Xmas Journal

I

FOR Xmas you got me a hovercraft
(radio-controlled), a book of New York
Poetry—O'Hara, Ashbery, Koch,
Schulyer; a DVD of Blondie
videos (Debbie Harry—cyberpunk,
atomic thirtysomething, belting-out
X Offender in the flesh). Oh my love,
how well you know me, my puerile desires
and middle-aged regrets. I choose a poem
at random and read, ‘love is first of all
a lesson in utility.’

Picture this—a day in December, snow
glittering white gold, the low sun sliding
behind Solomon's Temple, the garden
fading to charcoal grey, I watch, look, stare
from the lounge bay and see, through darkening glass,
birch twigs scrawled across the sky, our Xmas tree
afloat above the lawn, a silver flame
festooned in gold and crimson. My silhouette
looks in watching Blondie behind me
miming Rapture. Hush, John Ashbery's words
ignite to speak in frost-fire tongues.

‘And coming from a white world, music
Will sparkle at the lips of many who are
Beloved.’ I have no such gift—obvious
surfaces, a practiced oeuvre, poetry of
a trodden world, aspiring to style
and clarity—the self's convex mirror
remains beyond my grasp. I try to catch
each moment's droplet, dripping constantly
like melting icicles—a crystalline
image of the world held in miniature—
absorbed, swallowed, engulfed in sleety pools.

II

THE family watches TV. I surf
Times Square earthcam; 10am. over there,
New York roars like a hidden ocean
even though the streets are almost empty;
a thin man in a Santa hat loiters
underneath the TGI Friday sign;
Don't Walk! A couple crosses anyway,
between the prowling yellow cabs. Moblog:
an image from September 30—‘Mom
and Daughter in NYC’, both trash blondes.
‘Mom's a Hottie’, José comments
(from Chile, November 9th). I think—
What we denounce in friends as sentimental,
in strangers we forgive—the foolishness
that survives us after love—the scant wish
to be noticed first, our need to be desired.
But sensing this is not enough, revert
to rehearsed tribal obligations—
bad deals, brand loyalty—‘our landscape
is alive with filiations, shuttlings;
business is carried on by look, gesture,
hearsay.’ Our phatic grunts might keep the world at bay…
nevertheless its nightmare still marauds.

I remember Ground Zero, ‘the human
spirit is not measured by the size of
the act, but the size of the heart.’
Five storeys tall, billboard-sized, the message
still seemed trite. So we walked through August heat,
two summers ago, from Battery Park
all the way to Bloomingdales, then took in
the Staten Island Ferry to dig that
‘awesome spiky postcard view.’ Then cheating
just a bit, we caught the subway up to
Christopher Street; picnicking, to the tramps’
delight, right in Washington Square.
On Fifth Avenue drenched by 100
percent humidity; not rain—more like
a suffocating drizzle, a damp flannel,
hypothermic, we shivered in the Gap’s AC
until the shower passed, later munching
the ‘greatest bagels ever’ in some place
opposite the Empire State....

I browsed an hour
in the NYPL’s sonnet exhibition—
‘Passion's Discipline’—Auden's manuscripts
scribbled, reassuringly uncertain.
Met again in Times Square, beside a nun,
lost in prayer amongst the crazy neon;
grabbed us lattes from the Costa Coffee
kiosk; in Bryant Park, watched the kids
from Nasdaq taking five, glued to laptop
screens as half the world passed by; (opposite
the national debt notched-up, un-noticed).

III

BACK here, grandparents snore on dusky pink
settees—the Queen’s Speech burbling un-noticed,
before the inevitable Bond. Blessed are
the suave, for they shall inherit the blonde.
Over tea we disagree, about war,
and peace, how we must all, above all else,
nurture youth's stupidity, especially now
as all of us grow older. Now alone,
they've hit the sack by ten, warm Frascati,
a half-full bottle, too good to pour away
beckons from the crowded, dish-piled work-top.
I fetch myself a tall wine glass, settle
on the kitchen quarry tiles, cross-legged;
figuring how to skid the hovercraft
between the waste bin and the breakfast bar,
listening to Debbie. My dear, of course
you're right, an Island of Lost Souls would sound
upbeat (not Gothic Lieder), but lounge bar
calypso, slaughtered by your white-boy punk
musicians. Outside it drizzles. The snow
evaporates. How do I feel? Empty?
Maybe, but not unhappy, not unloved.

