkness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">on itself. Though ‘age’ would make it finite.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Perhaps we’re stuck there, straining in the lacklight.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Still, across the last however long,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I’ve noticed something budding, vaguely sensed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">a nerve untie and reconnect itself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I think my lacklight eye is almost open.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: right;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>from</i> New Poetries VI </span></o:p><i style="color: #222222; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 12px; text-align: right;">© John Clegg</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I need to confess that I am little obsessed with this poem. I have been
saying it to friends and acquaintances<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>– really anyone who passes through my kitchen long enough to hear it –
and enjoying saying it enormously for a while now. This is partly due to the
poem’s devilish simplicity. Phrases such as, ‘That was nice,’ and ‘..we came to
love the dark’ are disarmingly pleasing to utter, as is the term ‘lacklight’
itself, with its playful echoes of lacklustre and lackadaisical. And yet there
is nothing simple at all about this poem, which is why it has me in its grip.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One of its complex aspects is that from the outset we are made complicit
with the speaker. The fact that darkness is being rebranded first as ‘ersatz
light’, then as the invented term ‘lacklight, in a manner that calls to mind Orwellian
doublespeak, is not a state of affairs outside forces have inflicted on us. We
chose this. That ‘we’ rings out three times in the first two stanzas and so
Clegg embroils us all in the murk, deftly evoking how self-delusion gains
collective momentum in a society that’s ‘halfway down’. Clegg establishes a
terrifyingly topsy-turvy world in which an Emperor’s New Clothes-like
conspiracy exists, one where darkness gains plaudits and light none at
all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And the plaudits are so persuasive! Of course a candle or a torch’s
force is only partial, whereas darkness is total. Of course darkness provides
universal cover and offers to even out differences in status. It’s startling
how the neat syntax and assured repetitions of the bracketed phrases so easily
convince us of their authority. We are swept along from the second stanza into
the third with a delicious sense of certainty until, abruptly, we are brought up
short by: ‘In utter darkness, we were halfway down’, and are floored. What does
‘halfway down’ signify? Inertia? Hell? Moral turpitude? Existential angst? Your
guess is as good as mine, but wherever or whatever it is, I’m pretty sure I
don’t want to go there. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Except, devastatingly, Clegg’s last two stanzas seem to suggest we
already are there. Gone are the oh-so-carefully balanced phrases of earlier. In
their place exists only confusion, disruption ‘loss of measure’, conveyed in
the horrifying line: ‘darkness turned inside to cast a darkness/on itself.’ The
deliberately cumbersome enjambment, the fact that now the ‘we’ has become
querulous and questioning, ‘Perhaps we’re stuck there’– all serve to unsettle
us deeply. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Is there hope? Maybe a shred. On the one hand, the speaker, by the last
stanza is freed from the ‘we’ of earlier verses, which might foreshadow a
moment of individual clarity. But just as we contemplate this possibility,
Clegg undermines it. For the speaker here seems less clear than ever before.
They can’t be definite about time (‘however long’). They can’t be certain about
what’s going on with their own body (‘vaguely sensed’). The last line begins
not with a confident assertion but a hypothesis (‘I think’) Might the speaker
simply be more alone, more self-deluded than ever before? Clegg is, in this
ending, masterfully ambiguous, ceding control of the narrative to a body part;
the eye. I’m a little squeamish about eyes and never more so than in Clegg’s
near-final image, conjured with exquisite economy, which has ‘a nerve untie and
reconnect itself’. It is the speaker’s eye, acting semi-independently of its
owner, that seems to be adapting to the gloom. There are overtones here of
mutation, even of synthetic alteration. The effect is destabilizing. Yet,
adaptation and resilience are good things, surely? There’s no neat conclusion
here – the poem evades simplistic moralising at all costs, but Clegg’s final
line is still indubitably ominous: ‘I think my lacklight eye is almost
open’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What will happen when the
eye does open? Will the speaker be enlightened or more lost than ever? We don’t
know. But the way in which the t<a href="" name="_GoBack"></a>erm ‘lacklight’ has crept
into the line itself suggests we should be on our guard.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1183" target="_blank">Claudine Toutoungi</a></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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EJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10828650759873212450noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325993744355181430.post-5930474229108330242015-09-01T12:00:00.000+01:002015-09-04T13:18:55.307+01:00Joey Connolly on Ben Rogers' "Monstera Deliciosa/Semantic Satiation"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Monstera Deliciosa/Semantic Satiation</b> by <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1181" target="_blank">Ben Rogers</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
The sort of plant someone might grip a name on, a name </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">lodged on a bath’s corner ledge. A trickle from the pot, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">shot with loam. Each leaf is an open hand with gaps </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">between the fingers, which imply a loose hold on money, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">and which could connect to having a blank with names. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A name that doesn’t make you think of cheese. The plant </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">is a disorder that hangs over you, a shadow over a sheet </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">of water you cannot name, a shade you associate with
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">the metallic weight of regret. In the mirror, your face<br />
has a tug to it you don’t want to name. There’s a folly<br />
to the multi feather-duster effect that the fronds have</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">as your father parades the plant down the hall on a plate </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">whose pattern you don’t have the wherewithal to name.<br />
The plant has achieved a size where it can no longer perch </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">and has been delivered to a new home behind the television, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">there being no name like home. The television is in the room </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">named the living room, to distinguish it from the other </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">rooms. The fire reaches out to feather the guard. If the fire </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">were solid you’d name it a bed of thorns. Your mother
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">prods for a new channel, but before she does the news </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">broadcaster with a name you can’t name announces<br />
the death of a name you can’t name who appeared in a show </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">with a name you can’t name. The leaves reach out to smother </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">the television. The carpet’s name is soft earth, the wallpaper’s </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">name is mountain slate, the ceiling’s name is a heart turned<br />
to ice. The next trivia question in order to win a slice<br />
named a cheese is to name the plant in the corner. Another </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">time, the plant there will be named a Norwegian spruce.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">
The window’s names are outside, reality, growing up<br />
and danger. This time though, the plant is unnameable.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">
Your parents have left the room, and you are left on the sofa </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">with your name, a word that reflects you but you see<br />
through. A glass word and a plant that can’t nurse. You imagine </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">the plant will move again, and in years to come will plunge<br />
its many feet into hills spun with pine and flint. Returning </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">again to your name, it’s not your name any more, and doesn’t </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">even taste like a name, let alone name like a name. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><i>from </i>New Poetries VI<i> </i><span style="color: #222222; font-style: italic; line-height: 12px; text-align: right;">© Ben Rogers</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">There are still other made-up
countries<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Where we can hide forever,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Wasted with eternal desire and
sadness,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Sucking the sherberts, crooning the
tunes, naming the names.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">John Ashbery, ‘Hop o’ My Thumb’</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></i></span></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxoToN7ucuweE17mqxnhQnkfrjpGcRfykK2vArGJh-GJ47N-3LSYA3KNT-0vJYMqdyVFXhtD4jUmMTfPO_2tyJOq1Mti0GC4ZK_dbIbqKKJcfL10PRjjYV_4lL9A_VLONhMpwml5lJ0nM/s1600/Poem+Analysis.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="163" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxoToN7ucuweE17mqxnhQnkfrjpGcRfykK2vArGJh-GJ47N-3LSYA3KNT-0vJYMqdyVFXhtD4jUmMTfPO_2tyJOq1Mti0GC4ZK_dbIbqKKJcfL10PRjjYV_4lL9A_VLONhMpwml5lJ0nM/s320/Poem+Analysis.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></i></span></span></div>
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<i style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 14px;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">*Click on the image above to enlarge it</span></i></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">‘Monstera Deliciosa’ is the name of a plant, also called the
‘Swiss-cheese plant’ because of the holes in its leaves; it’s defined by the
gaps in it. ‘Semantic satiation’ is the name of that thing where you hear a
word so many times it becomes meaningless. ‘Monstera Deliciosa/Semantic
Satiation’ is<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>a poem by Ben Rogers,
in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Poetries VI</i>. But it’s also
true to say that ‘Monstera Deliciosa/Semantic Satiation’ is the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">name</i> of a poem by Ben Rogers, in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Poetries VI</i>. The words, weirdly,
seem to be both the name of the thing and the thing itself.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">This is a poem obsessed with
names, and the activity of naming. Naming, I think, is the delicious monster of
the poetry world; it’s the violence poets can’t help but do to the world as
they obsessively describe and redescribe – name and rename – the objects around
and inside them, as they project themselves, sometimes forcefully, onto the
world. Its deliciousness is the beauty and the power it can hold; its
monstrousness is in its rapacious processing of phenomena and experience into
something else, something somehow usable.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the poem, Ben Rogers is mounts a full scale expedition around
the different things that names can do. By the time we reach the second line
we’ve had two possible models of names: they can be things to be ‘gripped onto’
objects, separate-to but joined-with. Alternatively, names can stand in for
things: the plant’s name, rather than the plant, ending up on the bath’s corner
ledge. Because this is a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">poem</i>: it
can’t have things in, it can only have the names of things. This goes on – the
poem cycles through loads of cool ideas relating to how names work, but we
don’t have time to discuss them all now. I’ll just skip to my favourite bit,
which is this: ‘The window’s names are outside, reality, growing up / and
danger.’ With the brilliantly placed line-break, what seemed to be a clever and
entertaining poem about words snaps complexly into something a lot more
emotionally involved.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 36pt;">Windows represent the point at
which the outside world is made present and accessible, and for the narrator of
this poem, that outside, external world represents danger. Suddenly, the
obsession with replacing objects with their names makes sense as a defense
mechanism. To conceive of language as </span><i style="text-indent: 36pt;">replacing
</i><span style="text-indent: 36pt;">the world, rather than as being a window onto it – a way of looking at it –
is a way of pushing away the terrifying chaos and disorder of the noumenal,
inhuman world of things-in-themselves. The monsters of the too-real world are
tamed by naming them. It’s the oldest spell in the book.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="text-indent: 36pt;">And</span><span style="text-indent: 36pt;"> taming is necessary; the
window has sprouted four names (note it’s the ‘window’s names’ and not the
‘windows’ names’) which conjures some weird and unsustainable proliferation of
designations, like cells dividing too rapidly, and of the same order of creepiness
as what we feel when plants grow too fast, the natural world as implacable and
voracious. Nature – by standing in opposition to the human – is often a potent
symbol of otherness; think of </span><i style="text-indent: 36pt;">Heart of
Darkness</i><span style="text-indent: 36pt;">, or of the thistles and bulls in Ted Hughes (or nature in all its
narrative-shucking glory in Sarah Lindsay’s </span><i style="text-indent: 36pt;">Debt
to the Bone-eating Snotflower</i><span style="text-indent: 36pt;">).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">‘This
time, though, the plant is unnameable.’ By now, the plant can’t be contained by
its verbal packaging; for a narrator trying with increasing desperation to
block-out the exterior world with a wall of words, this is catastrophic. ‘Your
parents have left the room’ – some kind of grounding locus of authority is
suddenly absent – ‘and you are left on the sofa, / with your name.’ At this
point, the narrator is exposed to his own survival strategy, and becomes
vulnerable to being neutered into language in exactly the same way as the rest
of the world has – for security – been. The narrator’s name is ‘A glass word and
a plant that can’t nurse’; there is no nourishment here, only a brittle fragility.
