Reading Poetry: The Faber Book of Beasts

This is an essay from my Open University course – The Arts Past and Present; decided to post it here as there is very little resource material available online. The two poems under consideration are Thom Gunn’s Apartment Cats and Thomas Flatman’s An Appeal to Cats in the Business of Love. The essay received a grade of 83%, so it’s by no means perfect, but if you’re studying the same course feel free to have a read / quote at will.

Reading Poetry: The Faber Book of Beasts

At the outset, Thom Gunn’s “Apartment Cats” are submissive, inquisitive and playful in their behaviour towards the speaker; but, “more awake”, become involved in their own domestic drama – a play-fight – brought to life by the poet’s use of vibrant, animated diction. The second sestet sees the kittens wheeling and galloping “along the corridor”, transformed into Ben-Hur’s climactic chariot race; and by the third stanza, the syntax has become dislocated – “parry, lock of paws / blind hug of  close defence / tail-thump…”, comically mirroring the quick-fire spasms of a typical cat-fight.

Written some 300 years before Gunn’s poem, Thomas Flatman’s “An Appeal to Cats in the Business of Love” utilises hurt and violent language – “spit”, “pangs”, “tattered” – as emblems for human suffering in love. The sense of time is evoked in the opening line – “at midnight” (whereas the action in “Apartment Cats” seems to occur in the morning) – and these are rough, tough alley cats, not domesticated kittens locked safely in an apartment. “Old Lady Grimalkin” is a feline in stark contrast to Gunn’s rollicking “Girls”, perhaps one who is no longer desired and called “Puss”, but something rather more unrefined.

Although “An Appeal to Cats…” takes the form of one fourteen-line stanza, if this is a sonnet, it is one filled with an inverted regard for its subject. Only the four nursery-rhyme-like lines are indented to give any shape. Flatman’s use of form heightens the sense of entrapment and world-weariness – in lines such as “You find by experience, the love fit’s soon o’er” – and brings the childlike quality of  “Only cats, when they fall / From a house or a wall” into relief. “Apartment Cats”, neatly divided into 3 sestets, seems almost constrained in its precision of form, perhaps echoing the “absence of liberty felt by human beings” and in contrast to “the vitality (and) freedom of the world of nature” the poem describes. (The Poetry of Thom Gunn: A Critical Study, Stefania Michelucci, 2009, p.182)

Any obvious anthropomorphism is veiled by the poem’s descriptive technique – this could simply be a record of what it describes – but a closer reading might suggest otherwise. Observing the action, yet also a part of it, is Gunn comparing these warring felines to two women fighting over a lover? The poet, perhaps? In the opening stanza, “one sniffs around (his) shoe”, while the other “rolls back on the floor”, exposing her “bib” and “stomach”; literally offering herself to him. Resolving with a hint of pathos, the last three lines might be interpreted as – if events become too emotionally heated in this ménage-a-trois, either female will “stalk off in wise indifference”, inferring that the male figure will be left bereft.

Conversely, “An Appeal to Cats…” is directly anthropomorphic, personifying its protagonists recurrently. Flatman does not ask his reader to believe a cat can actually “feel the pangs of a passionate lover”; and while Gunn’s kittens are (on the surface) innocent and youthful, Flatman’s are marked and wearied by experience. He juxtaposes the travails of man – “Men ride many miles” – with his street-walking cats who “tread many tiles”; the implication here (and in the title’s “Business of Love”) is  that these are actual ladies of the night under appeal.

However, Flatman’s conclusion lends his characters a wily indomitability – whereas both men and cats “hazard their necks in the fray” of love and life, “only cats, when they fall… keep their feet… and away!” Both poems close with the image of cats, either real or personified, wisely removing themselves from the preceding action, at least one of their nine lives intact.

Recession

The banker obligingly lends Edward his umbrella.
After lunch (with supper little more than hours away),

it starts to rain again; all melancholy.
Tiny screens display jarring red and blue charts.

The banker clothes-lines Mr Smith (a passing everyman)
& angrily demands the return of his prize marrow.

Minor scuffle ensues, etc. Belatedly,
Edward dismantles the studio with a series of clunks.

He needn’t harbour any feelings of remorse.
“They’ll simply buff their awards and locate further victims.”

In a sudden volte-face, he paperclips GET WELL SOON!
slips by the dozen to their severance letters; feigns

insouciance with a flicked v-sign & cigar.
After tea, Edward opens the umbrella; to uproar.

One enraged lobbyist uses high-heels on a copper’s face:
“A candle loses nothing by lighting other candles!”

After supper, a skein of geese, obeying their deluded leader,
break formation & dive-bomb, one by one

into Edward’s garage roof. The papers ignite, gleeful.
Dismissing today’s killings out of hand, Smith

identifies this event as the author of all our misfortune.
“A burnt child dreads the fire” he whispers, knowingly.

Star Trek, 2009

The last time I genuinely enjoyed anything Star Trek-related was during Jean-Luc Picard’s tenure aboard the Enterprise; MC Hammer was topping the charts, shell-suits were socially acceptable, and I was about 12. Since then, the world created by Gene Roddenberry back in the 60’s had seemed as appealing as prolonged throat surgery.

