Drew Milne - Poetryetc Featured Poet - Series 4, #3
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What to do with the pressure to front up all manner of writing with intros
and outros, prologues and postlogues? To the embarrassment of manifestos
and blurbs, add the embarrassment of getting personal in the hideous gloom
shed by publicity. The anxiety of print, and now hypertext, remains
evident. Writing must be introduced with signs of the authentic and the
personal, photographs and what not. Such signs hold the text apart from
the slippery slopes of performance anonymity, suggesting that someone,
somewhere is responsible. The photograph has perhaps the most surreal
capacity to punish the rabbit caught in the headlights. Only a few writers
look better than their writing, and there's a suspicion that this is just
as well, even if the historian of haircuts in you would be sorry to see the
end of the publicity-still. Besides, photographs inevitably age and
wither, while writing can see off the prying eyes of the local residents
association, if the flesh is willing. The peripherals seem concerned to
construct an edifice of reading so that no one need enjoy the reading.
Take it easy, here's the digest. You know the kind of thing, where that's
coming from, who it has slept with. Next stop, museum culture. Pretty
soon there's more information than art. Of course, criticism is as
inevitable as breathing, and it is rude not to do your best to talk up the
pleasures of the party. We all have a certain responsibility to gossip
about the charms of our loved ones and to spread malicious slanders about
our enemies. (Eg, look at him over there with his satin sash, hasn't he
heard that this is no toga party, classicism is so last century, etc.) So
all kinds of not so revealing things pop out when you chat about the work
of others. You hope for good sense to prevail, a bit of discretion before
the academic hoover sucks you up. And even if you've swapped your toga for
a look that would flirt the socks of the highest-paid t.v. celebrity, the
thing is you just don't want to say too much about the art lest everything
goes purple with embarrassment. A touchstone comes to mind. Asked to
explain the work, cry 'What, you want me to say it worse?'
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In Memoriam Joseph Beuys
(from SATYRS AND MEPHITIC ANGELS)
1.
In gripe lore rumbles war among moderns
the humble it dreams wet
these hold all penchants for how to pay
lisp your r around Rimbaud and go all
impresario mon juste
for thieving abates
but not the look as contemporary mingles it
howl mid-atlantic coyote
fat sucker lush
likes Beuys like Beuys likes publicity so
this even if Andy troubles
what with what politics what's yours?
as fifth international slow gloats demise
consolidates inc
among diverse others
slow boating it to audience participation
behind you! in chat show chews
we're warming up for pause core grain-
less sepia relents in cut up
burrows all together now!
sweating last human pieces my contact
there faded
sepia genitals in tattoo smile from old calendar
relents still to in the know
shining in my irony plated social kills
nice to see you yes it's delicious
wishing seconds like no felt tomorrow
slow down the pratfalls
harmony guise shines freeze innuendo and
hurrah for applause man standards we can
on cue like it! Dalai Lama cosmetic
as answer drifted back over remote mine-
lands of a dead star not very
call me cute
call me what the hell you laugh for canned.
2.
It's all hands on ship my feckless sea persons
drop curtains we'll futurist in rich disturbance
ahoy art-less! viral shows shout against those
we're Just-In-Time that's JIT! for go-slow
All out! our future ist franchised
down sound bites ye petty bouge pas!
pun along a few don'ts on Sunday we bleed
or shallow it through to mid price laments
toads of woad hole you bore us
we'll go all eco art trash cosy if you don't
sit up and pay cable
subscribe there follow the leader!
we'll be no ad man's throb flush prize job
twitching to first over the wall corp ego
our sounds bite back fat sucker
jealous Maecenas from slash cut prices
the Texas in memoriam trophy shudders
to the standard oils of Folger juniors
get out of conglomerates get into Shakespeare
ye olde facsimile hoards it pays!
a word from our sponsoring angels
award your bliss markets and get compact!
or is that weariness rather than perspectival
spread-sheet autocue ho, ho! on camera one
you mean we never meant
it that play so fast we must
scratch ahead the wireless
accustomed to the sped words buy now!
no dirge but in mono-breath jive talk junk
you groove we track
enconiums and viral breath
blows its own sales to sirens
this is your life the bellows wheeze where none
coyote howls to straw ideology without ideas
cloudy in places where these scattered showers
purpling in damask sash that nought a muses.
3.