The poem ends when ‘your name … doesn’t … name like a name.’ The poem, by this
point, has reached the point of semantic satiation; the word ‘name’ stops
making sense. This isn’t a stylistic or formal nicety, though: the poem stops
here because it literally can’t go any further. It’s obsessed with names, and
now they’ve stopped naming things, there’s nothing left.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Again,
though, I get the impression that there’s a human psychodrama taking place
here, and not just linguistic trickery. Even apart from that danger associated
with the external world, there are numerous ominous reachings in this poem;
there is ‘a disorder that hangs over you’ (‘disorder’ as chaos, as a lack of
order, but also as implicative of a psychiatric disorder); there’s the ‘pattern
you don’t have the wherewithal to name’; the way the ‘fire reaches out to
feather the guard’ and the ‘leaves reach out to smother the television’. This
is a world in which mental stability is constantly under threat from the
reaching out of one thing into another. Boundaries are scarily permeable, and
neat languagey categories are wont to break down. There’s a huge desire for the
safety of pure solipsism, with those dangerous windows bricked up. If, as
Wittgenstein wanted to argue, language is the only way out from the crushing
loneliness of existential solipsism, then when names and words fail – become
meaningless with semantic satiation – we’re left in a very lonely place indeed.
Ben’s poem, with great humour and wit, sketches this dry quandary into a plush
technicolour.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1173" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Joey Connolly</span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
EJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10828650759873212450noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325993744355181430.post-88027273920606019422015-08-12T12:00:00.000+01:002015-08-12T12:00:00.297+01:00Our writers read!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYj15RhgdjGbxf89b6o3TNJ2NAwSiau0pefsxM-i3NhKEJl5aAL7iBjCGbg7ndrpicZ9HCiY51ztX6yd1I3QZzA2hyB3LYm4X9KSt6I6qUh-ivRdho1CMavJTydqS8jtUYKMbcLyedrR4/s1600/Whistlejacket_by_George_Stubbs_edit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYj15RhgdjGbxf89b6o3TNJ2NAwSiau0pefsxM-i3NhKEJl5aAL7iBjCGbg7ndrpicZ9HCiY51ztX6yd1I3QZzA2hyB3LYm4X9KSt6I6qUh-ivRdho1CMavJTydqS8jtUYKMbcLyedrR4/s320/Whistlejacket_by_George_Stubbs_edit.jpg" width="264" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">"I'll calm down when you tell me where I can get the latest Paul Muldoon title!"</span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Welcome to 'Our writers read', where we throw out a question related to poetry and ask readers to jump up and catch it. Got a question you'd like answered? Drop it in the comments section for use in the near future.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">We asked <i>New Poetries VI</i> contributors, "Which book of poetry published in the last
decade is most often on your bedside table?"</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Joey Connolly: </span><i><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.faber.co.uk/9780571244089-ooga-booga.html" target="_blank">Ooga Booga</a> </span></i><span lang="EN-US">by Frederick Seidel is probably the most
persistent offender. In several senses. But if I'm allowed to equivocate then I
wouldn't rule out Jen Hadfield's <i><a href="http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/titlepage.asp?isbn=1852247932" target="_blank">Nigh-no-place</a> </i>or Timothy
Donnelly's <a href="http://www.picador.com/books/the-cloud-corporation" target="_blank"><i>The</i> </a><i><a href="http://www.picador.com/books/the-cloud-corporation" target="_blank">Cloud Corporation</a> </i>either.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Adam Crothers: </span><span lang="EN-US">There have been some hefty and
valuable <i>Collected</i>s published in the last decade, and I suspect that
Ciaran Carson</span><span lang="EN-US">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s
and Frederick Seidel</span><span lang="EN-US">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s have spent more time in my unruly stack (</span><span lang="EN-US">‘</span><span lang="EN-US">on my bedside table</span><span lang="EN-US">’</span><span lang="EN-US">) than any slim volume. But I</span><span lang="EN-US">’</span><span lang="EN-US">m interpreting the question as
referring to discrete books of new poems by single authors, and so the correct
answer is likely to be Paul Muldoon</span><span lang="EN-US">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s <i><a href="http://www.faber.co.uk/9780571232352-horse-latitudes.html" target="_blank">Horse Latitudes</a></i> (Faber and Faber, 2006). I started
reading him sometime after the 2002 publication of <i>Moy Sand and Gravel</i>,
making <i>Horse Latitudes </i>the first new Muldoon I bought. And its
publication coincided with the beginning of a doctoral dissertation in which he
would feature prominently. So, even if one disagrees (as one should) with the
occasional suggestion that my poems are overly indebted to this wonderful
writer, it may not be surprising that I</span><span lang="EN-US">’</span><span lang="EN-US">ve spent a long time with this book.
The image on the Faber hardcover</span><span lang="EN-US">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s dust jacket </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">—</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/george-stubbs-538" target="_blank">George Stubbs</a></span><span lang="EN-US">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s <i>Mares and Foals without a Background</i>, c.1762 </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">—</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US">is the image I most
strongly associate with Muldoon</span><span lang="EN-US">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s poetry and indeed with my efforts to say interesting
things about it. It</span><span lang="EN-US">’</span><span lang="EN-US">s far from an easy collection, and looking at it now for
the first time in a while makes it clear that we need to become reacquainted: </span><span lang="EN-US">‘</span><span lang="EN-US">everything</span><span lang="EN-US">’</span><span lang="EN-US">, one poem says of Bob Dylan but
could say as accurately of its author, </span><span lang="EN-US">‘</span><span lang="EN-US">seems to fall within his range</span><span lang="EN-US">’</span><span lang="EN-US">, and as such <i>Horse Latitudes</i>
is not a book to be thrown overboard. I doubt I</span><span lang="EN-US">’</span><span lang="EN-US">ll outlive its usefulness.</span></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Caoilinn
Hughes: </span>Don Paterson's <i><a href="http://www.faber.co.uk/9780571251742-rain.html" target="_blank">Rain</a></i>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">J. Kates: </span>Poetry published
in the last decade is very seldom on my bedside table, where I prefer classics
— right now (I know it’s boring, but true) reading through Shakespeare once
again — but books of contemporary poetry are always beside my seat in the
Little Room, where right now Robert Gray’s <i><a href="http://johnleonardpress.com/?p=186" target="_blank">Cumulus</a></i> holds pride of place.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Nyla Matuk: </span>Maureen McLane’s
<i><a href="http://us.macmillan.com/thisblue/maureennmclane" target="_blank">This Blue</a></i>, Don Coles’ <i><a href="http://www.vehiculepress.com/q.php?EAN=9781550652949" target="_blank">Where We Might Have Been</a></i>, Lavinia Greenlaw’s 2003 book,
<i><a href="http://www.faber.co.uk/9780571222711-minsk.html" target="_blank">Minsk</a></i>, and Annie Freud’s <i><a href="http://www.picador.com/books/the-mirabelles" target="_blank">The Mirabelles</a></i>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Lesley Saunders: </span>I've two books
that have become pretty much indispensable and they're like mirror images of
each other. Anne Carson's <i><a href="http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/24644/decreation" target="_blank">Decreation</a></i> (2006) and Medbh McGuckian's <a href="http://www.gallerypress.com/store/#!/~/product/category=2183043&id=9220827" target="_blank">My Love Has Fared Inland </a>(2008) are constant reminders for me of what can be
accomplished with and through and in language. McGuckian plays with
grammar and semantics, twists meanings and sense, in the service of
psychological / spiritual clarity </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">— </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">her poems are like persons with whom she is
having an intense dialogue; whilst Carson deploys an apparently
straightforward quasi-colloquial register, mouthed by a series of ironic
personae, to express difficult and often very dark emotions / experiences.
