AS IF CATULLUS COULD RESPOND TO PRESIDENT TRUMP - NEW POEM BY ERIC SIGLER, AMERICAN POET AND SATIRIST

Inaugural Occasional Poem: The White House
Casting Couch Is Visited By Zeus as Golden Rain

BY THE AMERICAN POET AND SATIRIST ERIC SIGLER

 

I

 

I thought I saw a smoke screen or a cloud
descend through spears that rallied at the sky,
and railed against the theme -
four years beneath a shroud-
until I woke to see that, in my eye,
I could not emancipate the dream 
from shackles chained to starlight -
a strident stalker wading through the night,
an endless specter searching for a theme....

 

II

 

But then I saw sun's gilded feet retreat - 
high-heeled hopes broken by the darkness,
love that lies alone on mirrored splinters,
shattered by the monuments of defeat,
that thrust into the eyes the vile success 
of tyrants who elect to be successors -
their statutory statutes on the plaques -
marble mountains moved on others' backs -
destroyers in the mantles of the victors....

 

III

 

He heard his daughter's son would bring him death,
though prophecies are dead - the prophets mute -
the grander grandeur - puppet on a pulpit-
the bloviating toxins on his breath
the wind that withers trees and dries the roots,
that topples the foundations of the spirit,
the ignorance that feeds on fear and doubt,
that puts the fire of liberty ever out,
and leaves us desolate and destitute.... 

 

IV

 

This caused the Don to build a golden cage,
and lock his daughter there until forever. 
The father of no country - of no child -
the bearer of the void - this lightless age -
who hides his terror in his gilded tower - 
to torture and torment those he defiled
by lies that fed the truth of their desire
to hold their leader highest of the higher,
the feral alpha calling to the wild.

 

V

 

The daughter lay sequestered in the tower,
imprisoned in a dungeon with no window.
The tyrant feared the oracles of karma, 
and as he held the absolutes of power, 
he knew that his today would come tomorrow -
that death would be a sorry melodrama -
his name would ever desecrate the dust
that drowns the articles of blinded trust - 
the tides of time that brought us this enigma...

 

VI

 

He struts in his new clothes before the mirror
that slims him in the image of himself -
his hair the color of the coming sun.
He wears it like the falsified demeanor 
of pimps who preen to flash their worthless wealth,
who act as if the answer and the one.
So self-absorbed, delirious with power,
he seeks to steal the mother from the father,
or be the father of his daughter's son....

 

VII

 

He could not drown - leaden in the water -
nor touch a drink to demonize his soul.
He feels his bloated beauty does not change -
but stoops to snort an energizing powder,  
his fingernail dipped in a crystal bowl,
a morbid mind the dopamine deranges,
that stimulates the power of abuse,
so that he thinks himself the mighty Zeus,
that he will come disguised as Golden Rain.

 

VIII

 

He paints the tainted sunlight on his face,
plucks his brows and bellows like a bull.
He looks again into his lying mirror,
but can not see the truth of his disgrace -
that he must grope to find a fingerful,
that he can't stand erect without a popper,
however beauty sizzles in his child -
the image of himself that he defiled
and locked inside a dungeon in his tower.

 

IX

 

He looks outside his window at the clouds,
bends upon his knees and bows his head.
The sanctuary of his inner demons 
is draped in curtains made of funeral shrouds.
The promises he pilfered for the dead
he offered in the rantings of his sermons,
the lies that told the truth of his deceit,
the deadly hatred of the feigned elite,
who look upon their lessers as their vermin.

 

X

 

Now our tears have shed the Golden Rain,
and he has liquified into the chamber 
where he can rape and pillage and destroy - 
and like a madman - utterly insane -
he showers his gifts upon his sleeping daughter, 
and leaves his seed to scatter and deploy
the legions of the army of amorals,
the vengeance of the gross deplorables,
who never knew the simple joy of joy.

 

XI

 

And as this would befit a grand occasion,
I offer this entertainment to the Ball,
and join the singers singing their bright songs,
knowing that we face pure disillusion,
that what we saw before was not at all  
the truth that has amassed in these dark throngs,
the hatred now that's branded on the sleeves,
the golden calf in which the crowd believes - 
here neither love nor joy nor hope belongs....

 

January 20, 2017
Miami

STRANGER, BABY by EMILY BERRY - brief essay by TODD SWIFT

PLATH IS THE MOTHER OF US ALL, IN SOME WAYS

TODD SWIFT ON
STRANGER, BABY
BY EMILY BERRY (FABER, 2017)

"ANXIETIES OF INFLUENCE, THE CONFLUENCE OF POETIC RESPONSES TO BEREAVEMENT"

I hesitate to call this a review - it isn't - it's an appreciation, and a comment. I should say that I think Stranger, Baby by Emily Berry is one of the best books of British poetry you are likely to read in 2017; and that it seems to me to be at once better, and slightly less good, than its predecessor, Berry's feted debut, Dear Boy, whose title similarly played on various meanings. I once was Berry's "poetry tutor" - for several key years in the now-famed MAIDA VALE GROUP I ran through the POETRY SCHOOL - other members included Liz Berry, Helen Mort and Phil Brown. I recall seeing almost all the poems in Dear Boy in early stages.

