A poem with workings out
Posted by: cupid in Poetry, Rough Draft, Uncategorized, Writing Diary Add comments 
I am currently tying myself up in knots working on a commentary for my last attempt at a poem - my Asperger’s side took over last night and I got into some lengthy philosophical debate about the nature of knowing! I think this was in large part due to not wanting to rewrite the single short paragraph, or two or three at most, that I lost at the beginning of this week trying to write the same tricky section in which I describe my comparison in the poem of the myths at work in the state’s use of 9/11 and the moon landings; in re-writing it, I had to make it more complex to keep my focus.
I can’t concentrate now, something I put down either to writing late last night, to the cigarettes I had, which also contributed to poor sleep, or to the onion bhajis I’ve been eating and the Ginseng I’ve been drinking all day. Whatever it is, I can’t go out and run because it’s pissing it down, and know that if I played guitar for a while, I would later regret having done nothing when I have to go to my Mum and Dad’s for my mum’s party, something which will be a real challenge for me. And so, I’ve decided to try and do something to work towards a second poem using the same method as the first, only to comment on it this time from the off, if possible, and certainly to show a few workings out.
I have chosen a book. As I Described last time it has to be a book which has contributed to my frustration at my inability to concentrate, a book I have either started or rebuked myself for having not read. It has to be a book, too, which could be condensced thematically. It took me a while to find one such, but I have, in part perhaps because of my writing a little while ago about the stereotypes which attract themselves to the French: I have chosen The French by Theodore Zeldin, a book which I began reading after I returned to my home town from university and struggled to learn French, something another student said I could do quite easily, indeed a student so dope-addled that I thought if he can do it, anyone can. Of course, I didn’t finish it.
Now, last time, I didn’t do too well, in the sense that I misremembered the number of lines in a sonnet and chose the number of words accordingly. This time, I will try to choose he correct number for a sonnet, and even to chose the rhyme scheme in advance! This will certainly give me less wiggle room. It is in part for this reason that I hope to make the poem comical and have chosen the subject accordingly.
And so, we have 513 pages, bookmarked at the 216th page with a 25th November 2002 Asda receipt for a cup of coffee. Not bad by any stretch, but not complete, and this frustrated me at the time as I recall. And so, a sonnet is fourteen lines in, let us have an octave and a sestet. This will give us a word every thirty five and a half pages.
So, dice at hand, with the first roll to decide paragraph, the second sentence and the third the word. Should there be more than six paragraphs to the page we’ll decide with two rolls, substracting one in order to not disclude the first and going bust once we pass our quota, similarly with sentences, and similarly with words.
So, page 1: 3 paragraphs. Die: 2. Which brings us careering to the first adaptation to the rules. I remember that last time I did the same. Here we have loads of sentences, and it’s much easier to count the lines. We have 15 lines, which gives us 3 rolls of the die. Die: 1, 6, 1, which totals 8, minus the 2 extra rolls, we have the 6th line. Which has 10 words. 2 rolls. Die: 1, 1, minus the 1, gives us “their,” and comes to illustrate one of he rules introduced on doing the same a month or so ago for The First Circle, which is that grammatical words and overly specific words (subjective, I know) will not count, since they do not sufficiently flavour the poem. And so once again the 2 rolls. Die: 1, 6, which totals 7 and gives us 6: “people,” which is a dull word but cannot be discounted for that.
On to page 37, part of a chapter entitled “How to Tell them Apart.” A page of 4 paragraphs. Die: 3. 9 lines, two rolls. Die: 1, 5, total 6, which gives us 5. 12 words, which gives us (think about it) 3 rolls, so as not to exclude either the first or last. Die: 3, 6, 3, which totals 12 but must come down to 10: That! Again. Die: 3, 4, 6, so 11: is! A glance at the line demonstrates that there are really only two eligible words: “…their words come out like a machine gun firing. That is why…” Or maybe, no, we’ll call it ‘words,’ ‘machine,’ ‘gun’ and ‘firing.’ And so 1 roll (on the carpet now because three cups of ginseng and vanilla tea this morning following the advice, in part, of my Tai Chi guru, and some studies which showed it to be effective for ADHD which I desultorily read today while unable to do anything else, have left me utterly unable to sleep, while poor M tries to sleep next door after a soul-crushingly boring family party, with the clocks going forward, and when she starts work at seven o’clock tomorrow morning and finishes at half ten at night): 2, so “machine.”