Whenever I feel my own language is becoming clagged or clichéd, I
turn to them.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Claudine Toutoungi: </span><i><a href="https://www.upress.pitt.edu/BookDetails.aspx?bookId=36396" target="_blank">The Old Woman, the Tulip and the Dog</a></i> by
Alicia Ostriker.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Rebecca Watts: </span>If I may extend
the decade just a little: Jacob Polley's <i><a href="http://www.panmacmillan.com/book/jacobpolley/thebrink" target="_blank">The Brink</a></i> (2003).</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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EJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10828650759873212450noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325993744355181430.post-58318041543364459522015-08-07T12:00:00.000+01:002015-08-10T08:59:11.540+01:00Adam Crothers on Eric Langley's "Glanced"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>Glanced </b>by <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1166" target="_blank">Eric Langley</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
</div>
<div class="layoutArea">
<div class="column">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">You lovely looker on and by and by and. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">One-eyed Cupid, locked, cocks, and shot
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Zeno’s arrow at Zeuxis’ grapes. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Shaft straight. The pointed
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">parabola arced its homeward hoops on its </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">wondering way through loop and loop
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">towards my eye’s apple; its</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">
projectory now arches down to heel to hit</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">or miss, may kiss the head or glance off </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">on bow bend or twisted thread.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">My flighted hope: that bird cracks glass, and tumblers </span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">beakers breaks on painted grapes</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">on picture plane or bounce back </span></div>
<div class="layoutArea">
<div class="column">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">deflected, as mote on float</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">no overlook, from then to now, as now </span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">
and tip touches now, and now, and when
</span></div>
</div>
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</div>
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</div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">reflected. Map the rebound cause </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I am sore astound and all amazed,
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">while flecks dart and seeds quiver</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">quiver while the heavy freighted interim</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">divides</span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">by half by half by half. </span></div>
</div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Split hairs or ends or seconds now sub-divide </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">by half and half, as hare’s breath
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">on tortoise’s collar falls and arrow </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">tip elbows each atom aside
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">to side or sneaks contracted </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">kiss, a peak, a contact passing
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">charge in the charge in the change </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">from Z to thee kinetic.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">II.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Keep lovely looking on and over </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">looking keep looking till
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">your lead tip punctures what, back then, was </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">walnut, poppy, hemp, pine and olive; then
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">a resinous gloss, of Paris Green, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">of arsenic, of mercuric sulphide;
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">then, later, <span style="font-style: italic;">oglio cotto</span>, honied </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">lead oxide; then beeswax;
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">now, bladder-pod, ironweed, calendula, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">sandmat, in slow drying strata
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div class="page" style="text-align: left;" title="Page 33">
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<div class="column">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">of alpha-linolenic, brittle as it brakes,</span></div>
</div>
<div class="layoutArea">
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<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div class="page" style="text-align: left;" title="Page 33">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">of crisp linoleic, of still wet oleic acid, still wet. </span></div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Then warp canvas warped. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Then wall.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">III.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">So keep on lovely looking on,</span><br />
<div class="page" title="Page 33">
<div class="layoutArea">
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<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div class="page" style="text-align: left;" title="Page 33">
<div class="layoutArea">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">no overlook, from then to now, as now </span></div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">the paste-board splits<br />dry eye and true to touch </span><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">and peck hits home and
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">and each grape breaks and</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">tortoise tumbles down hap with hare</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">and tip touches now, and now, and when </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />and then just so, soothed through </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">freeze frame and bending glass,</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">each hot pigment shot and then
and then, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">keep lovely looking till.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">So glancing blown by, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">so palpably hit away, so
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">keep so lovely looking still </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">keep lovely looking till
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">until each hungry bird </span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">has flown and had his fill.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>from</i> New Poetries VI </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 12px; text-align: right;">© Eric Langley</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Default" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">How often, when reading
another</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">s work, does a poet think: </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">‘</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I wish I</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">d written that</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">’?</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> I</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">m surprised at how rarely I do. There's
plenty of wishing to have the Other</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">s
general abstracted skill, wit, intelligence, authority; and often a specific
image or rhyme will be so triumphantly new and right that I feel some
professional envy at that individual deal having been so decisively closed by
somebody who was not and is not me. But these responses are, I think,
essentially readerly responses experienced via writerly self-regard: being
impressed by the poem, first, and then wanting (a very close second) to be
similarly impressive.</span></div>
<div class="Default" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Default" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">Reading Eric Langley,
however, provokes in me what feels like a writerly response, one poised between
those two. The word </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">‘</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">craft</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">is complicatedly freighted: many poems have
died for lack of it, and yet to identify it in a poet</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">s work can be to accuse that poet of mere box-checking
competence. Yet in Langley</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">s poems </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">‘</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">craft</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">is a
verb, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">‘</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">crafting</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">the identifiable phenomenon. To feel that one
is witnessing in detail a compositional process, a series of moments clicking
together into a triumph, is to feel tantalisingly close to being the composer;
the consequent sense of falling short, I suggest, gives rise to the desire to
have authored the poem, to have had the satisfaction of that full experience.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="Default" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Default" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">Satisfaction is the aim
and the subject of Langley</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">s </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">‘</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">Glanced</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">. Its core image is of a projectile launched at a painting, but
not just any painting, or indeed any projectile. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">‘</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">One-eyed Cupid, locked, cocks, and shot || Zeno</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">s arrow at Zeuxis</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">grapes.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">The arrow that will never reach its target
because it must travel an infinity of ever-smaller distances along the way; the
two-dimensional painted grapes convincing enough to fool hungry birds</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">…</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">of course Cupid would come to mind. In the
first section, the arrow is fired; in the third, it thrillingly, impossibly,
hits, and yet is </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">‘</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">hit away</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">, glances off, another volley apparently required.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="Default" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Default" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">The middle section sees
Langley catalogue the raw material of the target, the painting: </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">‘</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">bladder-pod, ironweed, calendula, | sandmat</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">’…</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">Ingredient and procedure are much on his
mind, and this may be what prompts me to think along similar lines in my
response to this poem. To engage in a full reading would be a pleasure, but a
lengthy one; it will have to suffice here to speak of the constant fizz and zap
of repetition and tiny variation, the poem embodying the phenomena it
identifies: </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">‘</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">while flecks dart and seeds quiver | quiver</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">; </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">‘</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">charge in the charge in the change</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">; </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">‘</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">tip touches now, and now, and when || and
then just so</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">. Logic, acoustics, erotics: love poems, of
which this is a jealous one, know that these are not discrete fields of study.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="Default" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Default" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">We are aware that
through parody of reasoning the arrow cannot reach the grapes, cannot cover the
space between the poem</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">s beginning and end or even the space between
couplets; and we know that even if it did, those flat and artificial grapes
would give no wine. <i>Ceci n</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">’</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">est pas un grain de raisin</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">. Nor indeed would the painting give up </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">‘</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">each hot pigment</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">as a separate part: but Langley</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">s slowing and assessing of time and tone
allows the reader to entertain the possibilities, to see that the set and
frozen moment or colour is, when angled correctly, anything but. When MacNeice
writes </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">‘</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">Everything wrong has been proved</span><span lang="FR" style="color: #323232;">’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;"> in <i><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2007/oct/22/poemoftheweek13" target="_blank">Autumn Journal</a></i>, he is movingly
speaking in defiance of proof; Langley, just as movingly, speaks in its favour,
persuading the reader that, in a manner of speaking, something commonsensically
wrong can be shown as aesthetically right, emotionally accurate. Perhaps the
notion that Cupid</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">s arrow might never satisfactorily hit its
mark, and that the mark is anyway not as it seems, is as true as the notion
that a painting is made of mere pigments, a poem of mere syllables; and perhaps
this is all okay, or better than, with no need to pretend that matters are
otherwise.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="Default" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Default" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">Many great poems seem
more than the apparent sum of their parts. I find Eric Langley exciting because
his poems as wholes are precisely made up of their visible or audible pieces,
and because there</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">s pride in every cog and switch and pin,
every stress and rhyme and repetition boldly displayed. (The marvel at
mechanism in </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">‘</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digesting_Duck" target="_blank"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">Vaucanson</span><span lang="FR" style="color: #323232;">’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">s Duck</span></a><span lang="FR" style="color: #323232;">’</span><span lang="FR" style="color: #323232;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">is itself a marvel.) It</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">s like watching <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugfa4gr9tD4" target="_blank">Penn and Teller </a>or Derren Brown explain a magic
trick: I believe I</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;">ve seen exactly how it's done, but I still
don't know how they managed it, and I wish I'd done it because then maybe I'd
understand. As it lies, I am sore astound and all amazed.</span></span></div>
