Questions Time
Two for the Ex
Pounds of Flesh
Epigram for E
A Couple of Quibbles
Talked Down
As Mud
Radio Fun
A Dutch dérive
A Winsome Woman
Buddy Language
As in Dull
Cambridge 58
An Iscan Conclave
Herbal Remedies
Zionists
A Postmodern Question?
Exeter Latest
Alarm Call 2am
Odeon Odin

 

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QUESTIONS TIME

Let those who merit what the verse declares
Chose to be vexd and think the picture theirs
[John Clare, The Parish]

1.

A shameless nameless fellow is the brutal Anonym,
there are no literary flies that dare alight on him.
As befits an impartial democratic spirit,
he vexes and eagerly, pointedly heckles
each pompous under-performer, each brittle unfortunate bard.
High, low or mighty, he lets them all have it,
by ruthlessly firm analysis, piercing, bright and hard!
These brisk sarcastic retorts – there’s no need to resort to a shout –
are par for the broader intellectual course,
are part of a brazen, most unwelcome habit
of bracing LitCrit, underpinned by sharp impatience.
A presence to berate pretension, smug imaginings,
he’s here to deplore the current ambience –
 tides of earnest nonsense, endless dismal drought –
yet calmly, soberly, directs his own due rant
at whichever drab poetaster raises
his own fierce and horripilant hackles.

Banality of Academe, mere self-regarding cant,
this also, absolutely, he dispraises.
Winners of Awards, Established Reputations,
the New Obscurantist Sensations,
Bygones and Icons, National Treasures, Dim Young Things,
how few of them manage a poem that sings!
Which drooling ninny is fit to browse on Gert Stein’s tender button?
Strangers to genuine experiment, to ecstasy,
 freeliving foes may flaunt The Drug Experience:
unfortunate lambs fit for slaughter, while dressed up as wise mutton;
those too he fulminates against – clogged prose, limp lines and woolly brain.
Pouring scorn on the School of the Bleeding Heart,
he shows healthy contempt for Confessional Pain,
 and dismisses such stuff with a belch or fart.

He castigates as well the neat Minimalist;
decries a threadbare bourgeois Domesticity;
Freud is invoked, to poke fun at any annoying Miserabilist
whose cloying aches and pains ooze from a childish hoard.
He mocks New Righteousness, Gendered Self-Pity
that toils on woodenly prosaic chopping-board,
 and lambasts too the trendy tweakers of daft feminuscule truth.
No litterateur escapes, not hallowed Age nor callow Youth:
No more twee trivia, no bogus colloquial guff!
Enough of spurious navel-gazing, away with fake-classical stuff!



2.

Cliques and claques he furiously abominates,
likewise the lame ducks of officialdom. And Laureates,
 media-besotted Old- or New-Gen publicists,
the suited apparatchiks of the BBC,
Left or Right Message-Bawds, earnest Religionists,
  tripe-mongers straight or gay, their hangers-on, old mates,
macho lad, jammy rat, piffling Postmodernist.
Re the Networker Careerist, he reserves the right to be
 quite as politically stern or incorrect
as necessary – sensible, impeccably direct.
Impartiality imbues his hates;
he likes to rile the ranks of his half-baked antagonists:
the precious Clever-Clogs who go out of their way
circuitously to confound all honest sentiment
as they confuse plain truth with truism, inert cliché;
the Rag-and-Bone Creeps, clad in outdated styles;
colourless Collagists of yesteryear; trite Rappers of today.
(Let semi-literates rap’n’slam for all they’re
worth, which means not a lot – except hot air!)
He knocks those Nerds, aficionados of the second-hand,
tricked out in worthy Oxfam, or less worthy Oxbridge, gear;
 slick Plagiarists; Recyclers of junk and throwaway ironies;
Clones and pathetic Clowns; Performance Poseurs,
bland standups full of shit, less comical than piles,
and short on innate wit, while sure to smirk and tease;
pretentious self-congratulatory sniggerers,
Pseuds and Prize-Winners – smartarse figurers
in the dull, barrel-scraping likes of Poetry Review’s
Top Hundred, or a Colour Supplement’s ‘Best Ever’ Lists.
But who’s omitted? Who next to abuse?
(In fairness and irreverence he reserves a verbal gob
for the Distinguished Buffer, Grand Old Bore –
gong-wearing, if too long without a proper job,
toothlessly well-connected yet past sell-by date in-store…)
Longevity or youthful brevity – no matter,
neither state is respected. Nor will he flatter,
frowning at imputation of sour grapes. Fresh argument
is something he initiates, respects, can fruitfully control.


