Poetry and Art

In respect of the title, I refer to painting.

There are numerous examples of poetry written as a result of the poet's connection with visual art. Examples include "The Man with the Blue Guitar" (Wallace Stevens, 1937), based on Picasso's The Old Guitarist; "Mourning Picture" (Adrienne Rich, 1965), based on Edwin Elmer's painting of the same name; "Hunters in the Snow" (William Carlos Williams, 1962), based on Pieter Bruegel the Elder's painting, also so-named. Other examples by W.H. Auden, Elizabeth Jennings, and Monica Youn reinforce the inspirational aspect of poets seeking to re-determine the subtleties expressed in brushstrokes of oil on canvas.

There is a commonality on this approach among art forms. Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, based on works of his friend, the painter Victor Hartmann, is a case in point. Yet, while there is a commonality of artistic sensibility, there are also differences. It could be described as an exercise in 'Chinese whispers' where the original message, passed then from person to person, concludes upon the final hearing as something completely different to that intended. We interpret the world individually, uniquely, and it could be argued that the interpretation of subjects between artistic disciplines lends itself to a charge of grand indulgence, even though the resulting, reactive art form may well stand perfectly well in its own right.

Recently, there was report from an American biochemist who had been studying mud samples from an extraordinarily deep lake, known for its naturally occurring high arsenic content. To her team's amazement, the arsenic-rich mud was teeming with microscopic life. The team then isolated particular 'interesting' examples and applied still heavier doses of arsenic; the microbes thrived.

The scientists' conclusion was that one of two things might be happening. Firstly, the microbes might represent a form of life based on 'base root' DNA, that is, a subbranch of DNA billions of years old that never changed, while other branches of DNA evolved into life as we recognise it today. It should be remembered that oxygen itself served as a poison to early life forms, and only through adaptation did some forms survive and thrive.

Secondly, and perhaps more important was the idea that these arsenic-dwellers might in fact represent an even earlier form of life, and that all life since then was generated by a second movement, in which case it could be stated that life appeared on this planet on more than one occasion. The importance of the latter notion is that life appearing under such conditions might well be replicated on other planets under conditions that we might not recognise as life-enhancing.

This 'otherness' is reflected too in the exchange between the arts, the interpretive, combative quality impossibly surviving in airless, poisonous, primordial ooze, masquerading in stanzas and delicate strokes of Naples Yellow.

from Blackwater Quartet, selection 46

Walking on the Thames

Meccano miles to London: carriages

commute in slinky combinations past

the terraced suburbs. We meet at Claridge’s,

comparing life to life within our caste

then catch the last trains home. Across precast

and corrugated scenes a sense of time

connects the sparking track to the sublime.

December skies are quarrelsome. The rack

of weather gullies back to Seven Dials,

Museum Street, and you behind a stack

of first editions. The dust of viols’

muted measures dignifies denials,

a century grown sullen with its ghosts.

The CD catalogues these last outposts.

The peacock soirée ends with Auden’s Spain;

the taxis pass in pairs or not at all

this time of night. We stand in stair-rod rain

and stamp the street’s cascades against the sprawl

of doorways. Saviours loom from lanes, and bawl

their cider sermons in the acid light

where random neon punctuates the night.

Autumn Studies

Autumn in northern Europe. Wet and cold. Leaves totter lamely at branch ends, but only for a moment. A last knock of wind sends them flying across the green and along the road. 

At the kerb, a small dog strains against its lead, its nose pushed into the air, sensing the change, decoding the clues salted into each new gust.

On the mat by the door, a pair of ankle boots my wife has kicked off near the radiator. Her umbrella half-mast on the mat as well, still dripping. 

On the news, video of the first buick swans to settle on these eastern marshes this year, wintering here, for now at least, to escape the harsher Russian cold. 

The morning sun glints along a ragtag line of parked cars, their windscreens a breathless bloom of frost.

from Blackwater Quartet, selection 45

Indian Summer

My fear-God, ancient cousins shared the same

house sixty years, a cameo clan

of cat’s-pee sofas, mid-sentence naps, surname

a loot recovered when the redskins ran

to twilight generations and the land

was staked for farms. The tom defied Chopin,

sank stretching in the belly of the grand

piano. Shredded cushions testified

to years of lazy claws restyling hand-

embroidered patterns. Portrait oils preside

there still, the features fixed in varnish matt

the centuries of hearth fires craze. The fried

glaze buckles to the grate, a butterfat

of branded looks consumed as caveat.

 *

That August, I walked along the clatter

of cornstalks, kicking through the furrow rows

for flints. I stopped, stooped within the tatter

of river meadow ploughed to suit the crows,

examining my finds: the arrow tips

translucent— those serrated edges roes

felt ripping pelt and heart wall— hand-tooled chips

I polished, held to light recalling rites

lost centuries. There is no god equips

us for impermanence. Our lives are kites

of clouds the wind drives out along the air

around us, template for the arrows’ flights.