<div class="Default" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="Default" style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #323232;"><a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1176" target="_blank">Adam Crothers</a></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i style="color: #222222; line-height: 12px; text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i style="color: #222222; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 12px; text-align: right;"><br /></i></span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
EJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10828650759873212450noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325993744355181430.post-70899884143671857782015-08-05T12:00:00.000+01:002015-08-05T12:00:09.007+01:00Our readers write<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgRtAZmWgBCMJfeQjvz5zc8SwUgzVKMnbfHUpMUPHrI_-Z7EoJXn5B1dIPLbsHkRxTPB6r9E2RHUZ8l1wW8o6Y3d5t_XGsN8Kw6USN0EgYRKpdwrLb_VqyXJOHmRDmP1EfSoQ-RXrf_Ko/s1600/PD68920059_D9RGMW_2656372b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgRtAZmWgBCMJfeQjvz5zc8SwUgzVKMnbfHUpMUPHrI_-Z7EoJXn5B1dIPLbsHkRxTPB6r9E2RHUZ8l1wW8o6Y3d5t_XGsN8Kw6USN0EgYRKpdwrLb_VqyXJOHmRDmP1EfSoQ-RXrf_Ko/s320/PD68920059_D9RGMW_2656372b.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">George Herbert's meat-tasting face</span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Welcome to 'Our readers write', where we throw out a question related to poetry and ask readers to jump up and catch it. Got a question you'd like answered? Drop it in the comments section for use in the near future.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">We asked <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781784100377" target="_blank"><i>New Poetries VI</i> </a>contributors to fill in the blanks:</span></span></div>
<span style="line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">If ________ were alive today, he/she'd be outraged/entertained by _________. </span></i></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></i></span>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1176" target="_blank">Adam Crothers</a>: </span>If George
Herbert were alive today, he'd be outraged by the suggestion that in order to
innovate properly he should abandon, not redouble, his pursuit of metre and
rhyme.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1179" target="_blank">Nyla Matuk</a>: </span><span style="line-height: 22.719999313354492px;">I would introduce William Carlos Williams to the artist Tracey Emin’s installation, “My Bed.” He might appreciate it as a thing-in-itself.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 22.719999313354492px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1182" target="_blank">Lesley Saunders</a>: </span>If Sappho were
alive today, she'd be entertained (and probably delighted) by how much her
poetry is still being read and enjoyed, especially considering how little of it
survives. According to the <i>Daily Telegraph</i> (January 2014), a newly-discovered
fragment of her poetry was 'even more exciting than a new album by David
Bowie'. And you can even listen to a reconstruction of how the only complete
extant poem of hers <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/hearing-sappho" target="_blank">sounded</a>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1184" target="_blank">David Troupes</a>: </span>If Emily
Dickinson were alive today, she'd be all about anonymous blogging.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1186" target="_blank">Rebecca Watts</a>: </span>If Wordsworth
were alive today, he'd be outraged by how out of tune we are with reality. In a
well-known sonnet he laments the widespread inattentiveness to Nature (his capital)
among a recently industrialised populace fixated on the 'worldly' actions of
'getting and spending'. Ironically, what he called 'nature' we might call 'the
world', which today (at least in those parts lucky enough to be free from
attention-demanding natural disasters) is generally ignored in favour of a
virtual realm, where screens, headphones and social media platforms deliver on
demand the proxy sensory and emotional experiences that so convincingly
resemble meaningful interactions. While I don't believe collective human
experience would be improved by us all spending our days rambling in the Lake
District, exclaiming whenever we happened upon a nice flower, might there be
some fruitful middle ground between Wordsworth's privileged position and iPhone-induced
oblivion? No doubt if Philip Larkin were alive today he'd offer up some
sensible suggestions.</span></div>
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EJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10828650759873212450noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325993744355181430.post-47867188975834202792015-08-03T12:00:00.000+01:002015-08-03T12:00:05.250+01:00John Clegg on Alex Wong's "The Landowner"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>The Landowner</b> by <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1131" target="_blank">Alex Wong</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Rambler, direct your care </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> To this magnificent gift.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Dare, rambler, to make durable those views.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> ——More trust, more debit.—— </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Lest the day come to see all trust is up, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Learn to speak newly over nature; build </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Fresh castles for your chances to enjoy.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> Make chiffchaffs pay to find a way </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Within, from a world not edified since Eden.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Hear in the song not only expressive bird,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">
But a history in your tongue, to beat the bounds. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As a child skims the ways of ideal gardens, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> So can you then, so have you those</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Adventures to go on with, grounds</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Possible to their keepers;—outworks, follies. </span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>from</i> <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781784100377" target="_blank">New Poetries VI </a></span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 12px; text-align: right;">© Alex Wong</i></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">One of the
most substantial postwar changes to the English landscape was surely the passing
of the majority of country houses from private hands: and this change has, I
think, been slow to register in English poetry. Perhaps the difficulty has been
the same as that which affects the casual visitor to these properties: the
ambivalence between what was best and worst of the old system, how these estates
are simultaneously a temple to conspicuous consumption and an English vision of
prelapsarian order. (However far removed the latter concept is from our
conscious sympathies, it must be part of what we imaginatively access when we
appreciate, say, Austen.) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1325993744355181430" name="_GoBack"></a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This
ambivalence is what animates Alex Wong’s ‘The Landowner’. The poem’s key word,
‘trust’, is freighted with it; the National Trust, of course, is the titular
‘landowner’ (as we know from ‘magnificent gift’, the language of brochures and
panegyrics), and the financial sense of ‘trust’ is constantly foregrounded
(‘magnificent gift’, ‘more debit’, ‘pay to find a way’). But at the same time,
we are being shown Eden – another ‘ideal garden’ held in trust by a distant yet
omnipresent landowner, in which we must ‘speak newly over nature’. The
chiffchaff, I think, is emblematic of Eden because of its onomatopoeic designation:
Eden being for Wong, as for other poets, the place where every object receives
its single correct name. And Eden is, also, the Platonic image of the poem
possible in language, towards which our duties are those of a caretaker’s or
visitor’s towards a great house: ‘to beat the bounds’ (of language, of the
estate), ‘to make durable’, ‘to direct [our] care’. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The pun on
‘grounds’ – both the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">reasons</i> and the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">land</i> in which a poem must be rooted – is
beautifully handled, and in ‘keepers’ there is, perhaps, an echo of another
Bible story, Tyndale’s translation of Cain’s question to God. The Eden invoked
by the poem is treacherous and unstable (the ‘fresh castles’ are, surely,
castles in the air); the resulting poem may turn out to be a ‘folly’, an
unwisely nostalgic recreation of something already ruined; or alternatively an
‘outwork’, a working-out. ‘The Landowner’, I think, is the sort of poem that
works something out, a poem which, remarkably, listens to its own advice.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1172" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">John Clegg</span></a></span></div>
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EJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10828650759873212450noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325993744355181430.post-21994237124575961222015-07-31T12:00:00.000+01:002015-07-31T16:21:12.898+01:00Judith Willson on Claudine Toutoungi’s ‘Cats Breakfasting'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>Cats Breakfasting</b><span style="font-size: small;"> by </span><a href="http://claudinetoutoungi.weebly.com/" target="_blank">Claudine Toutoungi</a></span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>after John Craxton’s painting </i>Cretan Cats</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The meat of the fish is long gone.<br />
Its smiling bones intersect with the back of a chair, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">laid out pat, one more rung in a stack</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">
and the velvety cats can’t leave it alone.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There’s no word for this in the language of cat,<br />
this pawing furore, vertiginous spitting,<br />
cats here then there, then not here and not there,<br />
a hair’s breadth between them and their skeleton love.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Tails, bones, chair, paw, they are spinning and the picture is </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">spinning, as they hiss in their fit, little beasts,<br />
wild for the flesh of it, leaping in tempera strokes, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">implacable button-blue eyes driven so strong
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">they could lick the egg-yolk from the paint they’re made from. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><i style="color: #222222; line-height: 12px;">from </i><span style="color: #222222; line-height: 12px;"><a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781784100377" target="_blank">New Poetries VI</a></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; line-height: 12px;"> </span><i style="color: #222222; line-height: 12px;">© Claudine Toutoungi</i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">There is no implied narrative from which to draw out a
poem in </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Craxton" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;" target="_blank">Craxton</a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">’s ‘</span><a href="http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/craxton/Cats.html" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;" target="_blank">Cretan Cats</a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">’, no human figure from which to conjure a character,
not even a landscape to walk the mind through. It suggests nothing very
complicated about the artist’s state of mind. It’s just an interplay of
hexagonal tiles, a slatted chair, fishbones and a tangled circle of two black
cats, all legs and tails and arched backs.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">A painting so purely engaged in the pleasures of its own
visual qualities might seem to have limited possibilities for exploration in a
poem. For much of Craxton’s career, his evident delight in surface, in pattern,
colour and the play of Mediterranean sunshine, was considered to have limited
possibilities even as painting (‘a hint of the best type of Chelsea restaurant
mural’, in one critical put-down that memorably combined spite with snobbery).
Craxton had left England in the late 1940s, eventually making his home in <a href="http://www.visitgreece.gr/en/greek_islands/crete" target="_blank">Crete</a>,
and his postwar paintings sing with the pleasures of the South in glowing
yellows, radiant blues, sunbaked greens and ochres. Craxton found his visual
language in the clarity of light and sparse landscapes of Crete: ‘Don’t expect
to find any perspective in and around the Aegean’, he wrote. Instead, ‘a
complicated movement of lines ... dances with a static movement. ... The moment
caught from right inside of the form and held with an internal and external
pressure.’ Which sounds very like what happens in a poem.</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Claudine Toutoungi’s ‘Cats Breakfasting’ is a
beautifully lucid and subtle response to this inner structure of Craxton’s work,
a poem that both sends the reader to the painting with opened eyes, and is
totally of itself, needing no supporting illustration – ‘held with an internal
and external pressure’. It is a compellingly visual (and tactile) poem – ‘velvety
cats’ have ‘button-blue eyes’, ‘smiling bones’ ‘intersect with the back of a
chair, / ... one more rung in a stack’. This is exact and restrained, achieving
the illusion of transparency – yes, we can see that configuration of ‘tails,
bones, chair, paw’ erupting into a spinning, hissing knot of ‘little beasts’, a
‘pawing furore’ of cats that thread and roll and jump through Toutoungi’s
precise lines, a static dance circling around the poem’s midpoint: ‘ cats here
and there, then...’.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Then look more closely, and it slips away, like a magic
eye image when your stare goes out of focus. That spinning knot isn’t cats: ‘the<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> picture</i> is spinning’ (my italics).
Toutoungi has changed everything – we’re spinning, too now, back to the
beginning to look again at what we thought we were seeing. ‘The meat of the
fish is long gone’, the poem opens: a succession of now-you
see-it-now-you-don’t images. The cats are ‘here, then there, then not here and
not there’. What did we expect? Real cats?</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The poem’s last line explicitly draws us back towards
Craxton’s painting, reminding us that these cats are dabs of colour on canvas, and
now words on a page. They ‘could lick the egg-yolk from the paint they’re made
from’. Craxton painted in egg tempera, but even as Toutoungi dissolves the cats
into paint, her poem returns them to us in all their ferocious appetite for
life, ‘wild for the flesh of it’, for the nourishing richness of meat, fish,
egg yolk, for button-blue and golden yellow. The spinning cats will always be
there, always in the moment of leaping out of sight. Claudine Toutoungi makes
us see what it is like to look; what art –</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 150%;"> the poet’s and the painter’s – can
do.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=824" target="_blank">Judith Willson</a></span></span></div>
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EJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10828650759873212450noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325993744355181430.post-10912999165482175022015-07-30T12:00:00.000+01:002015-07-30T12:00:04.569+01:00London Review Bookshop NPVI Podcast!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Click <a href="http://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/events/past/2015/7/carcanet-new-poetries-vi" target="_blank">here</a> to listen to a podcast of the NPVI launch at the London Review Bookshop, featuring <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=981" target="_blank">Jee Leong Koh</a>, <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1186" target="_blank">Rebecca Watts</a>, <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1173" target="_blank">Joey Connolly</a>, <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1167" target="_blank">Vahni Capildeo</a> and <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1172" target="_blank">John Clegg</a>!</div>
EJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10828650759873212450noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325993744355181430.post-80059747142589956462015-07-27T12:00:00.000+01:002015-07-27T12:00:10.447+01:00Lesley Saunders on finishing a poem<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-US">One conundrum
that I seem to face quite often in reaching the final version of a poem is finding
a balance between two opposing principles:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>on the one hand to follow the very sound advice not to patronise
