Oh, Babe, What Would You Say

I gave up reading Oliver Kamm in The Times on Saturdays quite some time ago, abandoning the self-congratulation I had once delighted in at the thought that I was appreciating informed views on grammatical finer points and no longer able to reconcile the apparent tautology involved in liberal pedantics. I need to arrive at the higher form of self-congratulation of finishing the crossword, and that came early last Saturday, recovering from the early error of mis-spelling 'Lusitania'..
But I saw he began with a reference to George Orwell last Saturday and so proceeded, with care. But Orwell seemed only like an attention-grabber in his first line and none of the rest of his latest complaint had anything to do with either Orwell's writing or the several set-piece ideas that have been lifted from Animal Farm or 1984. But of course, my intellect rates at less than the square root of Oliver's so I may have missed the point.
Certainly, there are some who can't identify the passive voice and charge writers with having used it when they haven't and, by all means, there is much to be lamented about grammatical standards these days, which includes most days on Radio 5 sports reports and further afield at the BBC. But Newspeak wasn't about the passive voice and none of Oliver's complaints are about linguistic misuse either diagnosed or satirized by Orwell. For one who sets such store by the precision of his analysis, he looked alarmingly loose to me last week and so ought not to be finding fault with others. I think he is beginning to struggle and if next week he invites us in by citing Camus, I'll be more wary.
-
The TLS can also seem a bit too pleased with itself and complacent. Wendy Cope expressed dissatisfaction with their survey of the New Elizabethans on the letters page, where anybody worth being appears once- and hopefully only once- in their life, on the grounds that it drew attention to a few at the expense of the many. Well, yes, of course it does, as does any other mention of anybody. It might not be fair, or right, or proper but it is what happens.
I should have read Ali Smith before but I hadn't. The results from their questionnaire decided me to require of a friend a borrow of anything by her and Autumn is confirmed herewith as a tremendous book and Ali is up for paperback bargain-grabbing henceforth.
I'm sure I'd prefer to line up with Wendy rather than the TLS but on this occasion can't.

and I was also grateful to them for their belated review of Rory Waterman's new-ish book of poems, Sarajevo Roses.
It seems longer than it should have been since I added anybody to the list of contemporary poets I'm seriously interested in and, born 1981, he might be the youngest yet. If I allowed it to, I might find the Faber Modern Poets volume that I bought when it was new, featuring selections from Andrew Motion, Craig Raiue, C.H. Sisson, Tom Paulin, Robert Wells and Andrew Waterman (and I'm sure no such exclusively male book could be envisaged now), making me feel older than I want to be because Andrew was Rory's father.
I'm not sure that it does, though, and I enjoy the continuity, which made me try to think of poetry being handed on a generation, perhaps in not such a dissimilar style. Thinking of two or three generations of footballers, cricketers or horse racing people is easy and the Scudamores and D'Oliviera dynasty are ready examples. But if there's Freida, daughter of Sylvia, I reckon I could cause ambulances to come running over the fields if I knocked on the door of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and said that William Davenant was son of William Shakespeare. They don't take kindly to such treason but the only reason I decided against it was that it looks too much like a publicity stunt by Davenant, otherwise I like the idea.
There must be others but books by the Watermans are on their way here and anticipated with some, erm, anticipation. And so with Sean O'Brien's Europa due any day, racing to get here before About Larkin ft. Move Over, Darling, The Perfect Book very grateful for all the politeness with which it is being received, the poetry year, which rarely gets off to a quick start, is underway with some prospects. 

Pre-Release Copies

I was at the printer's first thing this morning to collect a box of The Perfect Book.

One makes oneself a hostage to fortune giving a book a title like that and I think The Singing Typewriter on page 5 is in a smaller font than the rest of the book. Other errata appear to be entirely stylistic and will have to be explained away.
The late edit of The Flawed Book, putting in 'dreadful' for 'lousy' omitted to notice that 'dreaded' occurs in the first stanza. Okay.
'Fatal' occurs in two poems, which only enhances any morbid overall theme the book might have but if a major theme is cliché then if cliché is dead language then perhaps it all ties in with notions of being trapped, whether by language or by life. It's not for me to say. I never said it would be a perfect book, I only called it The Perfect Book. Perhaps the next one, or the Collected, will just be called Book.

