Review by Sandra Tappenden

Collected Poems 1978-2003 by U.A Fanthorpe (Peterloo Poets, £15.00)


This is the second review I have written of this book. I lost half of the first one. Which, I think now, may have been a blessing, as I feel I was too supportive of the poet and not fussy enough about the poetry. We shall see. A week has passed since I finished that ill-fated first version, so here I go again.

Question: when a poem makes you laugh, does it hide the fact that it isn’t very good?
There are quite a few laughs in the collection, which spans eight volumes of poetry. The laughs are clever, appealing to a certain smugness at getting the references, which could be a problem. Here are some things which made me laugh, any road.

I am the two-headed anniversary god,
Lord of the Lupercal and the Letts diary.

(from ‘Janus’)

Even though I only guessed what the Lord of the Lupercal was/is (it’s ok; I’ve looked it up now, thank you) I appreciated the joke, and enjoyed the unlikely yoking (or zeugma, according to my Dictionary of Literary Terms). The poem goes on to do what many Fanthorpe poems do; it takes an idea between it’s teeth and worries it into submission. I admire the poet’s thoroughness. Is it a good poem? Well, it’s not at all bad; the humour is consistently tongue-in-cheek and, like many of the poems, it maintains a cheery tension between smart and undemanding.

In ‘Deus v. Adam and Another’ the joke is in the assumed courtroom-drama tone:

The document in this case refers to fruit.
The accused are vague: she says it was a lemon;
He thinks on the whole a raspberry.

There’s no mystery here, however. No surprises. Many of these poems rely on the chuckle-factor, and pleasure in the skilful writing. As a favourite, I can’t choose between the above poem and ‘What, in our house?’ which has several jokes in its rewriting of Macbeth, and laughs at itself too:

Macduff                                          Your royal father's murdered.
Malcolm                                          O, by whom?
Lady Macbeth         Such donnish syntax at so grave a moment!

Jokes aside, I get a sense of Fanthorpe’s world, and concerns. There is something solid or centred about her writing; no-nonsense, practical, compassionate without preaching. Her hospital poems, rather than give way to outrage or indignation, (which would be interesting, but inauthentic for this poet), examine the difficulty of administering systematised care, without recourse to blame, or histrionics. ‘From the Remand Centre’ gives an idea of Fanthorpeland. It’s restrained in form and length, which mirrors the subject matter. Here’s the whole poem:

Eleven stone and nineteen years of want
Flex inside Koreen. Voices speak to her
In dreams of love. She needs it like a fag,
Ever since Mum, who didn’t think her daft,
Died suddenly in front of her. She holds
Her warder lovingly with powerful palms,
Slings head upon her shoulders, cries Get lost,
Meaning I love you, and her blows caress.

In ‘Casehistory: Alison (head injury)’ a young woman is looking at a photograph of herself:

Poor clever girl! I know
For all my damaged brain, something she doesn’t:
I am her future.

and the idea of lost or stolen potential is there, ( a recurring theme, I suppose), but not in a brutal or bullish way.

Some may be troubled by Fanthorpe’s ventriloquism. I’m not. If I felt the poems were based on an irresponsible/ careless viewpoint, I might be. What I feel about this issue, if it is one, is that the reader is free to see for themselves. And a poem is not a person. It all depends on your experience, identification, beliefs.

The poems are remarkable often, because of their lack of sentimentality. Emotional targetting is generally the opposite of good poetry, I find. It certainly isn’t the same thing. There is a tendency to replace it with irony, mind you, but not all the time, thankfully. The poet propels you inside a problematic ethical consideration, and has the grace to leave it, er, hanging. I don’t feel pressured or shoved in any particular ‘right-minded’ direction. I can see how these poems may be deemed dishonest, via their appropriation of other voices, but you’d have to argue hard to convince me of that. It’s a possibility based on sensibility, not fact.