one’s readers – for example, by using up precious space in a poem to provide
information which a reader (especially a reader conversant with poetry) either already
knows or can reasonably be expected to guess; and sometimes the information is
trivial anyway, not integral to the real gist of the poem.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">On the other
hand, it’s important not unwittingly to baffle or distance readers whose
cultural backgrounds may be very different from one’s own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Glancing references and allusions that
seem self-evident to a writer could smack of esotericism or even elitism to
some of her readers, and result in that layeredness of meaning in poetry – the
past brought to bear on the present, the historical or mythical on the personal
– being lost.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I feel
particularly anxious about this because my love of ancient Greek and Roman
literature means I’m still strongly drawn to those bottomlessly rich resources
of myth and legend, and want to revivify and reinterpret their power and
passion for myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once upon a
time, it was probably the case that most readers of poetry in English knew who
Hector, Tiresias, Hannibal, Agricola were and what they did (to take just a few
of the heroes and villains I’ve recently written about).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I’ve realised, from friends’
reactions to drafts, that I can’t take that for granted – any more than I can
be sure of recognising the mythical and historical figures inhabiting the work
of, say, Shara McCallum, Daljit Nigra, <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1167" target="_blank">Vahni Capildeo</a>… </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Solutions
I’ve adopted for individual poems include appending a brief epigraph as context
(as in ‘Landfall’, ‘Olfactory’, ‘Army Musician’, ‘Particulare Care’), or, more
rarely, adding an explanatory footnote;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>in one or two of my poetry collections, I’ve included several pages of
notes at the end, which readers can ignore or peruse as they choose. But yes, I know it’s all a bit Waste
Land-ish, that notes look off-putting in themselves, too academic and recherché
for the spontaneous, inspirational nature of poetry…</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Perhaps some
poets hope or expect readers will use internet search engines to track down
references, though this presumes a considerable degree of readerly commitment,
as well as the risk (discussed by Henry King in his <a href="http://newpoetries.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/henry-king-on-janet-kofi-tsekpos.html" target="_blank"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Poetries</i> blogpost</a> in 2011) of ‘letting information stand in
for understanding’.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -17.35pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">It’s easier
at readings and performances, when I can slip in a crucial piece of background
during my preamble, or else check with the audience whether more context would
be helpful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I’d really
welcome hearing what strategies other writers have developed in trying to
resolve these dilemmas – </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -17.35pt; text-align: right;">
<span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1182" target="_blank">Lesley Saunders</a></span></div>
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EJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10828650759873212450noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325993744355181430.post-25495628033478777962015-07-24T12:00:00.000+01:002015-07-27T11:23:14.896+01:00David Troupes on place in his poems<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Thinking is a situated activity. Knowledge of myself and
knowledge of my surroundings are inextricable. Maybe this is why so many of my
poems are situated in specific, named places: the way I felt, the way I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">thought</i>, when I was there, in that place
and time, cannot be separated from the place itself. And even though the poem I
write is of course not a record of my thinking on that past occasion, but a
record of my thinking over the memory months or years later, still the attempt
to re-enter my own past head must begin with a mental return to that place, a
summoning-back, as nearly as I can, of how it felt to think and to be there –
wherever there happens to be. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hence the several place-name titles in my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Poetries VI</i> pieces, including
‘Swimming at Ovens Mouth’, ‘Swimming the Deerfield at Stillwater’ and ‘Echo
Lake’. </div>
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<br /></div>
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In visiting these memories to make poetry, however, I’m very
aware of the risk of producing something which excludes the reader. This risk
is a part of all art, of course – even the most fictive poem may still indulge
the writer’s private emotions and beg its wider concern from the reader – but
the problem seems especially acute with memory poems written about named
places. They can have a postcard quality of ‘wish you were here!’ self-delight.</div>
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<br /></div>
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My first strategy for avoiding this pitfall while preserving
the time-and-place specificity which is such a part of my creative process is
to begin quite literally with the place-name: I try to approach it as naively
as anyone who hasn’t been there would, and begin to construct the poem’s
meanings around the meanings suggested by the name itself.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfhRdVYAAe8R5_zEGLKIDWerYzKKF8UpkZc4zokoei5XuL5u71nOPey_sT6O1olW9uK7_YjPCIaAKDkPBNNYA2bGS9WnrW-XVImq-jCix7XULqv4LPypORcg-JygK9LgBkYY7XXThbqkA/s1600/Echo+Lake.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfhRdVYAAe8R5_zEGLKIDWerYzKKF8UpkZc4zokoei5XuL5u71nOPey_sT6O1olW9uK7_YjPCIaAKDkPBNNYA2bGS9WnrW-XVImq-jCix7XULqv4LPypORcg-JygK9LgBkYY7XXThbqkA/s320/Echo+Lake.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The poem ‘Echo Lake’ – a lake in my home town in
Massachusetts and one of my favorite haunts when I’m visiting – begins and ends
with the same image, and contains other images of subtle repetitions and
expansions, so that the whole poem rings, very softly, with echoes: ‘Crows
pass, // a slow communication.’ The poem is based upon a particular winter walk
a few years back, when I spent a day rambling through the frozen woods around
the half-frozen lake. But in writing the poem I tried to obliterate anything
like specific detail in favour of the enigmatic and suggestive, inviting the
reader to live a while in the scene, thinking their own thoughts, instead of
merely passing through a description of someone else’s bygone.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWBQUt7R_PJ3vKb0QKGjdI-QRkJfAo4NyAhnRkYhzpJcdoAjsB-fysZkYB_NxV5og8mErC0IRN64TKbZPrReAhk4umlEentPnhnPq-eXEKOHhGVcMWFbi0sB9EgXlOtmqCJeyEkTNJlx0/s1600/Ovens+Mouth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWBQUt7R_PJ3vKb0QKGjdI-QRkJfAo4NyAhnRkYhzpJcdoAjsB-fysZkYB_NxV5og8mErC0IRN64TKbZPrReAhk4umlEentPnhnPq-eXEKOHhGVcMWFbi0sB9EgXlOtmqCJeyEkTNJlx0/s320/Ovens+Mouth.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Pushing that metaleptic aspect of my imagery, keeping it
strange but ultimately relatable, is a big part of my poetic effort these days.
‘Swimming at Ovens Mouth’ begins ‘The sun and moon / dawdle in the evening crowns’:
for me those crowns are the black, jagged shapes of pine trees against an
evening sky, but they could as easily be brightly colored sunset clouds, or the
broad undulations of the horizon. The point is not what they refer to, but that
the intelligence of the poem sees them as crowns: glittering symbols of power.
Ovens Mouth is a stretch of tidal creek in Maine, and, if I’m being honest, my
wife (to whom the poem is addressed) never swam there: she swam a mile or two
away up the rather boringly named Back River. But ‘Ovens Mouth’, suggesting an
entrance to where things are made and unmade, the edge of some enormous
rawness, was too beautiful a name to pass by in the interest of mere historical
accuracy.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWax8Prve-pnsklk35S_MBio1EhBKOVdE0FxzzXhm4c_gSFAkQYyj-j29uapK1cj_k6kYS-W_yaG8pHdJ3sD07wYcCwgIXXsWJQjmDatZ7hF4DgppVcDTV7cDVXH9Ny3DhQcTho0tkUtQ/s1600/Stillwater.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWax8Prve-pnsklk35S_MBio1EhBKOVdE0FxzzXhm4c_gSFAkQYyj-j29uapK1cj_k6kYS-W_yaG8pHdJ3sD07wYcCwgIXXsWJQjmDatZ7hF4DgppVcDTV7cDVXH9Ny3DhQcTho0tkUtQ/s320/Stillwater.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Maybe I’m always on the lookout for resonant place names. An
hour we spent swimming with friends in a stretch of the Deerfield River called
Stillwater, not far above its confluence with the Connecticut River in Western
Massachusetts, was memorable mostly for being cold and tiring. But I knew the
name was a potential opening into meaning. The water does <i>look </i>still, with no ruffles and few swirls, but the moment you
launch yourself bodily into it a powerful current begins towing you away. The
physical experience of being in that water, in light of the place-name’s
optimistic lie, suggested all sorts of things about human resentment of time
and death.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So although ‘Swimming the Deerfield at Stillwater’ is built
from a real memory, set in a real place and full of real people, it is, I hope,
essentially an unfolding of the strangeness that we should name a stretch of
moving river Stillwater.<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1184" target="_blank">David Troupes</a></div>
</div>
</div>
EJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10828650759873212450noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325993744355181430.post-55788412336712355172015-06-22T12:00:00.000+01:002015-07-30T12:03:58.804+01:00Nyla Matuk on Molly Vogel's "On Heidegger's Being and Time"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>On Heidegger’s </b><span style="font-style: italic;"><b>Being and Time</b> </span>by <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1185">Molly Vogel</a></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">When I was fourteen, I wanted to play the violin. I did not </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">have the discipline of my twin, her feet</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">
dragging before her eyes down each stair early</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">
before seminary each morning. My Mom accompanied her</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">on the piano, a remnant from girlhood that came before </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">books and boys. Vanessa played while she thought
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">and Mom thought I slept upstairs.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I was listening: a book by my bedside and my black lab asleep</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">in my twin bed.
</span><br />
<br />
<div class="page" title="Page 144">
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-style: italic;">Now</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, I would hear Mother say. It is time, </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-style: italic;">now </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">is the time. Everyone </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">is waiting for you. Your siblings are waiting for you</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">in the car. God is waiting for you, too.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">II
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The metronome tsks time. It is telling the <span style="font-style: italic;">now</span>,</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: italic;">now</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">now</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">now</span>. It is the quiet from the before,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">the clamor of what is to come: four equally stressed</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">sixteenths. The details deliberate, the need for discipline</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">in the disparate. The phrasing of time being</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">robbed from one note to another. Refuge in order:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">the absoluteness of a thing holding time, holding time</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">in time. Pointing to </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-style: italic;">now</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, no, </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-style: italic;">now</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">—though the tick-tick sound </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">has come and gone before it has come. </span></div>
</div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">III
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Listen: one can only wait </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">for nothing; nothing waits </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">for no one. I know nothing, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">know no end </span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="color: #222222; line-height: 12px;"><i>from</i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; line-height: 12px;"><i> </i><a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781784100377">New Poetries VI</a> </span><span style="color: #222222; line-height: 12px;"><i>© Molly Vogel</i></span></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I’d only started dipping into <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781784100377">New Poetries VI</a></i> when I became convinced Molly
Vogel’s “On Heidegger’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Being and Time</i>”
was a poem that would stay with me a very long time—which was quite possibly
her intent for its readers. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The poem’s ending folds seamlessly back to
its beginning (chronology being top of mind for me, I saw fit to look at the
end as a possible new beginning) emphasizing a sort of volition-in-statis: at
the end, the speaker realizes “nothing waits / for no one” and in the first
stanza, the speaker’s sister, Vanessa, played piano “while she thought / and
Mom thought I slept upstairs.” These perceptions, of life or events moving
along regardless of the doings or sleep of the speaker, anchor the poem’s idea
of time moving along despite the state of being itself. It’s almost as if the
speaker is both aware of her being-in-space while simultaneously aware of her
non-existence as events unfold.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And as if mocking the speaker’s lack of
discipline and volition to learn piano, the mother speaks as though she were a
metronome marking time: “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Now</i> I would
hear Mother say. It is time, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">now</i> is
the time.” I read here a nod to time being wasted, too, the non-piano playing
daughter simply marking the time passing as observations of someone else’s
piano lessons without actually doing something else instead.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the second stanza, the poet observes a
perception of pure time; of what it does and that it is always already removed
from the present. This echoes the idea I noted above, of an existence always
being superfluous and inconsequent to time’s movement. The metronome is
enlisted to mark the moments that move: “It is telling the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">now,</i> / <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">now, now</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">now.</i>” Indeed, the “tick-tick sound / has
come and gone before it has come” and it’s likely the reverse of my thinking on
this may be true about this poem: that it is not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">being</i> that stands still, while events occur irrespective of it;
rather, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">time</i> faithfully marks a now
that can be pinpointed while one’s being, in the penultimate line, knows
nothing and knows no end. So the constant here might be time’s undeniable
moment to moment presence; our being must work around it. If “nothing waits /
for no one” we’ve perhaps arrived at a zero sum game.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Much as I have always wanted to read
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Heidegger">Heidegger</a>’s </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_and_Time">Being and Time</a></i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, like the
speaker in this poem referring to piano playing, I’ve never had the discipline.
