45. A Recipe for the Commitment of an Imprecise Poem

for the Veer Collective, who spat out what was offered them1

OK, no pressure, guys: your choice
is your choice & no one could think that
something this impaired could match what you require
publishing is hard but what you value I thought clear
but, well, I am reduced to talking snarkily just now
to say I find those values of commitment and precision to be
well, fucking inhuman – dead abstractions
orders from the mouths of disembodied heads2
I am disgusted by these words & turn
to where my attention is more upon the care of little ones
it isn’t that I believe in Liberty3 but
that comes from inside, yes? not
some retro Between-the-Wars ModernistTM delusion
planning the relaunch of New Masses yet again
now that’s what I call real corrosive kitsch
I prefer the stuff people do in kitchens for
more revolutions start over food than verse

OK then, dudes, I hear you say
so what are you working on? what
‘s new out of Bishops Stortford? OK
the game goes on & we start
                            where we are:
so no food & drink, my friends
                    no bread & water
but stones & gasoline for you to throw – OK?

And then to list my ingredients all dutifully?
they’re around us I reckon in common human actions
not committed to separation & asylums
but communal, messy & just happening:
      loudly saying no
      & calling out wrong decisions
      joining together against these
      & at the worst4 some
      active stand in opposition
      even with the risk of loss
                            or wound
      & we’d take from that
      human fellow feeling to
      see how a new ordering
      can form itself, as
      utopian dreams get realised
      through kitschy rituals so
      this should be then made into
      something joyful & sustaining
      no I can’t give you instructions how
      but suggest feeling & emotion, good
      like in a poem, OK, imprecise
      & what it is committed to
      never externally determined or adopted

      And all the processes that affect us
      huge & frightening
      new high status elites
      bursting from the carcass of the old
      seizing in their mandibles
      all common necessities
      & making us then pay
      over our entire lives
      just to exist in this world
      they claim they’ve bought
      & demonstrate possession
      by making all that there is good
      funnel into them & theirs
      it happens continually
      it is at
               that moment of change
      maybe now to be upset
      but how to do so
      without smashing our own life support
      or not surviving the guns they have already hired
      rather more effective than our poems I would guess
      no, I don’t know how
      & if you think you do
      oh you precise & committed ones
      then try it if you like
      but we are done with leninism
      as it brings nothing
      but another new elite
      – don’t you know?

The presentation of our change
must be less obvious, less
cut off in self-righteous correctness
but engaged through our human actions
which must include for us our writing
as that is what we have to do and if
we commit to something other than what’s our poetry
I think we’d be wasting our own best efforts then
I know it’s not heroic nor what you’d call political
but that too needs some total metamorphosis
not repetition of past failures yet again
“keep the line, boys, keep the line”
no – this is not the field of status games
but the whole of our human life

In the southwestern sky
that sun of winter dies
nonetheless, though we hibernate
or fly, burrow underneath
forage dutifully amongst the rubble
we’ll work for what comes after us
not for the absolute precise but
just a better life somehow

[I got this just from what I’ve lived and seen. It cost me (& 80 colleagues) our jobs; looks like it’ll cost me publication too now. That’s all I can say at present. Sorry if it’s not adequate; but not if not found precise or not demonstrating some image of commitment. It’s what I have found more important than adopted stances, disembodied thought & the glee songs that built mass movements. Memo: write poems, find some better publisher[5], carry on with the care of little ones and the preparation of our food.]

 

 

1 “Thanks for submitting the work. Veer editors have read it and reached the decision that it doesn’t fall within the currently more precise and committed stance that we are adopting.” Email dated November 16, 2013

 

 

2 that means Charlie Marx & Big Ted, remember? & now Paulina the Staffie bitch

 

 

3 as you know, free Americans have pissed all over this word, like mice raiding a larder

 

 

4 usually that means usually

 

 

5 any suggestions, please? anyone?