Stylistically, the poems often introduce themselves by way of ‘postcard’ language; brief, telegraphed sentences which, hmm, set the scene:

Clearly Eden. (the opening sentence of ‘Circus Tricks’)
Foreign ground. (the opening sentence of ‘Rite’)
Plane moves. (the opening sentence of ‘First Flight’).

You get the picture. This sort of thing happens a lot, and can become irritating in its predictability. (See below, re. longer poems). It has the effect of deadening the desire to read more than a handful of poems in one go. But then this is a huge Collected, with 468 pages, and who said anyone had to read more than a handful of poems in one go. It would be nice to not want to read more than a handful etc. because they needed to be taken in and reflected upon, because they amazed in some way, rather than not wanting to read more than etc. because I got a bit tired of the samey-ness. Still, if I hadn’t agreed to review the book, I would have taken my time. At least I do know (a) I want to read all the poems at some point, and based on the work I’d read previously by Fanthorpe (b) I’d have bought this book. At some point.

Poems I have enjoyed the most manage to hold humour, careful attention to the sound of the words, (robust, playful), and a certain tenderness in the balance. Take this from
‘Going Under’:

I turn over pages, you say,
Louder than any woman in Europe…

The dreams waiting for me twitter and bleat.
All the things I ever did wrong
Queue by the bed in order of precedence,
Worst last.

“Twitter and bleat”, and “worst last”, are very Fanthorpe, and I love the crunchiness of these juxtapositions. There’s another delightful poem, ‘Song’, which starts “Don’t eavesdrop on my heart / It’s a sneak.” I would have liked more love poems, in fact.

My surprise discovery has been that Fanthorpe often appears to lack the courage of her (structural) convictions. She has a smackable penchant for overkill, where last lines turn not just into closure, but the whole poem again, in case we didn’t get it. In ‘The Constant Tin Soldier’, the last lines are “I may be only a tin soldier/ but I have been constant.” Well, yes. And in ‘Knowing About Sonnets’, headed by a quote from Terry Eagleton, the reader is hammered, in the last line, by a point already quite expertly expressed. ‘Transitional Object’ is another last-line flop, but now, re-reading it, I think the whole thing not very good, being Very Emotive when I just said she didn’t do that kind of thing:

Sits, holding nurse’s hard reassuring hands
In her own two small ones.

Is terrified. Mews in her supersonic
Panic voice: Help. Help. Please.

and so forth, until

Whispers, Help. Help. Please. Cries for Mummy,
Daddy,
Philip. She is 83,

Resisting childhood as it closes in.

Still, I can’t think of this as the poet’s last minute U- turn appeal to the masses. Or I don’t want to. Oh, and lists. There are far too many lists. Are they padding? Discuss. (Please buy and read the book first.)

The longer poem doesn’t appear to be Fanthorpe`s natural home. I’m not sure what I mean by that exactly, except they bore me a bit, because her style is truncated and choppy rather than expansive. So the longer poems can seem too mannered or contrived or something. What works best is the understatement and thoughtful restraint in much of the (shorter) poetry, marked by drollness, dry wit, and a noticeable lack of angst.(Luckily, much of the selection is “shorter poetry”. I suspect even U.A. herself feels more comfortable with one page of A4). And the apparent fact that Fanthorpe is not faking anything. There’s no pose or side to her writing, which is refreshing enough almost to be deemed quaint. That’s not to say there’s no subtlety or integrity of thought behind the words. These things are just not foregrounded, is all, and hooray.

I read some of these poems with my daughter, whilst she was studying for her English GCSE. I liked sharing them with her. The fact that my daughter remembers them, and fondly. A way in should not be despised. Ok, there’s the possibility that a certain laziness develops with poetry like this. It becomes too easily the bench-mark for what a poem should be. Well, I’m a meat-eater who likes vegetarian food. Does this mean I can’t appreciate the calling? I’m not going to say “don’t read this book because it embodies what is wrong with contemporary poetry by way of its graspableness”, because in the main it does what one can only hope has a valid point; it invites you in. (I think of it as a big hotel, where you can drink at the bar, or book a room, or get a job…)