I have seen none from this new manuscript, though I predicted, even urged it to appear, in my several reviews/essays on Dear Boy, where I said (also in private conversation) that Berry needed to write about her mother's death.  It seemed to me that what was best in Berry's poetry was primarily not yet on show - that her surreal, pained, remarkable sense of humour bordered on expressionism, and hinted at hinterlands of anguish and psychic drama the rather tricksy poems on BDSM (mostly using techniques learned from Luke Kennard's toolkit) could hardly bear.

Now, Berry has gone away from London, metaphorically, and yet stayed, but gone to UEA for a PhD with two major poetry thinkers/poets - Noel-Tod and Denise Riley.  This new book of Berry's, frankly, is stamped, on every page, with Riley's ideas and advice, regarding language, identity, the body, and the strange. I know because I also did my PhD with her, and also have written about death, identity, the body, Freud etc, for many years. The uncanny thing about reading this book was not that I recognised it as my own, or Riley's, but that it has emerged, as its own style, but with family resemblances. There may be a UEA school of Agamben-Riley poetics.

Of course, Riley is the pre-eminent poetic genius on these isles now, along perhaps with Prynne, Ford, and one or two others. Her last book Say Something Back clearly should have won the TS Eliot prize a few days ago, but was beaten by a book that will be forgotten. Riley's will be read in 200 years. The reason? It proposed new ways of thinking about language and death, mourning and play, in poetry, by taking all models, forms and poetic options as pliable, open to reformulation. It was a harrowing, witty, beautiful and profound master-class in the human, yet aesthetic, consolations of poetry.

Berry's book is exactly the same in that its twin poles are mourning/grief/loss/bereavement and the language problem/how to speak that bedevils all lyric and innovative poets. Simplifying, it is different, in that Riley mourns and writes as the mother-persona, speaking to her dead child. Berry's uncannily mirror-opposite book is written by a child, mourning her dead mother, speaking as best she can, in poems under extreme pressure. Therefore, in some sense, this is the companion, the Other, to Riley's book.*

What Riley did was to make the exorbitant, overwrought mania of Plath turn into a more witty, philosophical introspection, still highly feminist and alert to ideas and feeling, but more ironic; Berry continues the ironies of British poetry, which constrains full throttle emotionalism (usually), in this book, but allows herself to signally break free, time and again, into extremes of expression and symbolism that make Plath look like a polite tea-time. In short, Berry's contribution to this field is to accept both the constraints of Rileyian ironies, and the unlimited expressionism of Plathian self-revelation.

What this means in practice is that Berry's poems are formally contrived - signposted as artifices, constructed platforms for assays into the same theme, over and again, obsessively turned this way and that - worried at endlessly - the fetish being, how to speak about and to my mother who committed suicide when I was 13. The speaker (a persona, but arguably Berry also) is a little victim, but now big, grown up, and, oceanically rising like a wave, to take on the vastness of language, death, poetry and the unconscious. In other words, she is doing the impossible in many voices. So, formally aware, and ironic - but then, astonishingly crude, awkward, shocking, rough-hewn, sharp-edged, blurts, stutters, shouts and yelps of pain, fear, wondering, doubt - horror. Berry's theme has long been that life is a horror show, and yet poems can be funny ways of dealing with that (funny ha ha and funny strange).

Dear Boy was more ha ha, this one is more strange. Depending on whether you think self-expression/lyricism needs to constantly renew and refresh itself, or can simply be tossed aside, you will read this book as a work of extraordinary poetic ability and frankness rarely if ever before seen in British poetry or as self-referential whingeing. I value lyric-modernism, and so welcome this book. Like a necessary nightmare, a session with the analyst that comes too soon, but was booked long ago.

review by Todd Swift
MAIDA VALE, LONDON
22 January, 2017

*NB: I would daringly interpose, in true Freudian fashion (pace Bloom) that one needs to place my poems, about my dead father and unborn children (from Winter, Winter Tennis and When All My Disappointments Came At Once), into this conversation - since they antedate both these books, and also explore language, Freud, Winnicot, mothers and babies, and death/grief, in almost the same terms.