30. A Recipe for a Long Semi-Structured Poetic Sequence

for my colleagues & comrades of Writers Forum Workshop – New Series, who have tasted what this recipe produces, monthly at The Fox, underneath the maroon lincrusta

And why do I do this, then?
well, if I didn’t, it wouldn’t be
                                  so
dumb necessity claims – it’s like the experimental
                                  – thank you Andrew Duncan
                                    and was that Ian Brinton?1
because this means not mastery but learning
not predicting how the words will fall upon the page
letting what is in & beyond them speak through
and it’s like too avoiding writing The Poem – bless it!
                                              all proper a
                                              golden little bowl
but letting in the dirty cracks of human experience now
which I don’t understand2
                         try and live within
involving them in this writing as I also
seek its origins to escape – we must know
first what has been paid for all our poetry
as here in Stortford, birthplace of Rhodes3
but what did you expect then? – fucking holy innocence?
                                my arse!
                                welcome everyone
                                to the here-and-now4

So you need just to start, yeah
unfolding stories in wonder, picking
at scars5, at dreams, all
seeming discarded, itchy & painful
forms the apprehension to proceed

One touch over all you’ll need
improvisation to rearrange everything
as it comes at you to pick it up
place it as it says where it says
so it says aloud its name thus:
     the dogshead of rage arises
     ends up all decollated upon the pole
     where Stafford & Warwick fight
& you try to get that energy
not to fit it into the schedule
but continually grow what you’re doing
until it becomes the place you are travelling to

The delicious game is to do this
with ingredients fresh & of the best
ones that fly around your head
untrammelled & unplanned but direct
open to all the stinking country-rock
           yes, of ambient experience
                                      thus:
     reading & thinking thru the reading & writing of the poems of yr contemporaries
     the last moment before the baby wakes & you’ve got then to attend
     all the texts you have already written
     all the texts you’d wished you’d written
     the facts & legends of a family’s living
     all the benefits you can gather from the company of poets
     just what you encounter on the train to a rundown seaside town
     the geography of that town, suffused with external memories
     taking a postcard & ask who is it? who is it? where is it & why?
     adding nothing
     what you hear in a coffeebar, or a pub, or wherever – let it force itself in
     the refusal to do what you ought – very important
     using all those precise techniques for the making & raising of actual things
     invent! with fortitude, the basis for all magic working & of all good cooking
     the cultivation of your non-neurotypical self
     high-status elites – focused on closely & continually6
     openness to games, swimming, floating away
     all your friends (real & imaginary)7
     the weather
     never forget a touch (or more) from Dom Sylvester Houédard
     just playing about with your computer8
     any system of magic that seems to work for you9
     an attempt at out-foxing Vanessa Place10
     fucking fucking rage
     the pleasures of narrative
     what appears to you in the night
     scars
     entoptic patterns
     Walter Benjamin – read what you like11
     itself – turned in & turned out12
& use of these what you want & in what order
or none at all & add whatever you wish
that’s pleasurable, nourishing & good fun together

Now, if a thing ain’t coming
                              – create its preconditions
then there’s no backward, let it stop with us
& inhabit too this vagrant sanctuary
                                      – do this
– or however you like for all I care
  the number of ways of acting is infinite
                                            but
  this here you can see13 is operative now:
     write 10 poems sequentially
     each following a different pattern
     then numbered 1 to 10
     decide by dice roll the order of forms
     that you’ll use in the next run of 10
     (purely as permutation – never 2 of the same successive
                              really doesn’t work!14
     & with one of them changed to a fresh recipe
     which determined of course stochastically
     while binding across these strutting runs
     let each poem bequeath 1 or 2 chosen words of power
     to its successor 10 units on
     & so on, building up as they proceed
     – this has very interesting effects
+ 2 further turns
          – whatever ingredients you choose of course
          crucial is openness to all language & image
          as you find them swimming thru this world
          supersaturated with meaning as it is
          let it crystallise out as it chooses
          – & challenge yourself in your making of instructions
          to go beyond what you think as poems
          or what you feel at ease doing
          in the mood of exploring & improvisational discovery
          not as aspirant formalist – no!15
     then let it play out
     the great game
     of writing a poem
     put into this world
     letting it swim with
     in the motion of us