It’s possible Molly Vogel has obviated my need to read that book altogether
with this rich meditation.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1179">Nyla Matuk</a></span></div>
</div>
</div>
EJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10828650759873212450noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325993744355181430.post-69496129065130429182015-04-24T13:46:00.002+01:002015-04-24T13:47:29.454+01:00New Poetries VI! Coming soon! <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglDDhJzrkwFW-nLUFPDzZ4l4-2sSMn-rtBpMMBzySFGoRLo1uukPm_uqznMvUllj6xP-agNGWjyEN6iS5lJm2a8725puMRU1IsdOh753mluqNE36Ps7zanLynRLvotQRnIhz3spB7ogVw/s1600/Schmidt+NPVI-cover-front-DRAFT.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglDDhJzrkwFW-nLUFPDzZ4l4-2sSMn-rtBpMMBzySFGoRLo1uukPm_uqznMvUllj6xP-agNGWjyEN6iS5lJm2a8725puMRU1IsdOh753mluqNE36Ps7zanLynRLvotQRnIhz3spB7ogVw/s320/Schmidt+NPVI-cover-front-DRAFT.jpg" /></a></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br /></div>
New content! New poets! New editors! New! New! New! (Same excellent quality!)EJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10828650759873212450noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325993744355181430.post-12479135477970154822011-11-15T11:02:00.000+00:002011-11-15T11:02:59.413+00:00Henry King on Janet Kofi-Tsekpo's 'Beucklaer reports from the biblical scene'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b>Beuckelaer reports from the biblical scene</b> by <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=979">Janet Kofi-Tsekpo</a><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>after four paintings by Joachim Beuckelaer at the National Gallery</i></span><br />
<br />
1 <i>Water</i><br />
A thousand fish found stranded in the middle<br />
of a market town have had better days.<br />
<br />
Hooked and gutted and sliding over<br />
each other in barrels, they have the eyes<br />
<br />
of humans who secretly worship nothing.<br />
Some get a fair bit of attention<br />
<br />
as they shimmy along the cobbled stones,<br />
their mouths agape. Traders throw up their hands.<br />
<br />
A man with long hair holds up two fingers,<br />
says he knows nothing about it.<br />
<br />
2 <i>Air</i><br />
Singing sea shanties to the empty waters,<br />
half the sailors are longing for their wives;<br />
<br />
courtyard women who wring the necks of birds.<br />
They lost their flight some time ago. Talons<br />
<br />
are removed from the foot of a falcon<br />
that like a slovenly girl lies featherless<br />
<br />
amongst the ordinary poultry, partridges<br />
and guinea-fowl, and other wild game.<br />
<br />
3 <i>Fire</i><br />
What we create are pale imitations;<br />
this meat on the hob, these bodies hanging<br />
over a flame. The fire gently nibbles<br />
<br />
the trees of the forest. She lays down<br />
her blanket like a vixen covering<br />
her young. A volcano is just<br />
<br />
an adolescent nosebleed, an eruption<br />
that might disturb her parents; make them<br />
wake up and feel the heat of their own making.<br />
<br />
4 <i>Earth</i><br />
As if it had been lifted into the air<br />
and dropped again, the earth<br />
belches something sweet,<br />
<br />
shedding and renewing<br />
by mere circumstance<br />
the rotten and the riches,<br />
<br />
as we scoop vegetables in their packs<br />
and ignore the cauliflowers, smiling<br />
superfluously like maiden aunts.</blockquote><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>from</i> <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781847771315">New Poetries V</a> <i>© Janet Kofi-Tsekpo</i></span></div><br />
The internet has many advantages for poetry, not least being blogs like New Poetries, which put poets and their readers in contact. Search engines and online encyclopaedias, too, are invaluable for tracing references and allusions. I often wonder how different the debates about ‘difficulty’ and ‘obscurity’ in modern poetry would have been if the early readers of, say, Pound’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cantos</i> had been able to look things up online – but of course, there are complex reasons and ramifications as to why poets felt the need to include so much in their work at just the time that they did (the influence of Ezra Pound’s poetics on the theories of Marshall McLuhan being a case in point). The internet is especially helpful with ekphrastic poems – poems about visual artworks – in enabling you to see the image, as in the case of Janet Kofi-Tsekpo’s “Beukelaer reports from the biblical scene”.<br />
<br />
But it can be a double-edged sword. It’s easy to get tangled up in the chain of links – skim-reading articles, letting information stand in for understanding, even forgetting what it was you were trying to find out. In fact, these dangers are very similar to those faced by the critic writing on ekphrases: there’s a continual temptation to think that seeing the picture means knowing the poem, and vice versa, finally settling for a superficial acquaintance with both. One can perhaps guard against this by determining to look for what the poem is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">doing</i>, either with the picture or on its own.<br />
<br />
With these preliminary warnings, then, I would direct you to the National Gallery’s website, where you can see Joachim Beukelear’s “<a href="http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/joachim-beuckelaer-the-four-elements-water">The Four Elements</a>”. Look at them; scrutinise them; but then look back and see what Janet Kofi-Tsekpo makes of them.<br />
<br />
In “Water”, the fish flopping over the foreground “have the eyes // of humans who secretly worship nothing”, a glazed, nihilistic stare. But look at the eyes of the humans in this scene. They look back, apparently surprised to find themselves being watched, but with only a bare minimum of interest. They seem to see us, but can’t; and this makes it unsettling to return their gaze, knowing it never reaches them. Contact vanishes into <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mise en abyme</i>. What dead, empty eyes their spectator must have.<br />
<br />
The sailors in “Air” are not in the picture; perhaps they’re the Disciples, just visible in the background of “Water”. In the foreground, their wives; beyond, a “slovenly girl” appears to flirt with someone’s prodigal son. There’s a contrast, not visible in the painting, between this open-air intimacy, and the loneliness of these women married to mariners. “Fire” continues the imagery of families and old flames, and seems to take off even further from the picture; while in “Earth”, the cauliflowers smile “superfluously like maiden aunts.” If this suite of poems has an underlying theme, without amounting to a message, it’s something to do with families: what drives them, and the times when that motor stalls. <br />
<br />
And look: in the top left of “Earth”, the holy family, with the virgin mother, goes trundling over a bridge.<br />
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=997"><span lang="EN-GB">Henry King</span></a></div></div>EJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10828650759873212450noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325993744355181430.post-38114807915914468852011-11-02T08:00:00.046+00:002011-11-02T08:00:00.589+00:00Miriam Gamble on Alex Wylie's ‘A Letter From Polème’<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b>A Letter from Polème</b> by <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=994">Alex Wylie</a><br />
<br />
This Year of Good God 1790 (blighted<br />
be its annal!) year of common<br />
rule, uncommon riot; the old ways rutted-at,<br />
untenable, I rode southward<br />
to Polème. Three days of cold (writing without light)<br />
three nights, saddle-weary, well passed.<br />
How slowly came I here! How masterfully kept<br />
my back straight on the straight road back<br />
to Hell – such wrought enormities housed in this place! –<br />
dreaming of the green walks to come,<br />
his gardens rustling rustic fictions in my brain.<br />
<br />
The Count coddled me in rich wine.<br />
I watched him lace the air and palated my quiet,<br />
movement being air made flesh, flesh<br />
unspeakable. Like an anxious shade, the candles<br />
cast me on his lordship, arranged<br />
thereon the wight of his lost house, an alien<br />
cadenza playing on itself<br />
(Nota, the question of the sum is yet unfixed<br />
&c. &c.<br />
the Count is more distrait, abstracted, these last days –<br />
if this seems strange I am sorry)<br />
<br />
He admires my selflessness and confessed as much;<br />
I confess in faith, coming to<br />
his point of view, I admire him for saying so.<br />
Quixote of your riven sky,<br />
O Moon! Enmantled yet, my comprador of light!<br />
For I would not alert my host<br />
to this my writing – there is a weird, subtle wire<br />
binds me to this blasted helix,<br />
a thing of Youth with scant attachment to the world<br />
taking account of dead money.<br />
<br />
(Tempered in the hissing wine, the will – iron, but hot –<br />
is forged and bent. See! in the glass<br />
grows a dawn of iron, as wine passing hot through blood;<br />
as through a washed-up, half-drowned wretch.<br />
Dribbling white sand, he dreams himself a golden mouth.<br />
Yet politicking with the Count,<br />
I count myself, of late, with the dreamers, lying<br />
earth-hooked, tracing his lineaments<br />
on ruin’d cloud)<br />
For what dim purpose came I so<br />
slip-shoddy into Hell? Through purpose, accidence,<br />
I am quite utterly absorbed –<br />
his kindness adversarial compels me here –<br />
the Oleanders spike my heart<br />
like Opium – the Count coddles me,<br />
holding me in usufruct as in rich wine<br />
(writing in the dark is seldom easy, my friend)</blockquote><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>from</i> <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781847771315">New Poetries V</a> <i>© Alex Wylie</i></span></div><br />
“if this seems strange I am sorry.” Many of Alex Wylie’s poems <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">are</i> very strange, and ‘A Letter from Polème’ is no exception. In fact, it may be the oddest one I know – vocally, syntactically, down even to the very question of what is going on and what we are supposed to ‘take’ from it.<br />
<br />
These are not, however, criticisms, and the above-quoted apology, though partly in earnest, is only partly so. With most of Wylie’s poems, and emphatically here, we are asked to enter the world of the voice almost entirely on its own terms. In fact, this is one of the main drivers behind the poems. They are voices from nowhere, placed somewhere, and trying to communicate. This poem is not in ‘Wylie’s’ voice, but that doesn’t necessarily set it apart. It is not an exercise in mimicry, a workshop entity, so much as a problematic means of self-expression, exploration, through the vehicle of another. Another way of saying that is that, although faked, the voice is entirely genuine and the distinction between voice and poet muddy.<br />
<br />
On one level, ‘A Letter from Polème’ is a gothic romp, an anti-pretension piss-take of characters like Stoker’s Jonathan Harker – earnest penners in the diary of self-important thoughts and ‘unusual’ experiences. Wylie loves rhetoric, but is suspicious of it, so he glories in this opportunity to give his lyrical skills full rein (without having to take the rap) in lines like “the old ways rutted-at, / untenable” and “Dribbling white sand, he dreams himself a golden mouth”.<br />
<br />
Yet, as that last line suggests, there is a wistfulness at play for the very ‘pretension’ which he seems to knock. This image, like many in Wylie’s poems, is in fact profoundly beautiful, and captures with succinctness the central dilemma of his art. Prophecy and the yen for ‘knowledge’ are prominent themes – in, for example, the “moonstruck man” in ‘The Star and the Ditch’ – and suggest, in the very mode of their expression, the sense that, at its best, humanity is a glorious, a wonder-inspiring thing. On the other hand, they are simultaneously qualified or cut down by both context and irony. Or perhaps the context <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> the irony. Stars always have a ditch to go along with them, the ‘light’ its opposite number in ‘dust’. And the seeker after ‘beauty’ or ‘truth’ is always overseen by a gallery of disapproving livers by commonsense, with whom Wylie is not entirely unsympathetic. In some cases, as in ‘Jericho’, the reader is included in that gallery. Does he distrust his reader? I think he does; I also think he’s right to. His poems are difficult to understand because they are uncompromising, refuse to pay their tithe in common currency – common in the sense of ‘shared’. They’re dispatches from the interior, hard-won, fiercely honest and always, of necessity, partly opaque. To use his own words, the poem is “an alien / cadenza playing on itself” – aware of its aloneness, trying to speak, but not willing to tell untruths to do so.<br />
<br />