Jelly roll fat pack culture strolls complete
on I don't know but yep it's all here in grey
for a live one saddest of all moving pictures
just listen and underwear charming
pants off I'll flag mine to see the tie slip!
dialogue yep surety sure
wait your snatch through meals
for more hot dinners than we have feed back
it's in the pink
but even comes a turn to eat mics
you'll speak like journal pit bull scholion
avante! avante! the changing of the guard
me fat sucker - you coyote dig it!
all substrates to the impresario gel
neo-neon check that, alright!
teeth to the chisel eyes right
storm troop to pithy apocalypse
quick march as masochism ghosts mountain
wherever whenever we gather
there's always one cries yeah! among us
cut up amid prelates howl on those
unspeakably long lines no agenbite sounds
done the work get it? know stuff
as corpses oeuvre it to blessed philologist
in double-breasted Achilles-mouth harm-
ony for its next trick please, you're too kind
while indianola instrumental novelty
fox trots to Every Kiss is the Same
how's that coyote?
speak up cry wolf no metaphor murder but
roll on worldly lit. bugs jiggering no really!
gathered here amid self-publicity
hymn me
our text is Tonite!
your host is shame
and the art of psalmody de profundis I belch.
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A modest preposition
(from STILL LIVES)
for the people of East Timor
Gnosis means simply knowledge, of whither
we are hastening, though in other times
it is as if one met song murderers,
death hands whose sacrifice is body fact.
It is not so difficult
to see the advance stand still
on circle line excursions,
swan-dancing over the pre-scribed pages
still cultivated as our last chapter,
whose neck turn thought is to be all the same
though its pain never is,
while the tread 'essential'
is nought but read ends,
where that something to be said is here blown
before an altar of bad-mouthing calm
that has every thus crust appearance
of being consecrated now to prose;
perhaps a sophist delight
first composed dissoi logoi,
if fraught, mark the old turn,
with the vengeance of communication
whose firsts are a thousand island dressing
cooked in fine archaic illustration.
The result is a disaster, flesh lows
as the spits turn critical,
the state of delirium
signs its fault, and its purpose,
like so much else politic dullness, is
not to cure one single flesh rash richness,
much less deliver us from the old stall
of some moment dress
whose tardy expatiation
is a fashion of other.
In a very framework of city, law,
or our covering stillness, is only
a drift, striving to obscure that poor will
the polis spent its meaning creating,
like whether to wage slaughter
or just send observers:
our own plenty questions
face us like blocked capital,
apologies on part half of people
do not ring true, and besides, nothing here
indicates what is still called election,
as to pass, from divided opinion
to bloody confrontation, is rather
the current of this stasis.
In the other form of trance,
on sponsored Dionysus
or the bold insomnia of sold news,
the wine has a happy dish, with brilliant
shivers drunk deep, singing home sweet heimat.
A clumsy proposal, then,
for the swift abolition
of all our advertising
from cable to leader and hope,
whose possible first pleasure
may be a beginning
on vultureless beauty
drained of litanies and winged messengers
whose further angels assist the carved drapes
of actually existing capitalism.
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>From BENCH MARKS
Slipper top of dazed shots
with no tain, sour preserves
to the lever where ore,
no doubt, is scratch placid,
the stir crazies row on
like this life depends, or
with no wish wash, only
trade winds & funk qualms.
Jump ship, blow sanguine,
rheum over slavish oils,
creole brushed doldrums
dipping scurf print in surf,
just get on swimmingly,
sere as siroc winds scratch
green backs, blood welter
in desert schwaermerei.
Bone dry and willow, an
oriflamme wash, zip high
in armour heels, no slip
o the wisp, as it were,
imprest on idle ashes,
ripe flesh and still ash,
pentose, blossoming in
puce cracks, the flute burns.
But hither, crash viol,
the loose twang in gas
and halter, its sermon
ever falters, never no
fine tooth in sundries,
schmo labrets, there's
hurt to your elbow, so
gone on open mouths.
Slip into this caress
of nomination, just
in you, as a burning
child dreads the fire,
leopard slur hanging
in landings, til sleep
comes down, comes
to or boots up silver.
Each to each, the braid
irks, fathomless in rank
peonage, chip in, drop
lustre, o barbed chaff,
your brim flows on as
feet go blow by blow,
stiller than a rude grant,
a cut price in demijour.
Star after star, army
of pale fleece, turn a
fiery crest in this hue
or temper as its heap
slides a berry whose
spine lies broke, one
half ripe, for lush lip
as her nom de plume.
You're all ears, or say
so, flushed at what to
see through each ruse,
my emphasis, as slop
head of brook, burn,
glittering swim, or all
that, orbits of hate in
glows, now go proxy.
This body of work, the
sordid do in inner surf,
where does its caravan
of fur get off, the skin
in tremors of static, so
freshly cut, spasms of
apricot heats to fill out
forms for luxury pains.
As her physic so wins
and its luminous crop
is so fast, what pulls a
regard along like this,
which brow searches
their lining, that flight
of fact, don't make me
a smile nor even glow.
This cold side of habit
transfers, you pan and
scan for scrags, a gram
of flesh, cut to mantles
still incident on its thick
tape, sparky frostwork
holding out quick films
of nightly stupefaction.