This is hardly far-fetched: Berry is familiar with my work, having edited some of those poems for me. I often spoke in my tutorials with Berry and others about the advice that A. Alvarez gave me (I had befriended him) - and Alvarez guided my book on death and my father, Winter, Winter Tennis, which takes Plath and language-play as its poles; and we know Berry thanks Alvarez in this new book. And Riley was my tutor when I composed them.  I am not claiming to have inspired these people - they may well have inspired me - they did of course - but the maelstrom or vortex of death/grief and the need to write out of that is endlessly complicating and complex, and can hardly be attributed, as if copyrighted, to any one poet. It is a community of linguistic grief we work out of, a pool of shared tropes, and ideas.

We all speak after, say, Homer, Dante, Donne, Eliot, Plath and Heaney, who may be the preeminent poets to discuss death and the underworld in terms of poetry and poetic speaking, on these subjects.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: THE WORST AND LEAST OPTION

 A TRUMP SUPPORTER AT THE BALL

I will spare you, in this brief editorial post, too much gnashing of teeth, and too many dire predictions. I will even offer the briefest of summaries: Trump is a very bad thing indeed - let's get on with democratically opposing him, in the USA and globally, within legal limits, as strongly and intelligently as possible.  Satire and comedy, tweets and posts will be a part of this, but not enough - Chaplin's The Great Dictator did not save Poland. For its part, as a small publisher, my company Eyewear is open to ideas for books that further such aims of seeking to defend the world against its worst Western threat in 75 years.

So, okay.  That's what I wanted to say. But, to be gloomy, for a moment, yesterday was truly a low, in my lifetime, and historically, for America, and its struggling democracy. A low for the world. Yesterday's neo-fascist inauguration speech, then the dance to 'My Way', and the immediate gutting of Obama-care, and creation of Patriots Day, signal a turn to the ultra-nationalist extreme right - a populism based on race-hate, lies, xenophobia, paranoid threats and sabre-rattling - that is in its America First incarnation at least - terrifying, unacceptable, and loathsome. If you had ever wanted to script a TV series about the rise of an American dictatorship, similar to the German one of the 1930s, it would look like this -  pompous white men wrapped in the flag, a divine mission, and a sense of history at their backs, seeking to make their "land" and "people" the most "powerful" and "great" in the world.

There is nothing comforting in what comes next.  Presumably, America is set to have a trade war with China, more closely align itself with Russia, bomb and otherwise attack places it thinks "Islamic terrorism" thrives; plus antagonise or attack Iran, and North Korea; and meanwhile, support Brexit and the collapse of the EU - while vilifying its Mexican neighbour.  Oddly, Canada has yet to be mentioned, perhaps because Trump admires handsome men, and Justin Trudeau is telegenic.

I predicted, correctly, that Trump will win.

I predict he will mandate the use of at least tactical nuclear weapons within the next 4 years.  Why? Because he loves power for its own sake, and has a personality that uses (and abuses) power for the glorification of his own sense of greatness.  This personality type, part of the "dark triad" of mental disorders, is never a good thing in a person, and in a world leader, usually leads to war, and terrible disruption.

It is possible the American economy will thrive, and the progressive backlash will lead to solidarity, great art and deeply moving images of brave and decent people defending the values that the gentle, decent, and brilliant Mr Obama epitomised. We could have a new 60s style renaissance of protest, poetry, and ultimately see a new progressive leader come to power in 2020. In time, Mr Obama will be seen as one of the ten greatest of Presidents, up there beside Lincoln in terms of moral rectitude, and grace under pressure. The 45th is, for the foreseeable, going to be the very worst. America is at rock bottom today.

The future is not so hopeful, anymore.

OSCAR NOMS WILL BE?....

TOM FORD FANS

On a lighter note - Lord we need one - 2016 was a great year for cinema, popular, commercial, foreign and domestic, art-house and comic-book.  As I was reminded recently, the last time a film took all top 5 Oscars (Best film, director, producer, actor and actress) was 1991 for horror classic Silence of the Lambs (one would have thought Titanic, but Winslett did not win that year). 26 years later, this could happen again with La La Land - or not, so stiff is the competition.  If they use all ten places, here are the ten films Eyewear thinks the Academy will nominate for Best Picture, based on other prizes, and critical reception.

1. La La Land - the sentimental favourite, and one to beat, for its self-reflexive rescue of the musical;
2. Moonlight - a powerful contender, examining a young boy's life as a black gay person in Miami;
3. Manchester by the Sea - probably shoe in for Affleck as best actor;
4. Jackie - again, Portman would win for best actor here;
5. Fences - another brilliant African-American film, with extraordinary central performances from Davis and Washington;
6. Hacksaw Ridge - Mel Gibson's redemption is probably complete with this anti-war film;
7. Arrival - many critics felt this was the film of the year;
8. Deadpool - an outsider maybe, but it was a master-class in comedy-action beloved by many.
9. Loving - a film about interracial marriage and prejudice in America;
10. Hell or High Water - at one time, seen as a front-runner, a powerful Texas-set crime drama critique of red-neck American values.