Page 74, in a chapter called “How to Laugh at Their Jokes” and we have just the one paragraph divided by a cartoon. In it twelve lines, so, once again, our three rolls. Die: 3, 1, 5: 9, less two, gives us seven: “perky and irreverent Parisian titi and the English Cockney, or…” from which we will take the underlined words. 3 gives us the functional but less than satisfactory “English.”
Page 110 takes us to the first page of “How They Get Married” (am I selling this book to you yet?). Another big single paragraph. 29 lines. 6 throws. Die: 5, 4, 5, 2, 5, 6, which comes to 27, minus 5 gives us 22. “…her task as a parent. Monique was an only daughter with five.” I roll a five, which, aptly, gives us “five,” which should stir it up a bit.
Page 147 with the potentially racy “What Lovers want from Each Other”supplies us with two paragraphs. Die (on the desk again now with M deposited at work several hours ago): 1. Nine lines. Two throws: 3, 3: 6 - 1 = 5. Finally an exciting line, though the way these things go I may well come to regret it later: “…pleasure‘, of homosexuality, of ‘prostitution for pleasure‘. Her…” Four eligible words, with one of them doubling up. Die: and we have a 5, so bust. Again: 1, which gives us “pleasure.”
From pleasure to p. 183 of “How to Find the People With Real Power”, a page of 2 paragraphs, of which, with a bouncing roll onto the top of my keyboard, we go bust with a 3, and then choose the second. This has 13 lines, three rolls: 5, 5, 5: 15 - 2 = 13. We have “…solving social problems, they interfere less in aesthetic matters” of which perhaps the words ‘interfere’ and ‘aesthetic’ would seem the most flavoursome, though perhaps I could choose to re-link ‘social problems.’ In any case, two throws: 6, 2: 7. We have “matters“.
We go now beyond the Asda bookmark and find Page 220, another page of two paragraphs, of which we choose the second. 33 lines. 7 throws: 4, 4, 1, 1, 2, 6, 4: 22 - 6 = 16: “…from other provinces. ‘It is better to integrate, to participate in…’ “Better“.
Page 256 of “What Becomes of the Drop-outs” gives us one paragraph truncated by a cartoon. 23 lines. 5 rolls: 3, 1, 5, 1, 6: 16 - 4 - 12: “…doing it, without any apprenticeships in the capitalist press.” 6, bust, 3. “Apprenticeships“.
Page 293 of “How to Eat Properly” and we have two paragraphs. 5, bust, and then the second, of only two lines. 5, bust, 4, bust, and 2: “cooking as being the most rigidly codified of all national…” we’ll throw in ‘all’ for good measure, giving us a good six. Of which we take the second, and perhaps one of the dullest but perhaps serviceable, we’ll see: “Most“.
Page 329, “How They Choose Their Style of Life.” Again two paragraphs, of which after going bust with a 4 and then a 5, we choose the first. Eight lines. 5, 6, so bust. 3, 4, which gives us the sixth: “…difficulty, that the masses were not interested in anything too…” We take the first word, “difficulty.”
366 and “How to Recognise the Effects of Education” furnishes us with another two paragraphs. 3, bust, and a 2. 7 lines. Die: 3, 3, 4: 10 - 2 = 8, so bust. Again: 4, 2, 2, gives us 8 less 2, so the sixth line: “…who became a commercial traveller and finally attained comfort…” 7 words. Die: 1, 4, 2, which gives us 7 less 2: “Finally“.
And so to page 402 of “How Not to be Intimidated by Intellectuals”. 3 paragraphs here. We choose the second. 32 lines. 7 throws: 6, 2, 5, 3, 6, 1, 3, which gives us 26 less 6, so 20: “…can charm, but also because he is an explorer, always bent on…” I’m including ‘can’ and ‘but’ since they seem able to change the direction of a line and throw a spanner in the works as it were. 4 and 4 gives us 8 - 1, so the seventh word: “always“, another pretty flavourless word.
Page 439 promises to explain to us “Why Women’s Liberation Moves Slowly.” One paragraph, broken by a cartoon. 22 lines. Die: 2, 4, 2, 2, 6: 16 - 4 = 12. “…experimentation on the functioning of the body, and ‘a precise…” We take the second, “functioning.”