For Xmas you got me a hovercraft
(radio-controlled), a book of New York
Poetry—O'Hara, Ashbery, Koch
Schulyer, a DVD of Blondie
videos (Debbie Harry—cyberpunk,
atomic thirtysomething, belting-out
X Offender in the flesh). Oh my love,
how well you know me, my puerile desires
and middle-aged regrets. Misquote a line
at random, delete, ‘love is first of all
a lesson in futility.’ Not true,
just write it for the here and now,
simply state your hopeless, empty case...

For Xmas you got me a hovercraft
(radio-controlled), a book of New York
Poets—O'Hara, Ashbery, Koch
Schulyer, a DVD of Blondie
videos (Debbie Harry—cyberpunk,
atomic thirtysomething, belting-out
Rapture in the flesh), how well you know me,
my lover, my mistress, my wife: desires
and middle-aged regrets. I choose a poem
at random and read, ‘love is first of all,
love is first of all, love is first of all.’

Reflecting on what I wrote yesterday about 'Etruscan Places', how the poem is centred around two artists who explore the world in quite different ways: 'Q', engaged, romantic and expressive, 'Bea', a cool, detached 'de-constructionist', then 'Xmas Journal' is a foray into a third way of working. Conversing with American poets through Sonnet Central and Eratosphere opened a different perspective on Twentieth Century poetry.

It is remarkable just how parochial the English Literature syllabus is, even now. I suppose it is just about forgiveable that my Open University literature courses in the early 1980's concentrated on Eliot and Pound, mentioned Plath as a foil to Hughes, but then ignored all other American poets writing in the last century. However, when my eldest daughter, Sarah, studied a comparative literature degree at Warwick University in the 'noughties' American poetry was not considered in any depth at all until the final year, and even then as an optional module. Nothing after Ashbery was on the menu, New Formalism and Language Poetry, anything really after the 60's, simply got ignored.

I soon found that the people I was in contact with in America were familiar with 'a whole bunch' of poets I had never even heard of. Fortuitously, ten years ago or so, a discount bookstore opened just south of Buxton in an old agricultural merchant's warehouse - agriculture replaced by culture! The place is packed full of publisher's overruns, seconds and sundry cast-offs. Sometimes the poetry section contains  hidden gems. Probably around 2005 I bought a cheap copy of Helen Vendler's 'Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry. I began to be able to read some of the names bandied about by my US based cyberpals - Elizabeth Bishop, Wallace Stevens, John Berryman, Amy Clampitt, James Merrill, Jorie Graham - a whole host of new, exciting discoveries.

The poet who most intrigued, infuriated and attracted me was John Ashbery. I remember being very impressed by 'Portrait in a Convex Mirror'. Next serendipity intervened. Gill has a knack of buying me just the right book at the right moment. My Christmas present, I think in 2005, consisted of 'a hovercraft (radio-controlled), a book of New York Poetry—O'Hara, Ashbery, Koch, Schulyer and a DVD of Blondie videos'. The poems and introductory essays by Mark Ford in Carcenet's 'Anthology of  New York Poetry' came as a bit of a revelation. In particular it helped me to better understand the relationship between the 'New York School' and contemporaneous developments in painting such as Abstract Expressionism in New York and l'Art Informal in Paris in the mid 1950's. I was particularly taken with the idea that Frank O'Hara was able to compose 'at any place, any time'. His technique seemed similar to Kerouac's famous speed writing of 'On the Road' which he typed on a long roll of paper supposedly at 'one sitting'.

I expanded my thoughts about this in an email I sent to Sarah in Spring 2010 when she was working on her MA module in American Poetry and asked me a question about Ashbery and his links to Abstract Expressionism.

Wikepedia says:

The idea behind Abstract Expressionism was to focus on the rawness of art, colour, the relationship between paint and canvas, and the process of painting itself. Abstract Expressionism was the outcome of a need for the artist wanting to demonstrate their passion for painting itself, through a subconscious and spontaneous process.

