COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN – LATE EXTRA!
In theory, I’ve sorted out both ‘phone and broadband internet access at the new address. A simple temporary transfer is possible so all I have to do is install the router and all will follow seamlessly.
In a just world run by the intelligent and benign, this might be the case. But it’s safer to assume that somewhere between the soothing Scottish tones of the lady at the call centre and the actual implementation of the procedures involved in temporarily shutting down one account and opening another, the ball will be dropped. So if I fail to make an appearance after Saturday November 1st, imagine me on the ‘phone either no. 21 in an enraged BT Broadband customer queue listening to The Lighthouse Family, or in enervating conversation with an intellectually-challenged 12-year-old customer services operative who keeps referring to me as ‘yourself’.
In a just world run by the intelligent and benign, this might be the case. But it’s safer to assume that somewhere between the soothing Scottish tones of the lady at the call centre and the actual implementation of the procedures involved in temporarily shutting down one account and opening another, the ball will be dropped. So if I fail to make an appearance after Saturday November 1st, imagine me on the ‘phone either no. 21 in an enraged BT Broadband customer queue listening to The Lighthouse Family, or in enervating conversation with an intellectually-challenged 12-year-old customer services operative who keeps referring to me as ‘yourself’.
...
IN SEARCH OF THE SINGERS...
In the meantime, a theme I have tackled before...
IN SEARCH OF THE SINGERS...
As far as I can tell, there are two kinds of poets: those who want to tell stories and sing songs, and those who want to work out the chemical equation for language and pass on their experiments as poetry.
Simon Armitage
I'm not Simon Armitage's number one fan, but the statement above encapsulates very effectively my reaction after a wide and deep trawl of poetry weblogs and magazines . In fact, I'm glad that he's made the pronouncement so definitively. I have tended to extricate myself from such grand tours with the distinct and unsettling feeling that I'm on the outside looking in; that there exists a club whose rules are so arcane I can never hope to qualify for membership. I may be chasing up and down the wrong bloglines but a significant minority of the sites I've visited recently have been either a.) locked into exciting urban poetry scenes in which the blogger is a major player, giving readings every night from assorted chapbooks, or b.) replete with verse that, through its arcane content and construction, flies beneath the sweep of my poetic radar.
With respect to the first group, I suppose I must be grudgingly happy for the state of poetry that there are individuals out there shouting the odds on our behalf. That I am not one of them seems a grotesque injustice, but clearly I have enemies who have poisoned the publishers against me. I shall rise nobly above their craven efforts for it’s the second category that really exercises me most.
Now, before going into full-scale whine, I must invoke the first six words of Simon Armitage's statement - As far as I can tell. The phrase has the virtue of humility. It establishes the possibility of a personal failure to comprehend as a result of major perceptual shortcomings. But I have read and re-read the verse displayed on many of these blogs and mags*, making my way through the strange lexicons, looking for a way in - a gateway, a handhold, a step - only to flop out at the other end, uncomprehending and exasperated, a stranger in a strange land. There is an apparent confidence, and sureness of footing in so many of the poems. They seem so comfortable inside their skins, coming from and going to places where meaning - however incoherent in the perception of this reader - resides and flourishes. And because that confidence, that sureness doesn't flourish in this reader I can only conclude that, by any reasonable criterion, the writer must be babbling like an idiot.
I've read a great deal of poetry over the years and I have been as powerfully exercised by the semantic and stylistic challenges of the likes of, say, Basil Bunting, Samuel Beckett and David Jones as I have by more immediately accessible writers. And I'm drawn strongly by the sonic qualities of a poem: Kurt Schwitters, Bob Cobbing, the Beats, hip hop that isn't trying to get its cock out or gun you down - bring it on! But an hour spent clambering through the clogged lattices of words, tripping over the broken bits of punctuation, listening out for a music I never hear, desperate to locate and lock into the pulse that powers the piece is exhausting and, ultimately, demoralising, for I feel the reflection must be, in the final analysis, on me.
So Armitage's belief that there are those who simply 'want to work out the chemical equation for language and pass on their experiments as poetry' brings a measure of relief to me in my post-blogsearch and mag-scrutiny bafflement. It inspires me to continue to set out across the territory in search of those who, like me, simply want to tell stories and sing songs.
*Here are four locations within which I found myself with neither map nor compass.
Five Fingers Review
Alice Blue Review
Glitter Pony
Octopus
Simon Armitage
I'm not Simon Armitage's number one fan, but the statement above encapsulates very effectively my reaction after a wide and deep trawl of poetry weblogs and magazines . In fact, I'm glad that he's made the pronouncement so definitively. I have tended to extricate myself from such grand tours with the distinct and unsettling feeling that I'm on the outside looking in; that there exists a club whose rules are so arcane I can never hope to qualify for membership. I may be chasing up and down the wrong bloglines but a significant minority of the sites I've visited recently have been either a.) locked into exciting urban poetry scenes in which the blogger is a major player, giving readings every night from assorted chapbooks, or b.) replete with verse that, through its arcane content and construction, flies beneath the sweep of my poetic radar.
With respect to the first group, I suppose I must be grudgingly happy for the state of poetry that there are individuals out there shouting the odds on our behalf. That I am not one of them seems a grotesque injustice, but clearly I have enemies who have poisoned the publishers against me. I shall rise nobly above their craven efforts for it’s the second category that really exercises me most.
Now, before going into full-scale whine, I must invoke the first six words of Simon Armitage's statement - As far as I can tell. The phrase has the virtue of humility. It establishes the possibility of a personal failure to comprehend as a result of major perceptual shortcomings. But I have read and re-read the verse displayed on many of these blogs and mags*, making my way through the strange lexicons, looking for a way in - a gateway, a handhold, a step - only to flop out at the other end, uncomprehending and exasperated, a stranger in a strange land. There is an apparent confidence, and sureness of footing in so many of the poems. They seem so comfortable inside their skins, coming from and going to places where meaning - however incoherent in the perception of this reader - resides and flourishes. And because that confidence, that sureness doesn't flourish in this reader I can only conclude that, by any reasonable criterion, the writer must be babbling like an idiot.
I've read a great deal of poetry over the years and I have been as powerfully exercised by the semantic and stylistic challenges of the likes of, say, Basil Bunting, Samuel Beckett and David Jones as I have by more immediately accessible writers. And I'm drawn strongly by the sonic qualities of a poem: Kurt Schwitters, Bob Cobbing, the Beats, hip hop that isn't trying to get its cock out or gun you down - bring it on! But an hour spent clambering through the clogged lattices of words, tripping over the broken bits of punctuation, listening out for a music I never hear, desperate to locate and lock into the pulse that powers the piece is exhausting and, ultimately, demoralising, for I feel the reflection must be, in the final analysis, on me.
So Armitage's belief that there are those who simply 'want to work out the chemical equation for language and pass on their experiments as poetry' brings a measure of relief to me in my post-blogsearch and mag-scrutiny bafflement. It inspires me to continue to set out across the territory in search of those who, like me, simply want to tell stories and sing songs.
*Here are four locations within which I found myself with neither map nor compass.
Five Fingers Review
Alice Blue Review
Glitter Pony
Octopus