3.

Satire’s the only apt response these days, he purrs,
since one must loathe each philistine – the toff or prole
alike – and worse, the tight-arse
 middle-classes, blinkered and blank and apathetically content.
As for this crowd of tossers here tonight, they shall not pass
unscathed!  Not to be cowed by stewards, strongarm stuff or threats,
his pointed satire, mischievous sharp weapon, always gets
results, shrewdly initiating impolite debate.
PR should be despised, he warns – genteel mendacity, third-rate
detritus of the times: smug propaganda and bad faith incite
cogent shock-tactics, just to sweep away sad shite.
Poets turn nervous now at readings: in disguise,
he aims some lethal shafts, flighted with craft and expertise;
these comments brim with justice, bring keen pleasure and surprise
to other verbal terrorists… Today the smartarse brash Young Man
In Vogue is targeted. A drivelling Teacher-dullard’s next.
Then an avuncular Eccentric, flourishing fusty text.
Insecure versifiers desperately seek
 to spot, anticipate and ambush him. They never can…
Clearing the decks, they must suspect, is his immediate plan,
 but still they go on, stammer forced and sorry words,
or pour out strained, self-deprecating anecdotes and such,
 before they feebly wisecrack, pause, most knowingly,
to milk applause from some dumb jerks they seek to please.
And thus they fiddle while Rome burns: as for the Mystery,
it’s a conundrum they can’t solve, let alone touch.
Communication’s nothing that concerns them overmuch.
 So what may be flushed out, rhyme or no rhyme?
Not excellence but effluents – verse turned to turds,
to worst of crapula, clogging the stream of Time…

How about the dreaded Heckler-Critic though?
What’s his own whispered weakness, his dark history?
What seedy CV secret should we all make haste to know?
Is he foreign Freak high on grudges? A drunken Lothario?
Our dread Stalker – this mild young slyboots? That erratic, wild old fart?
But no bullshit-detector’s required to tell blunderers apart:
any truthseeker, pure if not simple, is passionate for Art.

CODA

Good critics? Well might you enquire! There’s a New Millennial lack.
Wyndham Lewis, Leavis, Grigson: does the memory call them back?
With Roy Fuller, Enright, Empson, could they rally to attack
our increasing stacks of balderdash, this century’s bric-à-brac?
Should we ignore, or acknowledge, the fading ghost-name on blue plaque?
Are true, irascible talents required to keep Poets on track?

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TWO FOR THE EX

1.

POUNDS OF FLESH

She cooked up for those trueblue, blase Courts

a frightful dish of offal — olid olio of orts.
Eating one's words is a dumb exercise,
though, and the richest-seeming, tempting stew of lies

often smells rank, unpalatable. So to her surprise
even the well-fee'd lackeys paid such fare no heed,
lacking both zest and stomach to advise
this plump upholder of the rites of greed.

 

2.

EPIGRAM FOR E.

Exact as ever is the definition

of this peculiar noun, especially polite
for a term first used in 1676.
How the 2-vol Shorter Oxford completes

my Cambridge Eng. Lit. education,
now I happen to open it at the E's!

Eons (or Aeons) too late, I've hit upon this
word from the Greek expressing one long-gone fix:

it's fit for poet-sawbones — Beddoes, perhaps Keats.
My egregious Ex seemed an Epinyctis,

"A pustule which is most painful by night".

In Erica's case however, no use at all to squeeze.

 

 

A COUPLE OF QUIBBLES

1.

TALKED DOWN

Listen Up! the dunces see fit to exhort us.

Redundant and meaningless,
mere nonsense in trendy dress,

it's not stuff our English grammarians taught us.

As yet another ridiculous phrase,

this one I'll resist 'to the end of my days'.

2.
AS MUD

"To be honest we
all of us want to see more transparency"

an official spokesman oddly maintains,

as though he somehow did just that, or could,
being most 'clearly' blest with vatic vacancy.

He cites Lessons To Be Learned, Positive Gains...
Meanwhile, the Government Plan proposed will be

Proactive, Guidelines For Our Common Good.
Desperate to Deliver Excellence, he

fails signally to charm one lobbyist,

who grins in beatific boredom, pissed.