And the varied fortunes wandering through this poem
could not help me stop from saying what
there is in a poetic sequence:
                               as a journey
across this dark & obscure terrestrial star
not mere jumping on the spot
squeaking in the lyric voice
                             but major working
                             encouraging intervention
                             whatever speaks
                             Enochian tongues

Questions of lexis here important
avoid ritual purity like the plague it is
write for voice but not as voice
massed choirs or other transitory auditions
root in written words, sober as rain
colourful & nourished, yes, from the speech
                                 of our Polish mothers
now too our source
                   but not our only
also words diurnal & strangely secular
as many out of the dictionary as in
syntax fluidic necessarily as current speech
occasionally conceptually fully logged
but flying, not wading or marching
write too as a bastard or a mongrel
hybrid vigour trumping formal rigour16

Return to it again & again
under different aspects
each time receiving illumination
nothing is exhausted
nothing is unfamiliar
arrange it all
into a house of life
study it in detail
& live within it
then write again
and again for fun

Close attention
close unattention
concerned & unconcerned
in close attention
lose attention
always concern unconcern
attracting entities
children twice
to carry on
these difficult times
need is more
than personal;
need is more
than sound or sight17

[So I got this out of many sources: Williams’ & Eliot’s complex sequences18; Spicer’s serial poem; heavy flavourings of Oulipo, NY, & early Cambridge too, my masters19; undigested (or overdigested) fragments from the forgotten avant‑gardes & alternatives of the late mid last century20. Slowly finally working through; what can I say? Find your own route, your own diet, your own recipe. Ignore mine. More from both art song & popular song good – structure, progression & repetition, variation & tone – try these & play. Freely improvise. Never mind it’s autumn here. We will reach whatever end we reach.21]

 

 
1
discussion in café in Red Lion Square after the Free Verse Poetry Bookfair, September 7, 2013

 
2
do you?

 
3
“colonist hearts seen in a butcher’s tray”, Doug Oliver, “Remember Stortford, birthplace of Rhodes”, Oppo Hectic (Ferry Press, 1969), p 12, quoted also in Peter Philpott, The Bishops Stortford Variations (Great Works Editions, 1976); and still seen daily

 
4
or hear-and-know

 
5
“Scars are not injuries … a scar is what makes you whole.” China Miéville, The Scar (Pan Books, 2003), p 216

 
6
can only be critically

 
7
you’ve already begun to deal with our enemies

 
8
or your pen, whatever

 
9
well, OK, even critical theory; but when doing this working remember to protect your skull & its crowning chakra in a foil cap, & to rigorously avoid impure thoughts (< sigh! > even though these are the best)

 
10
Bert Brecht may be useful here, the cunningest old fox in such games – also genre prose, the more bastardised the better of course

 
11
then maybe some Brecht, yes, again; some Gershom Scholem – only then a little Adorno, once you have an educated taste

 
12
ideally both at once; or, just mistakes

 
13
or hear

 
14
think of this as good pragmatic advice, like the incest taboo

 
15
nor card-carrying oulipist – fellow-travellers only please

 
16
“Thus from a Mixture of all Kinds began / That Het’rogeneous Thing, an Englishman.” Daniel Defoe, “The True-Born Englishman”, in edited Geoffrey Grigson, Before the Romantics: An anthology of the Enlightenment (Routledge, 1946), p 137

 
17
yes, do bring in sound poetry & visual poetry or even asemic poetry – all good things; but never accept any restriction – seize opportunity always

 
18
let’s claim them both as the good English poets they aren’t, but could have been

 
19
also before them, in my innocence, the Beats – oh, the filthy grebos, don’t let those smart college boys sneer (or they’ll clock them snobby gits alright) – they’re the ones who really set it all in motion

 
20
who now remembers Fathar & Yanagi, the Duncan McNaughton world; or Loris Essary’s Interstate & Alan Davies’ Oculist Witnesses, language-oriented before the LangPo cadres took over; or Opal L Nations’ Strange Faeces – just what it says?