So news of a rebooted Star Trek movie didn’t exactly fill me with anticipation. I yawned while watching the trailer, and actually found Chris Pine’s smug-looking Kirk irritating; but agreed to accompany two friends, more devout Trekkies than I, last Saturday night.  

JJ Abrams’ Trek is dynamic, vital and most importantly – entertaining. On the strength of this and the underrated MI:3, he possesses a pure filmic sensibility similar to that of Steven Spielberg – both instinctively know when the time is right to deliver a spine-tingling image or moment, both utilise technology without letting it overpower their work.

From the opening sequence, when the USS Kelvin is ruthlessly despatched by Eric Bana’s Romulan villain (with Kirk’s father George onboard), the pace rarely lets up, but each set- piece is crafted with such faultless timing and bravura, this never becomes grating. It mercilessly pulls you in: there is enough cinematic bombast here to fuel a starship.

There are some truly jaw-dropping moments – the elder Spock, stranded on a neighbouring planet, watching Vulcan collapse on itself; the Enterprise rising past Saturn’s rings; and crowd-pleasing nods to the original series – Karl Urban’s McCoy gruffly asserting “God damn it, I’m a doctor not a physicist!”, Scotty yelling something about dilithium crystals and “giving her all she’s got!” as the Enterprise struggles to escape a black hole.

Although not without the odd minor cliché – Uhura is first seen strutting into a party accompanied by slick R&B; Kirk, the young rebel, wears a leather and rides a futuristic motorbike – the franchise has been modernised admirably. There’s also genuine warmth and humour – when confronted with an aged Spock from the future calmly explaining the “alternate reality”, Kirk’s response is simple: “Bullshit.”

Each character is given enough screen-space to at least establish their credentials, so that by the time Leonard Nimoy recites the fabled “Space, the final frontier” monologue pre-closing credits, the crew seems complete, ready to boldly go, and perhaps produce an even better sequel.  

In an interview just before he died in 1991, when asked what would become of Star Trek,  Gene Roddenberry said he hoped that “some bright young thing will come along and do it all again, bigger and better” than ever before.   

Mission accomplished.  

Synecdoche, New York

Having enjoyed moderate critical success and nabbed a few awards in the U.S last year, Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York, finally gets a UK release on May 15th.

In my opinion, 2004’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, also written by Kaufman, was the film of the decade so far, so I’m really looking forward to S,NY.

May update this with a proper review in a fortnight or so.

Lady Gaga (and the All-Girl Mutiny)

Lady Gaga’s Poker Face and Just Dance have been rotating inside my head for nearly 3 weeks now. They’ve become immovable objects, as much a part of my everyday life as wearing clothes, or eating cheese. I can’t recall any other records, let alone records so unashamedly POP! being this irresistible, this teeth-grindingly catchy.

 

Gaga is potentially a great popstar* in the sense that she opens herself up to ridicule while simultaneously cultivating an image apart from us normals. She casually name-drops Andy Warhol as an influence on her style, “because of his ability to make commercial art and create an intellectual space where it was taken seriously”; and her desire to release music which is “innately significant, and insignificant” in order to provoke debate, is (if you’re feeling absurdly generous), something of a Warholian act.

 

As ridiculous as it seems to get all high-brow when discussing someone who writes lyrics like “I’m not lying, I’m just stunnin’ with my love-glue-gunning”, and while some will certainly deride those claims at artistic validity; with two colossal worldwide hits to her name and an ambitious streak which outstrips most of her contemporaries (“I intend to have a multimedia installation at the Louvre”), she seems the most intriguing character in pop culture right now.  

(Or, have I been brainwashed by the circling, neverending sub-Barbie Girl electro pulp of “p-p-p-poker face p-p-poker face muh-muh-muh-mah”? Is Gaga, in reality, just Madonna’s irritating, equally supercilious, less attractive niece? Hmm…)

 

Anyway, I’ve suspected for a while that the future of decent music will probably be female – Santigold, Bat for Lashes, La Roux (who turned up to sign her recording contract wearing a T-shirt that read “I am a Cunt” – can’t imagine Caleb from Kings of Leon sporting a male variation), M.I.A, Yeah Yeah Yeahs – I find myself trusting testosterone-fuelled bands less and less. There seems to be something feeble, and decidedly 20th Century about a bunch of skinny try-hards fondling guitars.

 

KILL Razorlight! KILL Kaiser Chiefs! THE ELECTRO-GIRL

MUTINY IS AT HAND! Or something.

 

* This was written before Lady Gaga’s appearance on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, when she was, perhaps, excruciating…

Fear. Doubt. Gardening.

Removed, due to publication in Stride magazine.

The Vanishing Age of the Blockbuster

Having enjoyed the playful, if unbelievably dated original Superman film yesterday afternoon, then sat through what seemed like several days worth of Tropic Thunder (maybe the “in-jokes” sailed over my head, but isn’t it just f*cking terrible?), I was left wondering: What’s happened to the traditional Hollywood blockbuster?

