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Every now and then I'm reminded why I never feel
homesick . Actually it's almost every day when I go online and look at The
Guardian, but anyway...
A book of poems just did it, too.
If the tone of a book is ever going to be set by an opening poem it's here
for sure, in a poem called "To all the useless idiots in the
future", where Paul Sutton draws our attention to (one view of) the
state of the nation:
how
clothes and
other goods
dropping in price means that
poor people
can look well fed and casual
not just
tattered backdrops to Cathy Come
Home no
wonder they bombed the fuck out
of us such
chaos and filth underfoot so many
bad haircuts
and worse armpits
but the poem ends on (what seems to be) a note of optimism:
in the
shining air I will emerge and reclaim mine
It is of course problematic to assume blithely that every word in every poem
mouths a poet's own opinions, and it's especially so in a book of poems so
often given over to monologues by so obviously created personas. Having said
which, Paul Sutton has made no secret of his opinions, and readers can draw
their own conclusions. But it really doesn't matter whose words these are --
whether they are the words of a fictional Daily Mail reader, as one review quoted on the back cover has it, or the poet's
own thoughts. They are just words, words in poems, endowed with the task of
asking us to think. So is that really a note of optimism, or just the end of
a right wing rant we "should" condemn? And anyway, we ought to know
by now that the best poems are not always about what the poet thinks; they
are simply (sic) what the poet writes. If you want to know what Paul Sutton
thinks you can go here.
If you want to know what he writes, read this book.
Mind you, the danger of a book whose message (one might assume, although I'm
not sure one would be assuming quite rightly) is that the nation sucks (or
perhaps it's also that modern life is sometimes rubbish) is that one can say
Yeah, we know that, and there's not much point reading about something we
already know. (Actually, I think one message of the book is that modern life
is complicated, but what do I know?) Anyway,
the challenge for the writer of such a book is to produce writing that does
more than tell us what we think we already think we know. To meet that
challenge requires a sense of poetry that makes the act of reading
interesting and engaging. It's not just about anger and confrontation. After
all,
In all art
that claims to confront, the problem now is to find a
target (there
is no object).
(from "Open Letter")
The great thing about this book is that if you come to it expecting you're
just going to find a bunch of angry poems you're in, like if you go to the
Teddy Bears' picnic, for a big surprise. Certainly there is anger, and
certainly there are any number of killer lines that say exactly what you or
someone you know thinks about your country (if you're British, that is; which
makes me wonder how Americans read these poems, rife as they are with oh so
British references; but then, this comes from an American publisher, so..... it
beats me; presumably they're savvy enough to know these poems are the real
thing). Anyway, as I was saying, and for example, here are some pretty damn
good lines:
I go to
seaside towns - there's no culture, just alcohol and
headlights.
(from "Open
Letter")
The other
problem is I dislike most people, and they feel the
same about
me.
(from
"Strategies")
How
sculpted seem horses at night ....
(from
"Cities of the Dead")
That last leads me to draw attention to the fact that Sutton can be what we
call "lyrical"; while the signature note of this collection may
well be lines and phrases such as "Fuck Modernism" and "Aren't
these new restaurants toss?", this is far from being a one-note
performance. Even before the cast of characters really kick in, "Winter
Landscape" sounds a definite personal, lyrical note:
Today I saw
three deer jump the road, their white behinds
flicking between
the trees. It filled me with joy and sadness
while four or five lines earlier a single, simple sentence says an important
thing as well as ever it can be said:
How
terrifying it is.
Most takes on these poems are going to talk about the politics, which is fair
enough. But it would be a mistake to ignore the presence of the poetry. The
book's mixture of poem, prose poem, dramatic monologue, and some things which
seem to combine all three, is quite an achievement. It's not all either an
easy read or a pleasant read, and I wouldn't recommend a
cover-to-cover-in-one-sitting read, because it's too powerfully depressing
and true for that. But I'd recommend a read, for sure. It's better than the
bloody Guardian.
© Martin Stannard 2010
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