The gothic offers us a world turned upside down, turned against the accepted world, both as pure antagonism and as a means of showing the latter to itself. Wylie has a foot in both camps, and grants them equal ‘reality’, just as Lorca did the dream against the ‘real’. Past critics have found him difficult to write on, and have blamed him rather than themselves, which is mistaken. We shouldn’t be trying to sum these poems up. Rather, we should accept that they <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">are</i> difficult (though also very pure), and that, if we lack the critical vocabulary to pigeon-hole them, that is down to the uselessness of pigeon-holes, and also part of his point.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/personpage.asp?author=Miriam+Gamble">Miriam Gamble</a>'s first collection, <i><a href="http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/titlepage.asp?isbn=1852248688">The Squirrels Are Dead</a> </i>(Bloodaxe), received a Somerset Maugham Award in 2011. </div></div>EJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10828650759873212450noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325993744355181430.post-44547195548380709562011-10-29T10:01:00.002+01:002011-10-29T10:19:04.373+01:00'These editors know their onions when it comes to poetry'!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9kaXSWZ2H2FcY1QF-AYNinhxV9THXnggtSyp3K5_D9lwTLt4J5_ysyeSEAYHxi8fERhkdsW4r0TBuJaGjkbAFVC4SkcX84aP7RsDqDBBcQ2m32ugC0QkHycZWdGYI9alEIKE8-BtF1PA/s1600/npcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9kaXSWZ2H2FcY1QF-AYNinhxV9THXnggtSyp3K5_D9lwTLt4J5_ysyeSEAYHxi8fERhkdsW4r0TBuJaGjkbAFVC4SkcX84aP7RsDqDBBcQ2m32ugC0QkHycZWdGYI9alEIKE8-BtF1PA/s320/npcover.jpg" width="205" /></a></div><br />
Something worth shouting about: a nice review by Nick Lezard earlier this week in the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/"><i>Guardian</i></a>. Lezard is full of praise for the poems in the book and the editors. Read it <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/oct/25/new-poetries-v-anthology-review?newsfeed=true">here</a>. <br />
<br />
<i><a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781847771315">New Poetries V</a></i> is available to purchase from the <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/">Carcanet</a> website with a 20% discount and free p&p. </div>EJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10828650759873212450noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325993744355181430.post-53667167412514937682011-10-25T08:59:00.000+01:002011-10-25T08:59:44.737+01:00Grevel Lindop on Helen Tookey's 'At Burscough, Lancashire'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b>At Burscough, Lancashire</b> by <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=983">Helen Tookey</a><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Lancashire’s Martin Mere was the largest lake in England when it was first drained, to reclaim the land for farming, in 1697.</span><br />
<br />
Out on the ghost lake, what's lost<br />
is everywhere: murmuring in names<br />
on the map, tasted in salt winds<br />
that scour the topsoil, westerlies<br />
that wrenched out oaks and pines, buried now<br />
in choked black ranks, heads towards the east.<br />
Cloudshadows ripple the grasses as the seines<br />
rippled over the mere by night, fishervoices<br />
calling across dark water. Underfoot, the flatlands'<br />
black coffers lie rich with the drowned.</blockquote><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>from</i> <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781847771315">New Poetries V</a> <i>© Helen Tookey</i></span></div><br />
I’ve been reading Helen Tookey’s work with growing admiration. Her quiet, precise poems have a genuine eeriness – a spooky quality that I've met with nowhere else in recent poetry. I think it comes from the fact that she has interests in both archaeology and psychology, but knows intuitively that they aren't separate – that when we dig up the past it’s our own roots we are looking at; and when we explore the dark corners of our personal psyche, we’re also daring to open up the hidden aspects of our culture and society.<br />
<br />
'At Burscough, Lancashire' is a case in point. The poem is about a lake that's no longer there. Helen Tookey uses its absence to evoke the landscape (a strange, nondescript no-man's-land) in vivid, sensuous detail but also with semantic depth, so that the placenames on the map recalling the lost mere merge into the sound of the wind, and the trees which still turn up now as fossilised bog oak and the like become disturbingly evocative of mass human graves. Ruminating on the loss of the mere, she writes, by implication, an elegy for the communities that lived and worked there and have now, like the lake, gone with hardly a trace. She also hints at the other cultural obliterations which have stained past centuries. The 'choked black ranks' recall ethnic cleansing, forced migration, mass starvation. And the simple fact that, over the centuries, many people, fishers and other, must have drowned in the lake and been forgotten. Even money is there, faintly, with the substitution of 'coffers' for the expected 'coffins'.<br />
<br />
But it’s all held together by a consciousness which sees in a context of myth. The ‘fisher voices calling/across dark water’ are voices from the other side of the river – Styx or Lethe – that separates the dead from the living. These are the souls of the dead that might call to us in sleep. Could it even be that they are fishing for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">us</i>? The choice choice of ‘flatlands’ is deft also – and again a neat substitution, because we would expect ‘wetlands’ (indeed, the remnants of Martin Mere are now a bird sanctuary run by the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust). Not just a neat label for the nondescript alluvial west-Lancashire landscape, it suggests a flat earth that might tilt up one day and show worrying things underneath. For the mathematically aware it also recalls Edwin Abbott’s 1884 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flatland</i>, a brilliant Lewis-Carroll style fantasy which enables even the simplest person to understand the amazing nature of spatial dimensions.<br />
<br />
Helen’s poem shows us just how many dimensions an absent lake and a depopulated landscape can have. And she tells us about it in such deceptively gentle and musical tones, hovering on the edge of blank verse, but always staying flexible, floating between four stresses and five – 'rippling' and 'murmuring' as the poem says. It's like listening to a lullaby that soothes and seduces with its beauty; but just might give you nightmares.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://grevel.co.uk/">Grevel Lindop</a>'s <i><a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781857544657">Selected Poems</a> </i>and <i><a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781857547900">Playing With Fire</a> </i>are published by Carcanet. <span lang="EN-GB"> </span></div></div>EJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10828650759873212450noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325993744355181430.post-84994971224739866632011-10-19T08:14:00.001+01:002011-10-19T10:32:33.155+01:00Our readers write<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk4iusw7j58tpYMx__CbvFr38NY6v1gPCfVFqIr1wCINb8Mr37gBib5_G4Gf3y9jo5orad5Rnxf8Am5Jnpsur41_UscGC4tUNVMJzNuSxyG2kuNkwST9QGf2uiZOakI6IlnY8mrSzf-6Q/s1600/moore.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk4iusw7j58tpYMx__CbvFr38NY6v1gPCfVFqIr1wCINb8Mr37gBib5_G4Gf3y9jo5orad5Rnxf8Am5Jnpsur41_UscGC4tUNVMJzNuSxyG2kuNkwST9QGf2uiZOakI6IlnY8mrSzf-6Q/s1600/moore.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Marianne Moore disliking it.</span></div><br />
Welcome to 'Our readers write', where we throw out a question related to poetry and ask readers to jump up and catch it. Got a question you'd like answered? Drop it in the comments section for use in the near future.<br />
<br />
<i>Reading over the introduction to </i>New Poetries V<i> and thinking about canons and contributions, who for you is an important poet with a small oeuvre?</i><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=888"><b>Dan Burt</b></a>: I take your question <i><span style="font-style: italic;">[w]ho for you is an important poet with a small oeuvre</span></i> to mean, a dead poet to whom I return regularly. They are: Ransom and Snodgrass (Americans); Housman and Eliot (English).<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=992"><b>Julith Jedamus</b></a>: I would choose Bishop and Larkin: both perfectionists, both intensely private and self-censoring. Bishop published, if I recall correctly, seventy-eight poems in her lifetime; Larkin’s output, during the ten-year gestation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">High Windows</i>, was reckoned to be two-and-a-half poems per year. It is hard, in both cases, not to wish for more—and yet we have their prose (her travels, his jazz), their letters, and, controversially, their notebooks. How glad I am for his crossed-out cul-de-sacs, and tracks gone cold or stale; and her snatches of description (‘begonias ghostly in a galvanized bucket’) and rejected titles, her lists of possible rhymes (imposture/imposter) and musings on her art. In the unfinished essay ‘Writing Poetry Is an Unnatural Act’ she wrote that the qualities she admired most in the poems she liked best were ‘Accuracy, Spontaneity, and Mystery.’ Ah, yes....<br />
<br />
<b><a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=931">Evan Jones</a></b>: The question strikes me as very Modernist: Eliot published sixty-six poems, Marianne Moore seventy-one. But it brings to mind immediately a little-known Canadian-America poet, Joan Murray (1917-1942), whose work was published posthumously in one slim book, selected by Auden for the Yale Younger Poets Competition in 1947. For John Ashbery, she is 'one of the poets of the forties I most enjoy rereading'.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=986"><b>Rory Waterman</b></a>: Well, there are many obvious choices, for all sorts of reasons: Wilfred Owen, Philip Larkin, A. E. Housman. But where would we be without the remarkable and tiny oeuvre of Ian Hamilton? No poet has squeezed so much out of so little. And whilst I'm on the subject, our perpetually back-patting generation (of poets, critics, magazines) would benefit equally from taking note of his editorship and his incisive criticism, as well as his catholic tastes.</div>EJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10828650759873212450noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325993744355181430.post-61889915353326863492011-10-17T08:00:00.009+01:002011-10-17T08:00:07.053+01:00Henry King on Alex Wylie's 'Jericho'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><blockquote><b>Jericho</b> by <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=994">Alex Wylie</a></blockquote><blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Funnily enough there's only air</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">between us, no wall</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">of monumental moment and renown</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">to storm at, blow up or bulldoze down,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">nor lock to twist off with the minor key of song;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">though for some reason – as you mark well – </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I've brought along</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">my own wall-flattering trumpet to blow</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">with one desire, to enter Jericho.</span></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span lang="EN-GB"><i>from</i> <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781847771315">New Poetries V</a> <i>© Alex Wylie</i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></div><br />
I didn't notice for weeks. Perhaps my own upbringing, permeated by Bible stories, left me over-familiar, too complacent for close reading: the story of the Israelites marching around the walls of the besieged city of Jericho every day for a week until the sound of their trumpets (and Jehovah’s wrath) brought the walls to the ground. Or perhaps it was that off-hand opening: 'Funnily enough...' The letters are even deceptively simple in shape. For whatever reason, I had been reading the second-to-last line, as one might expect it, as a wall-<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">flattening</i> trumpet. But wall-<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">flattering</i>? What to make of that?<br />
<br />
So, let’s go round it again. The poem is addressed to someone, thus there's some kind of relationship in play – but the speaker is disconcerted by the fact is that 'there's only air / between us, no wall'. It feels like there <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">should</i> be a barrier between them; the feeling is so strong that it is itself a barrier. In the tradition genre of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">carpe diem</i> poems – exemplified, in English, by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Marvell">Marvell</a>'s 'To his Coy Mistress' – the poet employs his eloquence to persuade an unwilling woman into accepting his advances. The story of Jericho might seem like a perfect conceit to deploy in this situation. But the declared permeability disarms the usual demolition strategies; and the superbly Augustan metaphor (not forcing a new trope, but finding it in the language itself) of the 'lock to twist off with the minor key of song' implies, through the metonymic connection of song and poetry, that poetry isn't going to guarantee access, either.<br />