 
21
but only if we start & do it, now:

12. A Recipe for Nothing Less

for Sarah, starting here . . .

Why do a recipe then?
suddenly I can’t
– stand it
am I paid to? do I
want to?
– put it all
down again in a long list
trapped in disgust at that food

Everything stops: there’s
a screaming, then laughter
we can’t need this
I don’t know
what Sarah wants

I can’t say it
I can’t write it
dynamic? my
word I think that is
a delusion now

All chick & piss, yes
like the disordered children
absolute sharp features
all her smutty fragments

I’d like to need the following:
a bus
some dada
some bears
– plenty please!
power
(oh, mark 7 for choice
prayer
poetry
& passion
– lots of that
for pudding
please

Sarah never asked for anything
or if she did, what sort
of comment will that be?
familiar
enough?
then it’s all about speech
which is more about growing things
than cooking them or alchemically poeticising
much more fun
& real1

All of it is noise
just switch attention off the mess
into the medium itself to
splash about a little bit

Just typical of this this young world
– for all that recursive repetition
that what was given before
that, yes, we’re all into around
unusable & valueless
– thank you very much

[OK – that’s all. She never turned up, did you, Sarah? No ideas but everything & everything idealess – every idea less a thing than just talk. Delicious tabletalk. You don’t see this at all? Man kennt ein bisschen, man ißt ein bisschen, man geht kaka ein bisschen, man macht etwas ein Gedicht. Dieser Gedicht.]

 

 

 1 what sort of comment is this?

5. A Recipe for a Seed Cake

for the memory of my father

Whose favourite cake this was, cuing
yet more stories of army life – just
2 types of cake allowed them, fly & sand
trapped in a real utopian dream
peaceably defending this island from excesses
corrosive & absolute, unlike pleasures
like just baking beautiful cake
an act of trust unfrantic as
what? the coming of blossoms – do it well
for here is what will help:
                            125 g self-raising flour
                            125 g caster sugar
                            125 g butter
                            3 medium eggs
                            1 tsp baking powder
                            2-3 tbsps ground almonds
                            ½-¾ tbsp caraway seeds

Hopeful to begin, cook it in a small loaf tin
buttered & floured (like some inconspicuous blossom here
with a length of greaseproof paper across the long axis
its ends 2 handles to grasp onto
put on then the oven at mark 4 (180º)
and suddenly mix!
                  cream the butter & the sugar
add the eggs, and the flour with all the rest
then beat into a homogeneous batter – yeah, yeah
it’s just that simple
                      (I don’t know my father’s recipe
but I guess this as what he learnt
from his grandmother who brought him up
some basic & memorable recipe
                              spoon it
into the tin & set in the oven for about 40 minutes
use your head & check carefully its progress
protect its tawny head from burning too much
& poke into it the oracular skewer
– you want it warm, moist & crumby
                                   not soggy
and then when it is blossoming – take it out
let it cool as it stands for, oh, 10-15 minutes
& lift out finally with the paper, exposed
like a sudden found piece of poetry
                                    trapped on the wire rack

A good cake for drinking with it good beer
or I thought so at the Oto
                          – tho’ not popular there
I make it now in due & inescapable filial piety
let it go on & be made by whoever so wishes
my grandson baby Neirin if so he decides
something is opened
                    let it carry on
                    if & thus it does

[The recipe is the typical Pound Cake1, using here Jane Grigson’s writing of it down. Another recipe gives more flour & more egg – but this cake seems fine, and fits with my father’s two types of army cake – fly cake, of course, made with dried fruit. And as I said, nothing is as good as this seed cake with a good English beer.]

 
 
 
 

 1 Old Ezra the Baker Poet, that’s a good myth