The modern art/contemporary art movement of Abstract expressionism derived its name through the relationship of abstraction and expressionist values being converged into one process

The first thought I had about a parallel between Ashbery’s work and Abstract Expressionism was the way both the poetry and the paintings are self contained and self referential. In some senses they don’t represent anything beyond themselves (the exception to this is ‘Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror’, which, for all it’s sophistication does explore the problems of representation) But with much of Ashbery’s work to ask ‘what does this mean’ what does this ‘represent’ is as frustrating a process as asking the same question in front of a Rothko. You don’t get a sensible answer because you are asking the wrong question – the real question is ‘how does this exist?’ ‘what have we here’ ‘why am I reacting to it in the way I am doing’ It’s like a‘close encounter. So here’s a question – do we encounter the poems rather than experience them?

Then there’s the question of energy and exuberance – One of the charms of Ashbery’s work – and I do think his poetry has charm – it’s not ‘confessional’ or miserable which characterises so much post war poetry – it’s bright, clever and infuriatingly incomprehensible – which could equally be said of the Abstract expressionist work above.

The other powerful parallel between Abstract Expressionism and the work of the New York school of poets is the way the process of the work’s making is woven into the the finished article. In Modernism this is not a new idea – Paul Klee in the 1920’s talked about drawing being ‘taking a line for a walk’. In some senses Ashbery’s poetry is like taking an idea for a walk – trying to find a fixed point of view in many of his poems is not possible – they twist and turn, go off in odd directions – they are the product of a wandering mind. That being said – they are not quite ‘stream of conciousness’ – the effect is more whimsical than that.

I’ve been thinking this morning about the way Pollock's paintings are gestural – see below!

In a sense the finished paintings are the product of a series of physical brush gestures. The thought struck me – are Ashbery’s statements, his phrases, separate ‘occurences’ in the same way – the poems are a record of what has occurred to the poet about a particular thing or subject -  a collection of occurrences – not a description, not a representation, not an explanation.

Finally, on a more personal note, I have to say that when I came across Ashbery’s poetry it was one of those sock-knocking-off moments’ – Mum bought me an Anthology of New York Poets, a Radio Controlled Hovercraft and a DVD of Blondie video’s a few Christmases ago. It snowed. Gran and Grandpa were in Buxton, I went online to the Times Square web cam while they watched the Queens Speech – all these things are forever mixed up in my mind with John Ashbery – they all ‘occurred’ together, so, I had to write them down. [text: Xmas Journal]

Xmas Journal was written at speed in early January 2006 most probably. I made a couple of pages of rough handwritten notes in an exercise book, then wrote the finished piece quickly and directly into Word, a largely completed version exists in my 'new stuf' word file. Of course, it's not really 'stream of conciousness'. Just as  copious notes existed of the material included in 'On the Road' before Kerouac embarked on his rolled-up manuscript typing marathon, then a lot of material, particularly in the form of video and digital photographs existed of our trip to New York in Summer 2003. Furthermore, I must have 'regularised' the material into a rough blank verse format as I went along, though having written so many sonnets, pentameter came pretty naturally to me by this point.

The structure of the poem is a recollection of a recollection moderated by 'real-time' New York as it appeared on web cams during Christmas Day 2005. There are lots of time zones depicted simultaneously, Summer 2003  being remembered as Christmas Day unfolds in 2005 in England, and some hours 'behind' in New York. Time past is captured on Earthcam's 'favourites' images too; an image of a mother and daughter is commented upon by Jose from Chile. That seemed slightly unusual in 2006; Facebook had only just been launched and the world was Twitter free, how far we've come, and so swiftly.

Mom's a Hottie’, José comments

(from Chile), November 9th.....

Like 'Etruscan Places' and 'Barcelona' family videos were an important starting point....



I remember Ground Zero.....

munching the ‘greatest bagels ever’ ....

I browsed an hour in the NYPL’s sonnet exhibition—
‘Passion's Discipline’—



Met again in Times Square, beside a nun,
lost in prayer amongst the crazy neon....

watched the kids from Nasdaq taking five,

glued to laptop screens as half the world passed by....

The poem which resulted from all of this was unlike anything I had written before, more immediate and personal with a feeling of having been crafted in 'in the moment'. I had the same qualms about sharing it, as with 'Mythical Ballads' -  was it too personal?  Finally in December 2006 I did post it to 'Not Sonnets'. The reaction was positive, gushing even! On the few occasions I've spoken anyone who has read the poems in 'Prospero at Breakfast' this is the  one that they most often choose as their favourite.

Above all else though it is my love song, for the intrepid Turpies on their travels and for Gill - 'how well you know me, my lover, my mistress, my wife....'  and of course my very best friend.