Ronnie

Some last words, from me at least for the time being, on Mick Brown's Phil Spector book. As if the records made with the Ronettes, the Righteous Brothers, John Lennon et al weren't enough - and we know there is more story to come - the book reaches new heights. Firstly, there is the interview with Brown in which Spector is coherent, thoughtful and capable of something like wisdom. For a short time one is tempted to find some sympathy for him. Then, in the next chapter he shoots Lana Clarkson and then there's the court case.

It's not a pleasant book, of course, but it's a brilliant one that transcends the genre of pop history and becomes something much bigger and better although to care about it it is an advantage to care about pop records. It's such a good book that it prompted a poem that I hope is worthy of the name.

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Ronnie

Her glass was always more than half empty,

The wedding ring a prison like the mansion
For the sake of it. She’s had her fill.
This wasn’t what she had expected.
She’s made him so proud of her 

She’s an exhibit too priceless to show,

Locked away among his anxieties 

And guns.
                  The walls are the walls 

Of an unsound mind, the world 

Outlandishly much smaller 

Than she thought it would be. 

She wasn’t crazy about him 

Orchestrating everything. 

And, if he has the chance,

He’ll never let her go.

- 

It's at an early stage that one usually needs to decide if a poem is going to be in metre or not. I like them to be if they can but wouldn't want to be the sort of poet that is exclusively either metrical or not so. With the second line having 11 syllables and resistant to being reduced, I typed in a few lines that I could look at later.

Having reached an impasse, I added a few more the next day, not convinced it amounted to much more than a loose accumulation of lines but I liked them. One can't say it's too 'loose' with every line echoing with allusion or wider reference, like the line endings 'fill' and 'expected' and so I moved a line or two about, amended the punctuation and eventually printed it out to look at.

I think it's a poem and the longer it goes without being further amended the more likely it is to solidify as it is. In the same way that paint dries or molten metals harden, that which had looked temporary or 'in progress' begins to look finished. The great thing about it in recent years has been that it is only me that has to be happy with it. I wasn't always sure about the opinions of other readers anyway, whether they were overly flattering or unduly had their doubts.

It remains to be seen if it stays on the A list of 'publishable' items to be included in the Collected Poems or if it drops onto the B list of out-takes. Agnetha Afterwards is borderline, not necessarily because it's not a good enough poem but because I wonder if I have any authority to write such a thing but the triptych of poems on women artists in isolation doesn't need any more than Escape Artist, for Rosemary, due soon in the anthology of the Medway Libraries 'Circle of Six' project. 

So, a poem indeed. And probably time for another six months of rest.