It now seems a pre-requisite for all big-budget films to be around 3 hours long, overwrought, digitally enhanced and lacking any kind of soul. A case in point being Superman Returns – while a reasonable idea in theory, Bryan Singer’s laboured revamp wound up being one of the most pointless extensions to a franchise in Hollywood history.

Presumably led by Christopher Nolan’s bleak take on Batman, there also seems to be a current trend for grit, hyperrealism and a calculated violence in today’s blockbusters, totally at odds with the Spielberg-initiated template for family-action-adventure films which had been prevalent in the previous 3 decades.

The latest instalment of the Die Hard series, for example, utilised this modern formula, and veered away from the original’s unaffected bonhomie, witty dialogue and perfect pacing. In recent years, only the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy (despite clocking in at over 7.5 hours) has offered any sense of light-hearted fun in the face of all this po-faced solemnity.

So is anyone capable of producing another blockbuster as faultless as Raiders of the Lost Ark today? Another Back to the Future? Even taking into account their brazen commerciality, it’s the boundless enthusiasm, the work ethic on display, a feeling that the filmmakers are striving to entertain their audience, rather than indulging in stylistic emptiness, that contributes towards their enduring appeal.

Perhaps it’s only nostalgia that gives rise to these sorts of appraisals,

but it seems to me that the lack of pure imagination, or at least a willingness towards commercial artistry within Hollywood’s big league, is cause for concern. Or maybe just boredom.

I’m off to watch Jaws and pray the new Transformers movie proves me wrong.

Bright Star

Just read online that Jane Campion’s film about John Keats may premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. I’m pretty excited about the casting of Ben Whishaw, perhaps England’s most promising young actor, as Keats; and of the gorgeous Abbie Cornish as the poet’s lover and muse, Fanny Brawne. It’s a sadly unavoidable fact that the girl for whom Keats wrote some of his greatest verse had such an unfortunate name, but this is one “period drama” that really deserves to be brought to the screen.

I was so enamoured with Keats’ story a couple of years ago, I read two biographies (by Andrew Motion and Stephen Coote), made about 200 pages of notes, and started drafting a script of my own. But with each scene outlined, and just as I began writing dialogue, the news that Campion’s film was in pre-production appeared. Decided it was probably best not to try and compete with an Oscar-winner, especially when I had no film credits to my name.

While Keats, as a character, may lack the controversial saleability of Byron, for example, his poetry (in my opinion) is infinitely broader, more earthy, with an invincible depth running below its sensuality. Contrary to all our floral preconceptions of the “romantic poet”, he was “the coarse-bred son of a livery-stable keeper”, as Yeats snobbishly described him, a scrapper with a passion for claret and snuff.

I assume the heart of the story will centre around the Fanny / Keats romance, the authentic tragedy of which will be a huge selling point; but I hope Keats’ work will be allowed room to affect a modern audience, and that his reputation in some quarters as a feeble consumptive prone to hypersensitivity (Byron’s assertion that he was “snuffed out by an article”), will hopefully be rejected as nonsense.

Bright Star should be released in the UK sometime in 2009.

May the Best Man Win?

If nothing else, his comedy maid’s outfit certainly drew attention from the bride’s black eye. She gulped her champagne like a furious bulldog. The chink of impatient cutlery. “This guy”, Gavin finally yelled into the microphone, slapping Adam severely on the neck;

“Well he’s always been there for me, yeah?” A wayward burst of the Friends theme made every toe curl. Shifting chairs. An anecdote about spooning in Corfu. Raised eyebrows. The groom wished for a rickety table and some rope.

“Then Wendy came on the scene…” Gavin lurched, cheeks resembling two bowls of roasted beetroot, “… and I was evicted from my own home.” A forlorn yelp: “No more pissing in the sink! No more Die Hard marathons…”

He hacked away a concerned arm and wept, quoting the Auden poem from Four Weddings. Wendy’s father stepped in with a gruff scruff of the neck: “Car park. Now.” The buffet-disco kicked off early with Come on Eileen and lamb kebabs.

Gavin studied a crow’s reflection in the muddy puddle.

Ah, Rejection

After a 6 month wait, the poetry journal “Alice Blue” sent me this… unusual rejection today:

“Unfortunately we were unable to find a place for your work in this issue. Sometimes this happens. Monkeys press switches and little babies freak out & cry, “pick me!” “pick me!” but it’s all monkeys here so don’t despair. More opportunities skitter towards you with alice blue hypodermics, ice water, and The World’s record for rapid eye movement.

Much love, The Editorial Staff ”

I assume this is the standard response they send every rejectee. In a moment of confusion and misplaced bravado I considered mailing this reply…

“Thank you for the contrived response, Editorial Staff. According to the internet, Alice Blue is both obsolete and a failure, so please accept my sympathies. I enjoyed the monkey reference, but rest assured your attempt at self-importance drifted past virtually unnoticed.  

 

Ever willing,

Writer”

 

On the issue of editor-writer exchanges, these Letters from our Editor were crafted by Salt’s Chris Hamilton-Emery. Brilliantly written, and very funny indeed.