A more sophisticated poetry-taster would very probably hate this book. I don’t at all; quite the opposite. I will return here, for laughs, for pleasure at a certain knowingness, for compassion, and to remind myself that poetry is many things, not least belief in human possibility, even if sometimes it’s wrapped in cling-film for my convenience. Fanthorpe believes in human possibility. The loss of it is something she is keen to repair in some small way, by showing just that, through mimesis. She may point out “the system” and its crassest failings of care, but always nudges one, albeit very politely and practically, forward into acceptance, via what feels like non-judgemental awareness. (Not all of her poems are assumed voices, I hasten to add.) Anyway, I think that’s what I mean by her centredness. Take it or leave it. (Have a beer and leave, or apply for a job in the kitchens.) Your choice.

So. If you were stuck overnight at an airport, (waiting for your Easyjet flight, no doubt,) with your packed lunch a mere memory, you probably wouldn’t refuse a cheese sandwich. In the departure lounge of all possible poetry, U.A. Fanthorpe’s “Collected Poems” could be that sandwich. It may not be the most adventurous comestible you’d ever eaten, but you’d be grateful.

© Sandra Tappenden, 2005

Alice had been poorly, she was barely over it, and was thus feeling a little below the level of her usual calm happiness. So I gave her a snippet from a poem I had come across recently:

Your face is as white as linen on a board.
I pray that the skies will soak up your electricity,
the birds founder and come to heel,
the drive-by stabbings evaporate into friendly if noncommittal steam,

and tragedy draw his petticoat across your face
because it doesn’t happen enough.

I was delighted to see her face regain its colour and light up as if it had been lit up by something, something like a passing carriage lit on the inside with lanterns, and from the outside by moonlight. She smiled. “Drive-by stabbings”! she laughed. “That’s legend!” Alice uses phrases like “That’s legend!” So do her young friends.

Later, when I returned from my labours and put some flowers in a vase (or vase, as Americans say) she said she had been looking at that smidgeon of poetry over and over again. “I don’t know what it means,” she said, “but I can’t stop reading it, because it seems to be about me, and about you and me, and more than me, and more than me and you. Which I like. It makes me feel part of something great, and it’s okay to not know what it means.” (Perhaps it means exactly that.) “I mean, I know what it means, but I can’t say. I’ll make a cup of tea, I think.”

While she was saying this I had started cutting up some lovely root vegetables for the evening meal. Potatoes, carrots, parsnips, and rutabagas in a landscape etcetera. But I had a surprise for her. “Here’s another chunk to chew on,” I said. Inside me, bits of my existence were dancing with glee.

On the scrap of paper I gave her was this:

One might as well pick up the pieces.
What else are they for? And interrupt someone’s organ recital –
we are interruptions, aren’t we? I mean in the highest sense
of a target, welcoming all the dust and noise
as though we were the city’s apron.

Alice was very quiet and didn’t speak to me for ages. It must have been twenty minutes at least, because I had been out to get some eggs, and come back. I had forgotten I needed eggs if the meal was going to be edible.

“We are interruptions, aren’t we?” she eventually said, with a hint of a smile and also a hint of a new-found expression on her face. But I was in the middle of watching football highlights on TV while supper simmered on the stove, and didn’t wish to be interrupted. So she said it again, with a kick, and I was forced to acknowledge that Yes, you could certainly look at it that way.

“Who wrote these things?” she asked. “It sure as hell wasn’t you. You’re good, but not that good.” I kissed her, but I didn’t use my lips. You meant more than life to me. I lived through you not knowing, not knowing I was living.

Anyway, Alice (I think her name was Alice. It may have been Bethany, or perhaps Gertrude. But a brunette, for sure; Operators are waiting to take your call…) from that moment on, she was sold on this writer of those sprinklings, that poet of those brief beams of barn-light into the la-la of day times and night times. She twisted my arm until I told her who had written those chimes of freedom. She needn’t have twisted my arm, for godsake, and all that hurt, because I was going to tell her anyway. I was going to wrap the book from whence they had come up in pretty paper and tie it with a ribbon and give it to her instead of a bunch of grapes. Which I did, henceforth.