We live to live again, life foursquare

a trophy of the rituals we share.

 *

The switchback trail was dry stone walls and pines.

I climbed into the day to rest there by

the boundary. The sunken-earth designs

of limestone evidenced a time awry.

Each breach disproved a mended wilderness,

the rock course toppled to the alibi

of iron-bar roots and soil-shift. The recess

eroded in the scree was Shawnee, grave

goods woven to a primitive finesse

of spirit dyes’ root-reds, each symbol wave

a colour breaking bright in paradise.

The trace was ashen to the touch, the brave

a huddled remnant called to other skies

as life within each echoed life replies.

 *

The gravel road along the hillside grows

before me, winding in on drifting dust

among the graves. Abbreviated prose

confirms the terminus of marble flushed

in sunlit pinks. My own name, too, appears,

anticipating resurrection: Trust

in Me, absolving life’s delinquent years.

My hand’s print on the blush of stone is all

prediction warrants, pending volunteers.

The plastic roses decorate this squall

of dated lives. Their bloom retains a sense

of seasons in a trance, and cannot fall,

or fail to function in a future tense

reserved to reconcile the faintest scents.

Creative Flow

There is an urban legend masquerading as statistical evidence that given enough time and a reliable typewriter (That's how long this tale has been making the rounds.), a chimpanzee could write the plays of Shakespeare. This of course is nonsense; any fool knows our simian friend could only manage the sonnets....

Looking beyond the immediate headline, is proof to be had in an army of chimps sitting at myriad typewriters (good luck finding that many working machines.), or is it an extremely long-lived individual?

If the former, it's not sporting to substitute the machines for PCs. After all, is it fair in the trial to expect the chimp(s) to not only apply themselves to the random tap-tapping of language symbols into Art, but to deal with a mouse, and spam emails, as well? If the latter, then we must assume too that the individual animals although long-lived and under the best medical supervision, must like us succumb to the challenges of chronology.

On an external wall of an overpass on a road between London leading towards the M3, some wag has painted, "Give Peas a Chance". Now, it might be that this particular graffito is the result of the English education system and that the painter simply can't spell. Conversely, it might be that the painter is a savvy sort in touch with his cultural heritage who also knows a good pun when he sees one.

I prefer to imagine a chimp, escaping one night from a nearby holding facility (As he fled through the side door, behind him the faint sound of typewriter keys searching for Shakespeare.). Slow-moving and grey-bearded, he drags a bucket of paint and a brush along the overpass, then climbs on to the parapet wall. He sits there quietly, contemplating the roar of traffic passing below him.

A grin spreads across his ancient face. He dips his brush purposefully in the paint, and leans into his work. 

from Blackwater Quartet, selection 44

Constructing the Human

Excitable atoms, busy bird shapes

in slipper-soft configurations

whirl above your head.

Your careful steps imply a difficulty

balancing the squawking vapours.

The plumage trails in a brightness

suggestive of acacias at the peak.

The first tick of the universe

untangles time, a knotted sequence

parting with the suddenness of strangers.

You move as you have moved

and are about to move.

I cannot disprove your beaky crown.

National Poetry Day

Yesterday was National Poetry Day. It slid by like a dirty old van in rush-hour traffic. It's one of those forced-jollity events that lacks the energy to be even the least divisive. Contentious views on the subject of The Nation's Favourite Poem will not have them manning the barricades.

In vox-pop interviews, the few members of the public who could recall any poem at all, thought that Kipling's "If" a good choice. This sturdy, sentimental study in morality and self-reliance is long enough to make an impact on those people unused to closer study of poetic works (Postmodernism!? What's that?!) yet compact enough (always a useful attribute in poems) that whole passages might be commited to memory without troubling the unsuspecting reader.

I think that such moderate commitment is useful. Like a clock ticking away on the mantel, it serves its purpose, maintains the schedule and requires neither food nor water to allow us the benefit of its function.

To study poems as they are studied at university, for example, is to chase them around the room, corner them (hear them howl!) interject finely-wrought discussions about the elements of style, political persuasion and gender subtexts, before finally abandoning the part-skinned, bloodied carcass as a job well done.

I, too, if asked my favourite poem, might choose from a long list that included "Fern Hill" and "Death Shall Have No Dominion", or "Dover Beach" or perhaps something by Ted Hughes or Philip Larkin. By then, I would begin to second-guess myself, thinking I should include something by Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, and who was that guy everyone was talking about a few years ago....

There's no accounting for taste, even when we're told what we should like. "If" only.