There are other films that could just slip in here, such as Tom Ford's bleak existential actioner, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Nocturnal Animals, or Lion, based on a moving true-life story; or Scorsese's Silence, or the comedy Florence Foster Jenkins (especially as it is a Streep Vehicle) - or 20th century Women, or Hidden Figures. Surprise inclusions could include: Love & Friendship, a popular stylish romantic satire; admired horror film The Witch; Linklater comedy Everybody Wants Some!! which has some critical love. A further nice twist might be including one or more art-house faves: Irish comedy Sing Street, Cannes-winning I, Daniel Blake, or American Honey, The Lobster, or Paterson, by Jaramusch. Captain America: Civil War would make sense, in terms of its critical reception, except comic book movies don't usually get nominated.

OUR EYEWEAR REVIEW OF THE TS ELIOT-WINNING COLLECTION JACKSELF

Jackself

by Jacob Polley

REVIEWED BY ROSANNA HILDYARD

Jackself is a scarecrow made up of lean meat and fat, frost, daws, lanterns, digestive biscuits, roundabouts and cow parsley. Jackself is Polley’s alter ego in this series of narrative poems, which work equally well individually as they do patchworked into a collection. Jackself is a wild pagan figure, a wodwo from ancient England, Jackself follows a snotty teenager growing up around the crumbling farms of Lamanby, in Cumbria.

Although Jackself is a hodgepodge of tones and references, it forms a remarkably coherent collection when read end to end. It is structured as a poetic bildungsroman, charting Jackself’s loss of innocence as he comes to terms with grief. Jackself is the love story of two friends: Jackself of Lamanby and Jeremy Wren, who bully and wrangle with each other, go fishing in Lamanby’s deserted tarns, and stay out at night to drink white cider and Malibu together ‘way out among the hedgerows’.

Jackself is lively, hilarious, cynical. In ‘Les Symbolistes’, Polley has Jackself, describe eating his own father as though in some weird rite: ‘carved so thin / I could read a rose-tinted poem through each slice’. It is a precisely conjured image, both disgusting and authentically symboliste. Yet it is Jeremy’s response that brings this scene to life:

 

A POEM! Wren roars

you’re creepy as a two-headed calf

and I’ve always thought so.

Poetic preening undercut. In fact, Polley does not have much time for self-conscious literariness: another moment comes in ‘Jack O’Lantern’, in which Jackself wishes to chronicle a frightening autumn night featuring ‘bedlamites’, ‘banging’ wind and dead ‘apple cores’ in a childish quatrain. But each time he tries to form his verse, the nursery-rhyme rhythm is broken, visually and rhythmically, with irritation:

 

the wind’s inside the apple core

the moon bangs like a drum

and         no           again      the sky’s a door

the year a slum

 

Jackself’s stubborn refusal to give up becomes increasingly funny as the truncated poem continues, reflecting a clash between teenage perfectionism and writer’s block.

Yet for all the humour, Jackself is bleak. This is a poetry book about the failure of poetry, of inarticulacy and two people’s inability to speak to each other. It is almost no surprise when, midway through the book, a fuming Wren suddenly turns on Jackself:

 

I’ll show you, he says

and he storms home, stamps upstairs,

throws a dressing-gown cord

over the rafter in his bedroom,

pulls the slipknot over his head

 

abruptly, leaving no note of explanation or farewell. Jackself is left dumb.

If Jackself has faults, they are due to its own inventiveness. Written as nursery rhymes, riddles, and cautionary fables, Polley must navigate several traditional genres of anonymous English literature as well as rushing through his particular narrative of a specific time and place. At times, telling apart the story of England’s Everyman Jacks from Polley’s own Jackself can be confusing. Yet on the whole, the narrative structure, each poem jumping from Jack to Jack, O’Lantern to Snipe, holds up well. Polley’s control over these deceptively simple forms and genres and his sense for aural and visual space, means that his poetry can bear the weight of intensely imagined language.

This year’s line-up for the T.S. Eliot Prize was a particularly rich one, but did appear to show a lean towards poets from the Reiver country and the North of England – J.O. Morgan from the Scottish Borders, Ian Duhig in the Vale of York, and Ruby Robinson and Katharine Towers from Sheffield. Polley, who lives and works in Newcastle, has been nominated twice before for the T.S. Eliot Prize, but it is Jackself that has finally won it for him – and in a collection which celebrates chance, superstition and English, colloquial tursn of phrase, it seems fitting that it is third time lucky.


Rosanna Hildyard is an editor at Eyewear Publishing, and a graduate of Oxford university. She is a writer and critic, currently living in Brixton.