Over to Conchita, for she has the book now, and wants the review fee, such as it is, so she can buy some new clothes:

Hi. Conchita here. I am wrapped in linen, and stroking a cat. I am also holding a book in my little hands. It is called “Where Shall I Wander” and it’s by John Ashbery. My paramour Miguel gave it to me. He is such a sweetie. There are things I wish to tell you about this book of poems, apart from the fact that it has blown my fucking mind.

This is where my degree in English kicks in. Poems are weird things, and often they are boring. (If I sound like someone else while I say this stuff, so be it: we all, sometimes, sound like someone else. It’s all an art, and pretence or lack of it gets us through the difficult times. If someone rubs off on you, perhaps it’s because they like you. Or you them. Or something.)

I don’t like poems that tell me how to live. Nor do I like poems that tell me little bits of information I already know, or could get from a newspaper or off the TV. I’m not sure if, in theory, I should like poems that wake me up and alert me to what it’s like to be alive, and getting by. I’m not sure I should like poems like that, because I kind of feel I shouldn’t need that waking up. But I do. Maybe we all do.

But Miguel gave me this book. It made a change from underwear, that’s for sure. Perhaps he was going for the element of surprise.

(Please, do not try and explain what everything fucking means. Who cares what everything means? That’s half our problem, wanting meaning. How do you explain life, experience, that which moves your soul and your bones? Is it beyond words?)

Or, isn’t that Art? “If one could paraphrase the meaning of something it wouldn’t be art, would it?”

Anyway, I’ve slept on this book, and thought about it long and hard. Then I thought I didn’t want to think about it, as such, I more exactly wanted to be in it in the same way it’s in me. I kind of know that the guy who wrote it is pretty old, like 78 or something, and if you wanted to you could read lots of things into these poems because he’s old, like 78 or something. And I think you could do that if you wanted and it would be okay, although I think also you’d know while you were doing it there’s way more than that going on in here, way more than just an old guy being wistful and old, with intimations of mortality in the same lines as pure vitality. I hope when I get that old, if I get that old, I have the kind of wits about me this guy has. If we were all tapped into life the way this fella is, Jesus, that’d be something. Thing is, when you give yourself to these poems, they are so full of a brilliant world, so bursting with that notion, do you know what I mean? that notion how life is so rich, so bountiful, but yet so sad because it's finite, but you can’t be sad, even though you are, and it’s like, it’s like the guy doesn’t say this, it’s what you think while you’re reading, but also you think, Wow! and in some ways you’re not thinking at all because you don’t know what’s going on but in other ways you’re thinking in a way you didn’t know you could, because it’s a beautiful (yes, I mean beautiful) exhilarating – I mean, like, it’s not some clever shit poetry that makes you feel you have to work it out.

They said you’d be here sooner. It’s still early, but I can wait
no longer. It’s bed and the movies for me.
Tomorrow, exceptionally, there may be a flawed native pearl for breakfast,
and in October, lots of weather, much of it cruder.

Doesn’t that just make you know how life is full of ordinary and absolutely stupendous all at the same time? Which I guess I already knew, but I tend to forget, but even that isn’t it, not it, not really. Because actually what’s great about it is that you’re reading it, and engaging with it, so you’re alive and kicking, and it’s not some stodgy text, it’s actually buzzing with fucking life, excuse my Spanish. And isn’t it just great to actually, physically, simply read? Hold on, Miguel is saying something from the kitchen…

Oh, right. We need to get a new stove, I think…

All in all this has been a fairly active and satisfying year, and I’m looking forward to the next one. Where it will take me I do not know. I just hang on and try to enjoy the ride. Snow brings winter memories. There is a warning somewhere in this but I don’t know if it will be transmitted.

*

John Ashbery’s “Where Shall I Wander” is published by Carcanet, and costs £7.95. Everything above that is coloured blue was written or said by Mr. Ashbery. Anything in any other colour was not. As far as we know.