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Double Yellow
(from SONGBOOK)
Not for you the evening
star, nor the barbed hair
of golden stone, now as
long sleeves of the state
hold us aloft this gutter
in scarlit ways, the grit
on each blackening oath
trailing to a burn of fire.
Tooled high, our pool of
worm blaze and simmer
goes through all its stark
waltz of jam today, buds
of crimson sucked amid
the ducked stool, a swift
stitch combing the tangle
to a long imperious quiff.
When did each curl talk,
the railing rises given up
to a scarfield, so blown
to orange jets and laced
cocktails, its comfort rag
spilling a tempered lawn
where the technicians of
sensibility plough on in.
Boulder of ruffled cheek
choke your callow sash,
with clutching temper in
legions the colour of our
ribbon or lung, systems
theory with a smile, this
stain of the local to some
drum and flower of ditto.
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from 'familiars'
***
to its application face in a
day's fruition and folly of
jacket on to a sprung floor
not in so many words but
s/he where it gives to open
rending the slick biddable
do as can but needs pluck
and you do as you do spark
terms in the domestic open
where the bright car studies
amid the day fall against the
bark blue of feeble kinds
***
sure blinkers of material in
bracketing out monumental
purrs appearing in the sight
and its passing of great mirth
as the plangency of its scalp
bids for inertia and affective
to the point of becoming dry
then lighting for this strange
bridge and making headway
are empty fires almost bright
but genetically fresh produce
for the jostling inch to inch
***
to be camera high, as pencil
scores but a trace in the sun
for the found texture to crow
over and do away with crews
projecting the left over pastry
place whose laughing lines to
polished glasses the tinkling
of each smile gives new parts
at least if the moon of chrome
turns to hear a way through
the usual spokes, hand held
to blend in the merging scar
***
shoddy in shambles bundled
through the corpus snags in
loose but sweet bother and
can you hold the good frond
that heads the field so spick
and preyed upon to fevers
of leafy coral, ice and legal
balustrades in scarf wounds
whose spearing but sunny
can steel all but the urgent
places of drafty and ample
that does for the ripped aim
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from THE TROJAN LIGHT
***
wry thing and manic plumage
it's coming on all curious
and in a very real sense to
enfeeblement as crispy gloom
that's abyss for short best
of the severs yawning arctic
skin as volition withers on
that gives me fever and oh
with most audacious hand
to tongue that depends on
a media of wobbles till all
living things must die in
their immense ramifications
and seem to right here as
oxen low for the summary
execution of its posh fringe
***
well a toothy scrap swims
into shame the most brief
mention of the disappeared
who no more can press but
folds dug in a burnt pocket
that aircraft have bombed
a way to the negotiating
table and a deft bathing
kind corners the surrogate
call groomed into purpose
from some ardour will suit
the matinee nymph in sore
digits that lavish somehow
till a cost of which upshot
is human terms and open
to views from Machupicchu
***
so to comb scolds vulgarity
is closing teeth now quite
as it ever was how clients
halting in the knife halted
yawn frankly at a negligee
done for some proxy theatre
run up upon the still clasp
and far conflagration whose
breach of all for which our
warmest hand is played out
on the dark plinth and rude
Eruropa stood so to smarting
the rape the blood pelting
how rapt stings torn from
its holding spine so much
as spent their bring thing
***
parting as the cloud swallow
each shocker and judicious
toppling ankle spread down
before hurling abrupt stock
still plenty seen and stood
mounting cream chords picked
off each bit of cordon-bleu
would but the truce stench
stitch craquelure for booty
scuttling the first sky lob
in somewhat feral wandering
to carry out of the mouths
of stern child and faction
come forth shoot blue and a
rendered dawn is yet evening
scrawls under house arrest
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Drew Milne was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1964. His books of poetry
include 'Satyrs and Mephitic Angels' (1993), 'How Peace Came' (1994),
'Sheet Mettle' (1994), 'Songbook' (1996), 'Bench Marks' (1998), 'familiars'
(1998), 'pianola' (2000), and 'The Gates of Gaza' (2000). A substantial
selection of his work is forthcoming in a book from Salt entitled 'Offcuts:
new and selected poems 1990-2000'. Drew Milne completed a doctorate on
philosophy and modern theatre in Cambridge. Having previously lectured at
the universities of Edinburgh and Sussex, he is currently the Judith E.
Wilson Lecturer in Drama and Poetry in the Faculty of English, University
of Cambridge. In 1995 he was writer in residence at the Tate Gallery,
London. He has published a number of academic essays and reviews, as well
as co-editing 'Marxist Literary Theory: A Reader' with Terry Eagleton. He
is the editor of 'Parataxis Editions', an imprint which published the
journal 'Parataxis: modernism and modern writing'. Further information,
regularly updated, is available from Drew Milne's website:
http://drewmilne.tripod.com
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