<br />
But the speaker – the poem's Joshua – has brought along his 'wall-flattering trumpet', one that will not bring down but actually build up the wall, however insincerely. In fact it already has: the wall 'of monumental moment and renown', with its play of sounds, has been raised by the poem’s diction to a rather grandiose stature. Distracted by the wordplay in the penultimate line, one might not notice the in-built idiom, to blow one's own trumpet. So the trumpet – a variation on the poet's lyre or lute – is to flatter the wall, but also the poet himself. His stated desire, 'to enter Jericho', seems more and more like a pretext for this self-aggrandisement. <br />
<br />
But this is what happens in the classic <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">carpe diem</i> poems: the poet cannot just assume the girl's objection or the other obstacles; describing these provides opportunities for the poet to display his virtuosity, just as much as he uses it to overcome them. 'Jericho' extends the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">carpe diem</i> tradition by commenting on it, sending up the masculine hubris of the genre. Most telling is the aside '– as you mark well –' in which the poet acknowledges that his listener is not naïve; she's heard this one before, and if she's going to accept the poet it won't be because she's left defenceless by his rhetorical prowess. But if this poem isn't intended to do exactly that, still, it finally got through to me.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=997">Henry King</a></div></div>EJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10828650759873212450noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325993744355181430.post-65478650853922551732011-10-14T08:00:00.037+01:002011-10-14T08:00:03.086+01:00Sasha Dugdale on James Womack's 'Balance'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><blockquote><b>Balance</b> by <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=978">James Womack</a><br />
<br />
It didn't want to let the morning<br />
Come, as if the globe were rocking back,<br />
Back and forwards, twisting gently like<br />
A fair-day weathervane, and turning<br />
Towards the sun, turning us away.<br />
Calm but firm, the world like a mother<br />
Did not allow it to be either<br />
One thing or the other, night or day.<br />
The sky was gritty with darkness, with<br />
The light and the dark mixed, for the air<br />
Was full of masonry-dust, plaster,<br />
Powder, snowflakes, soot. I thought that if<br />
I tore the page off the calendar<br />
The next page would have the same number.<br />
It didn't want to let morning come.<br />
Fine by us. But the mechanism<br />
Slips suddenly out of gear—we are<br />
Jerked forward, lose balance once more.<br />
This is the last station in autumn—<br />
The sun is up, the scales have fallen.</blockquote><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>from</i> <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781847771315">New Poetries V</a> <i>© James Womack</i></span></div><br />
I copied and pasted this poem into a document so I could read it and write about it at the same time. The computer grasped the words but dropped them without punctuation and line structure onto the blank sheet. As an exercise, in a kind of poetic curiosity, I began to put back in the line breaks and when I had reassembled 'Balance' I checked it against the original. The poem had reassembled itself easily and entirely, like a well-made travel cot, snapping rigid back into place, the rhymes and internal rhythms bolting down, despite the weathervanity, the apparently undecided cusp of a moment it describes.<br />
<br />
I like this balance between day and night, and between seasons, like a gently rocking cradle, I like this observation because I know it to be generally true. But the gentleness, the lunar holding pattern, belies a ruthless diurnal drive forward. In James Womack's poem the move forward is a jolt, a jerk, the loss of balance. But this is odd: his machine has slipped out of gear. In his version of time the rocking motion is the constant, the drive onwards is the mechanical failure: a surprising and thought-provoking reversal for the reader, who knows all about the inevitability of time and the seasons. The morning is dissonance and decision and revelation: 'the scales have fallen' is a beautiful rendering of balance lost and eyes opened, some cradle-innocence shorn away.<br />
<br />
I find myself teased and made anxious by the masonry-dust and plaster. What has happened in the half-light, as the snow falls mixed with the soot? Womack has not written any particular event into the poem, but we are immediately alert to the possibilities. Too many memories of early Autumn days darkened by grit and horror, when balance has been irrevocably lost. And the placing of horror, once it has been read and registered, changes the poem, works at it uneasily. Are we rocked by the world, because we need numbing and calming? Are we held in this no-time because the wrench forward into a new world is too much? Or is the world merely reverberating, the weathervane swinging aimlessly, the calendar’s torn pages repeating? I cannot honestly say whether this balance is benign or not, whether it is <i>anything</i> to us, or we anything to it.<br />
<br />
A last word about the last station. The last station is the burial. Silence and darkness. But in this poem the last station is brightness and vision. No sense of reconciliation though, as we survey the world after its mechanical convulsion. No redemption. The scales have fallen. Judgment has been made.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">Sasha Dugdale's most recent collection is <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781906188023"><i>Red House</i></a> (Oxford Poets/Carcanet).</div></div>EJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10828650759873212450noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1325993744355181430.post-43023101213479571632011-10-10T07:17:00.001+01:002011-10-10T23:04:37.444+01:00Evan Jones on Helen Tookey's 'America'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><blockquote><b>America</b> by <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=983">Helen Tookey</a><br />
<br />
Broad and smiling as a Sunday<br />
rivermouth, impossible word<br />
<br />
between us: <i>america</i>. Wide<br />
and easy speech, argument smooth<br />
<br />
and seamless as an egg. Half-tongued<br />
I stumble through the station at<br />
<br />
Stephansplatz, past memorials<br />
to lost wars, and to the playground<br />
<br />
in the beautiful gardens, where<br />
I watch my children disappear<br />
<br />
undisturbed: macht nichts, sie kommen<br />
wieder zurück. America<br />
<br />
is where we can never meet, though<br />
we lived there together for years.</blockquote><div style="text-align: right;"><i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">from </span></i><a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781847771315"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">New Poetries V</span></a><i><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> © Helen Tookey</span></i></div><br />
I like Tables of Contents. A lot. Question one of the four Auden asks in his test for a critic is ‘Do you like, and by like I really mean like, not approve of on principle: 1) Long lists of proper names … ?’<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=1325993744355181430&postID=4302310121347957163#_ftn1" name="_ftnref" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span></a> It’s like he picked me first for his crab-soccer team in gym class. But I’ll admit it’s not just the names: I’m after the titles. Titles function, it’s true, but they’re a big part of whether I’ll stick with a poem or not. What I’m looking for is specific: I want something that tells what the poem is about and yet has to it a shake – by which I mean that it both sets up and defies expectations, turning function on its head while simultaneously starting to press down on the kick. There was a band awhile back called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dentists">The Dentists</a>, and they had some great titles (and some great songs to go with them): ‘One of Our Psychedelic Beakers Is Missing’, ‘Strawberries Are Growing In Our Garden (And It’s Wintertime)’, ‘<a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=931">I Had An Excellent Dream</a>’ (this last probably their best). Too few poets pick up on the bracketed title of the pop song. <br />
<br />
The ToC in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Poetries V</i> has some real gems: ’You Could Show a Horse’, ‘Aunt Jane and the Scholar’, ‘Kamasutra (the subsidiary arts)’ to list a few. At each title that interests me, I swim into the book and read the poem. You should see me with a new CD, flipping from track to track, following not the play order but the titles that sound interesting. Maybe this isn’t how everybody gets into a book,but maybe too it’s more common than I think. Anyway, when I get to ‘America’, a funny thing happens. I start to hum, even before I get to the page the poem is on, Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W773ZPJhcVw">America</a>’, its ‘Let us be lovers, we’ll marry our fortunes together’ the only line I can fully remember, and then, maybe, some la-la-las, before arriving at ‘Michigan seems like a dream to me now’.<br />
<br />
Helen Tookey’s poem has both little and everything to do with that song. Her place is not ‘America’, but instead an alternate universe, a world that never happened and never will. The poem is also a start and another start: there is firstly the point where the reader meets an ‘us’ with a word between (a word we don’t get until the end of the sentence): <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">america</i>. The French and the Germans spell national adjectives lower-case: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">américain</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">amerikanische</i>, only proper nouns need capitals. Gertrude Stein tried to pull this into English usage in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Autobiography Alice B. Toklas</i>, but nothing-doing, it seems. Yet this word is a proper noun, so it’s mispelled here, italicised, equal on either side, even as it separates. <br />
<br />
Then there is the second start: the poet in Vienna, at the U-Bahn station in Stephansplatz, through which an ‘I’, ‘half-tongued’ (does this refer to the language barrier or that she’s been kissed, awkwardly, partingly?) and stumbling, breaks from the ‘us’ to a public garden where her children are playing – her own and not ‘ours’. Is this a consequence of the first start or its own separate event? There’s an argument, there is impossibility, but none of that tells us that this moment follows the last. This is another beginning, and we begin to sense the alternatives that are taking place. For this is not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">america</i>, but touristic Vienna, where the Wienfluss flows into the Donaukanal. But ‘nevermind, they’ll return’, those children – who and how many will they be when they do? – real or unreal, whether they too have travelled to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">america</i>, or simply come here to look for it.<br />
<br />
Finally, there it is, ‘America’, bolder and more certain of itself as we reach the end, on a line that begins in German. Can it separate itself further? It can. For the ‘we’ return here twice, and America leads the way: it’s not in-between this time and not at the end, even as the poem comes to its end. ‘All come to look for America’: Paul Simon’s song aimed to capture youthful curiosity about national identity – but does in the end little more than reinforce clichés. At best, that song is about setting-out, beginning. Helen Tookey’s ‘America’ is both an end and a beginning. For Vienna, too, is a dream, and curiosity flourishes, wherein both Americas – in one a lover waits and in another he has never had to wait – exist. <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=931">Evan Jones</a></div><div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;"><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=1325993744355181430&postID=4302310121347957163#_ftnref" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span></a> </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">I also devour acknowledgements like they were written for snacking on during a film. I go looking for the fine print. The Canadian poet, Jay Macpherson, in her <i>Poems Twice Told</i> (1981)<i>, </i>composed her ‘Notes & Acknowledgements’ in rhymed iambic tetrameter couplets. With this, she fills in the blanks between the poems and author. She’s more alive.</span></div></div></div></div>EJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10828650759873212450noreply@blogger.com0