 

 

RADIO FUN

Freak accidents of phraseology and timing
treat ears to subtlety Reith might have reckoned 'unacceptable'.
Cast abroad, they're rare yet inspirational,
our motley aural gems, mined from the BBC
World Service. (Weirdness also greets prospectors of R3!)

A few priceless nuggets, then, may especially please me,
assume experimental forms, New Musicology
whose clearest echo may be treasured. They come chiming in,
to represent pure Accident, prime inadvertency.
(Their deeper audible lode reveals an absurdist grin).

Viz one guest, quite far from the norm - and so preciously introduced
as An unashamed viol junkie — sounded just a little unused
to jesting On Air. Today's take involved grim Albania I think,
the venue apparently where A stock of Second World War musicians
exploded. (‘The rest is silence', hints alternative history.)

When set or mindset's on the ball, the boil, the blink,
we should approve these conflicting and often eccentric visions

loading the digital realm. Even warfare's relayed fancy-free.

Each dreamer hears too much — not just wordplay nor wireless elisions,

but bland propaganda brought home. (Trails of grandiose vacancy...)

 

 

A Dutch dérive  

All my life I have been an anti-tourist… a building has only to be listed in the guidebooks as of ‘great interest’ for me to refuse to go near it.

[Jean Renoir, My Life And My Films, 1974] 

i. 

In Ley-den or Lie-den – it’s pronounced both ways
in Holland – we found poetry upon the walls
inscribed immaculately, situated high
above eye-level. Passers-by may safely gaze
at leisure then, and none deface resplendent works
waiting at corners, by ubiquitous canals.
Strolling on Koolstraat (but of course!) we happened first
to view one dismal Ode to Charles Parker: the worst
stuff, with its dizzy invocation of ‘John Burkes’.
Still I admire Gillespie, Bird, and undeterred,
we crossed the cobbled sidewalks of that fine city
where centuries earlier the great Descartes
once graced its University… How excellent
that the rational, enlightened Dutch see fit
to decorate their buildings with such generous arts,
calligraphers greeting bards. So pleasingly
some of the world’s sublimer lyrics lit our days,
were warmer than the elusive sun: Shakespeare
and Sappho, then Ronsard, Yeats, Apollinaire,
Quevedo, Williams, cummings and Montale –
original versions what’s more, even the Greek.
Dutch poets figured too, but we kept no tally,
not managing to scan their Flemish flights. 

ii. 

Did these quite admirable sites appear unique?
Were they to vanish soon? History’s quicklime would
efface most verbiage – warfare or fire or flood
lend a rough finish to invention, beauty.
When so little uplifts us, which artefacts last?
Fabric falls to fragments, ruin perpetually;
language flies back to the Babel of fabulous times…
Near water, pairs of footsteps ebb and flow, with
no trace left. Poor human imprints are transparent,
porous as brick, brief as remembered rhymes:
what price the classical ideals, that Golden Mean?
Yet giving the nice lie to cynical philosophy
a note from the resonant past may be heard.
Deep in the Museum of Egyptology,
there lay the 18^th dynasty figurine
of the God Bes, three-and-a-half thousand year
old, still going strong – “protector of music,
drunkenness and eroticism”. Truly my kind
of mythical deity, whose inspiring wit,
sensual radiance and best cheer must here remain
in place, genius loci, seldom seen again…
Learning to wander, keen if not curiously blind,
we linger awhile to discern flickers across life’s screen.

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A WINSOME WOMAN
or, La Belle Dame Sans Souci 

“calm and dull and self-absorbed”  

Pregnant banalities uttered display unending confidence.
She’s attractive enough, and keen to charm her captive audience
of mainly female hangers-on. They’re egregiously vain, alike,
and can’t conceal their impatience for a turn at the Open Mic.
After the cod hesitation and the insignificant pause
come chronicles, most scurrilous, all angling for scanty applause
It’s pretty well-rehearsed and yet bland fodder served often before,
over-emphatic point-scoring, plus tales that are more trite than tall.
The performer tries to decide: her lovelife will surely enthrall;
deep in a fancy blue folder she needs must forage, simpering.
Confessional verse shall reveal how shags shake One’s Innermost Core!
(Her hapless drone lay drained and prone, alone and palely whimpering…)
While she reckons Win some, lose some, alert critics know Less is more:
the slow water-torture of readings drives commonsense out of the door.

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