Finally, we have page 475 with “What Illnesses They Suffer From” a page of two paragraphs. After going bust with a 3, and another, we finally roll a 2. We get fourteen lines to choose from. Die: 4, 3, 6, gives us 13 less 2, so 11: “…remains, but it is now balanced by fewer practical responsibilities…” Sophistry perhaps, but it’s too late in the day to have a ‘but’ and so we have 6 words. We roll a five and so have the utterly unpromising “Practical.”
The French
Is there a people harder to like than the Gauls?
This hexagonal ghost in the machine of Europe
They’re enough to make the English shut up shop
To a nation 9 to 5 doesn’t suffice, their laziness appalls
30 hours slack graft leaving so much free to pleasure
Dangerous loose hours for conjugal (and extra conjugal) matters
and still they want better, strike and blockade, mad as hatters
Here it’s school, apprenticeships and then go hell for leather
But is this penchant for repos what bothers us most?
Could it not be how our neighbours embrace difficulty
Suspect intellectuals and, finally, effete chefs mocking our Sunday roast
There’s nothing wrong with beer and butties! We were always guilty
of dreaming, never of defeatism, nothing stopped functioning: England shone
Rare now is the practical man of wisdom and passion. Where’s it all gone?
28/03/08 - 29/03/08
I definitely struggle with these exercises. I am always torn between so many different impulses and priorities that motivating myself to anything is difficult, but this is especially the case when I take myself so far out of my comfort zone that I feel only my own limitations, and feel time passing me by with no progress, however illusory, being made.
I was having a crisis before Christmas, and before my birthday - my 29th! I came to question all of my values and all of my priorities, or what few of them were consistent enough to question. Poetry came to be something I saw as a possible solution to my getting bogged down in unwieldy novels and time-hungry research, something that could come into play if I was to start working with my temperament instead of fighting against it. Raymond Carver and Alan Silitoe both had come to short stories through poetry and the two were intimately related. If short stories were my first love before politics came along, and given that they still inspire me far more than the majority of novels I try to read (I often fail), I should surely at least attempt poetry too. It might help me to slough off some of the more unwieldy feelings and commentry if nothing else, just the same as essays would help me to rid myself of the excrescence that might otherwise threaten my novels.
My Christmas list therefore comprised several books of poetry, on poetry, just as it contained drawing materials. I was willing to try anything. My parents, ever supportive, were kind enough to buy me the excellent Writing Poems by Peter Sansom, published by the fantastic Bloodaxe books which also published the anthology Being Alive which they also bought for me, along indeed with the scanner on which I have scanned the covers of these books, and the A4 sheets on which I drafted this poem.
And so I thought of this exercise for myself.
Not only does it give me some practice in the mechanics of poetry, but it also, I suppose, gives me some distance from what I write. With this, and with The First Circle, I can get my disclaimers in, and so too I can click publish without any concern of showing myself up (I grant that on this site I do little enough of that, and publish much that others would hold back from, compensating for the Fort Knox like highly defended personality I display in my day to day life): with poetry I think I would feel this embarrassment, this shame, more than I would elsewhere.
But on to the poem itself. And I won’t scrimp on disclaimers. This book didn’t serve me so well as The First Circle. I had hoped it could be comic, but there were few comic words. Indeed, I found myself having to shoehorn most of the words into the poem, and when out on a bike ride with my brother and his girlfriend who are visiting from London, I thought about how sincere I could be if I dispensed with the straightjacket of some of the words, concluding that actually, this would be ok, since any exercise should be no more than a jumping off point. Still, on coming back I reminded myself of the validity of my reasons for wanting the straighjacket in the first place, and besides, that this was evidently a throwaway theme. Such practice would could and should serve me when I needed it for a more natural theme of my own.
And yet I do find that you can make a theme your own, and this is why such exercises that force us to work in ways we normally would not can lead us to revelations and to real art. (I do not claim that in this case it has, it has not, but from it I see that it could.)
