Last week I shared Palinode at The Oasis and wrote a little about the origin of that poem. In particular I touched upon its genesis within a space — the Oasis swimming pool — that has a certain queer resonance. For this week’s issue of Part-time Poet, I thought I’d share two more poems which touch on queer themes and dig into the meaning of the subject of the poem. How do we expect the poem to address us, and what does that mean for who we are?
The first poem in this week’s newsletter, Calliope, I produced from my journal notes on Wednesday evening — the midsummer solstice — after reading some of Jacques Dupin’s work in Jean Khalfa’s seminal The New French Poetry.
CALLIOPE We say that the dead are glorious but I know that it’s your lips Flower of the boy I saw on the bus, dressed in a turquoise polo shirt Muscular arms Shapely arse — there’s a Greek word for that which I’ve never used in my poetry before, callipygean, I was taking the cat to the vet The callipygean was taking his bag to his work The green trees were full of leaf The songs were full, my mouth was full O take me in your capable hands, I sang remind me how I can be broken! Everybody wanted to catch a glimpse of the pretty black cat I was carrying in my lap Except for me, who wanted his eyes
I’d also read Khalfa’s excellent introduction to that volume, in which he describes the new French poetry as “[giving] weight to a conception of poetry as the exploration of being itself, which both precedes and surpasses the psychological and the historical self.” Dupin and his colleagues, as per Khalfa, are attempting to peek behind the curtain of the narrative self — into Ashbery’s “Chateau Hardware” — and exhume whatever might lie beneath.
I’d originally encountered Dupin’s poetry years before during one of Jean Khalfa’s lectures at Cambridge University when I was a first year student there. At the time I remember being struck by the fearsome, raw quality of his work — WOW, I remember thinking, poetry can do this??! More recently, I picked up a copy of Ballast from a bookshop in Paris. I haven’t yet had much time to dig into that particular work, however.
Something I appreciate about Dupin’s work is how one almost has a sense that one is not reading the poem at all all, but is rather being read by the poem. As if the reader is a vessel for the poem to worm its way through and join in with the world. Dupin’s poems have the quality of physical objects out in the world — something elemental like stones or hills, non-negotiable features of the landscape. Dupin’s work isn’t interested in making itself pretty for the reader — it’s much more visceral than that.
When I wrote Calliope, I wanted to capture some of that lightning for myself.
The second poem I wanted to include here is another take on the Palinode which I shared last week. In recent months I’ve often found myself writing a poem on the same subject or theme several times over. I don’t know what that’s about, yet. I hope you enjoy this follow-up to last week’s poem.
I’m reading Plato at the pool, Phaedrus. In his introduction, the translator explains that the Greek word éros means “a longing capable of satisfaction,” something which has fallen through the teeth of summer, whatever has been lost and it may not be found, no I wonder, is éros like the way light falls through the eyeball and turns back inside of us to heat? As simple as the sun gifting us the colour blue, or buying the next generation iPhone or Apple Watch. And anyway — what does éros have to do with Phaedrus? Out on the sundeck, hot boys read books or they pretend to read books. They sit and sunbathe with their friends and shield their intentions behind carefully stated designer sunglasses. The translator reminds us that the Greek word to persuade also means “to seduce”. Eros has something to do When hide-and-seek. But Socrates doesn’t want to play hide-and-seek. He’s out to prove that true love can be edifying, a force for the moral good. All of us know how that story will end.
Love your beautiful brain my angel
Enjoyed the poems.The second one was A BIG surprise.Notes very interesting too