My word finding difficulties continue to plague me, being, with my own idiosyncratic and limited speech, one of my real weaknesses yet that I have to work around in my writing. With poetry it mainly limits my grasp of metre. I find that I cannot imagine and reimagine a line so that the words and their stresses sit down and bed together like rocks in a dry stone wall. I don’t have so many synonyms and subtle timbres at my tongue. The logic of the poem and the feeling of it works around in my mind, arranges itself, but I can’t express it on the page, and so with every line through which I progress, the fit becomes worse and worse, with rough off cuts of thought and feeling being left by the side like the queens and the bishops which stack up when I play chess. And so it was metre I was hoping to work on today. I didn’t manage it. Perhaps the words were not right. I suspect this is the case to a certain degree, since, now that I have been forced to cut a thought and a feeling down to size, and see what a mess I can make of it when it is forced into a certain pattern, I think I could make a go of it if I were freed from it. But let’s see what actually happened instead. I hope it’s not too much of a car crash.
I forget exactly how I hoped to open the poem. Certainly I wanted to make a play on the Englander’s notorious suspicion for and dislike of the French. I wanted at one point to make the French out to be a nation it is not easy to like, but whom one can then warm to, coming to laugh at their idiosyncracies. When I then came to settle on “Is there a people harder to like than the Gauls?” it was in large part, I think, down to that end rhyme.
“Machine” stumped me. What a horrible word for a second line. This really precluded any of the avenues I would have liked to have explored from that gambit. What it did was open up a route to one of our little Englander’s gripes about the French by use of a possibly questionable use of the phrase “ghost in the machine” which suggests that the frogs are behind it all. From this it was a small step to the spanner in the works that market stall holders and butchers and greengrocers the country over claim that Europe are throwing their way by insisting they weigh in metric, not imperial, and, with that, to throwing back a national stereotype, that we are a country of shopkeepers. Now, obviously, we no longer are a country of shopkeepers, for the moment we blame this on Europe, but later, the changes that have taken place will come up again.
Originally I had “But it’s not just their officious clamour that appalls” as the next line, with this rhyme word flagged up for some time to pair “Gauls,” but here was another word to shove in by fair means or foul, “five.” And so on to the French legislation limiting working hours. Almost certainly I misremembered this as thirty hours (I did, it is thirty five), but since facts are very rarely at question in English Gripes about the French, or certainly, rarely employed unadorned, I thought this apt, and so a contrast between the British working classe’s appetite for overtime is compared to those French who spend so little time working, and, in the next line, crushed into the phrase “slack graft” comment passed on a recent successful book encouraging French workers to do as little as possible.
The “aesthetic matters” of Zeldin’s book becomes conjugal matters with a suggestion that the alleged susceptibility they have for having affairs is a result of the laxity in their working habits.
The final two lines of the octet continue to contrast the work ethic of our working classes with those of the French as a whole, as our tabloid reading classes see it at least.
The octet changes things a little, asking if there is not something more to our supposed dislike of the French. The “most” was relatively unproblematic. The next word, “difficulty” forced the subject I would have chosen to bring up one way or another anyway, namely that of intellectuals, but was otherwise similarly dismissed. It was the next word, “finally” that I most would have wanted to change, even to something such as ‘the final straw’ which I hoped “finally” itself could suggest.
After I wrote the next line, with all of my off cuts of thought and feeling already now mounting up and written off, I decided that it actually was quite apt, because I could see that the caesura that occurred with the exclamation mark at the apogee of defensive anger in the little Englander’s plaint serendipitously expressed much of what I wanted to say. Because this caesura comes right on the heels of the first and only mention of beer, and here things turn maudlin and self reflective. All the anger turns back on itself. It’s England’s faults that come up now, and how the country, once such a proud place, has changed for the worse.
Even with the clunky metre, and the jolt on tripping over a word as ugly and unsuited as “functioning” I can feel the atmosphere of that moment when anger turns to reflection, and I can experience it as typically English, typically parochial, typically working class, and I can feel too the theme then bite back as it should.
The metre goes to hell here in these last few lines, and I’ve never yet come close to writing a line of iambic pentametre, something that can only partly be explained by all the manoevring that has to be done to slalom these words in these exercises. If I pluck up the courage and manage to prioritise it for long enough I’ll post a few examples of poems written without this slalom so you can see exactly to what extent it is a factor.
Again, I’m not happy with this poem, but I’m happy enough that I can see that poetry is something I could grow into. That last turnabout, for example, might have been serendipitous, but it is something that could have been worked on.
I should make an attempt to work on some of the exercises in Peter Sansom’s book (I read it through first to give it the once over and intended to go back to it. It’s been sat on my desk ever since, the subject of an un-written review as much as anything else).
One day, as with all this, it will come to something.