So those expecting to receive a copy in the post can expect it early next week. If anybody else wants one, by all means e-mail. I might be grateful of a fiver to cover production costs, p&p, especially since Supasundae let me down at Aintree today.
The Professor and I both like Seeyouatmidnight in the Grand National. His other choice is The Last Samurai whereas I go for a hopeful punt on 50/1 shot, Carlingford Lough, thinking that something like his old form would make him a good thing.
--
Meanwhile stay tuned for news of the next release, First Three Tales by The Jess Davies Band, due on May 4th, featuring Mama Told Me (Davies-Green). I can hardly tell you how much I enjoy typing that.

Oh, Babe, What Would You Say

The first essay in The Salt Companion to Mina Loy is called Futurism, Fashion and the Feminine: Forms of Repudiation and Affiliation in the Early Writing of Mina Loy. I'm sure it is worthy and valuable work and, in fact, the first section sets out Loy's very radical agenda to ensure that I will go back to it but it does also show that in pursuing poetry to the limit, it is possible to lose sight of poetry altogether. It will have to wait in the same way that the biography of Delmore Schwartz is patiently waiting, having been overtaken by more pressing reading soon after it arrived.
More pressing will be Ali Smith on a borrow from a mate who is a great admirer of hers, having asked him for a lend of anything after she topped the poll in the TLS last week that asked over 200 industry insiders for their nominations for the New Elizabethans. Along with Zadie, Hilary Mantel, Ishiguro and others, she is top of the league. I'm disappointed to see Alan Hollinghurst in there with Julian Barnes not mentioned but Sarah Waters is listed just outside the Top 10.
Perhaps Barnesy was overlooked because the question did ask those invited to take part to consider their most recent work and whose future work was most eagerly anticipated. But he need not worry. Love, etc. didn't convince as convincingly as Talking It Over, to which is was a sequel that perhaps didn't quite have enough to stretch far enough into a second book, but the rest of the short stories in The Lemon Table will be saved up for later, after a break for Ali. If the remainder of the stories are anything to compare with The Story of Mats Israelson, they will be worth waiting for. It is very rare for me to downright insist that you absolutely must read something, hear a record or anything quite so imperative but The Story of Mats Israelson struck me on first reading as one of the finest such things in the genre or language, and if it doesn't surpass Joyce's The Dead that is in some part due to it not being on the same scale.
But lists are just lists and arguably the less valuable for being polled across a wide constituency rather than expressing an individual point of view. Look what happens when a country holds a General Election. It takes places with the sophistication of France or Canada to get it right. So Julian Barnes need not fret. The Story of Mats Israelson is a further reminder, when by now no more are needed, never to attempt to write prose fiction. One would never be happy, knowing that you could be judged against such a masterpiece.

JDB CD EP

The Jess Davies Band will be playing at the Orange Rooms, 1-2 Vernon Walk, Southampton SO15 2EJ, on Thurs 3rd May to launch their debut CD, First Three Tales, which will be available there as well as on iTunes and Spotify. 
And to think we used to have to go to the HMV Shop.
More details will be available on the link in the Recommended list over there >>> shortly, I dare say.
I will be making more effort to get there than I did to attend any launch of my own new release. My name somewhere on a pop record, who would have thought it.
It's all I ever wanted.

The Perfect Book

The Perfect Book should be here this week and so if you are expecting a copy in the post, expect it next week. Otherwise when I see you next. Anybody else who would like one, by all means e-mail me and you can send a fiver in return if you feel charitable enough.
I will over-indulge myself by saying a few words, firstly anticipating the suggestion that I might do better as a cover designer or wildlife photographer. I'm very happy with the wrapping but it ought to be about the poems.
The title is, of course, ironic, being the title of a poem about how a book can be imagined to be perfect, which is answered by its counterpart, The Flawed Book, about the novel once it was written, which is the last poem here. The attentive critic or reader will notice that a number of the poems come in pairs, like the centre page spread consisting of The Summer Game, about cricket, and The Winter Game, about National Hunt horse racing.
Three poems at the beginning are in memoriam for one who departed the life she had led with such panache four years ago now, a theme that is reprised towards the end.
If poetry is often advised to avoid cliché and Donald Davie wrote about re-making it, several of these poems deliberately embrace it while the epigraph suggests that lyricism might still be possible in poetry that does its best to avoid bad practice and as much of the advice that is on offer as it can. While self-consciously aware of their status as artificial language, these poems are more autobiographical than perhaps some of the earlier ones were allowed to be, which is not to say that a few aren't outright fictions

I need to correct an earlier announcement that the book will be 'launched' at the Portsmouth Poetry Society meeting of April 18th. It no longer will as a prior appointment has been re-instated but I hope a good number will still attend the meeting to hear John Dean read from his new book.
   

Hamlet

Hamlet, BBC2, 31st March

It has become a commonplace for modern dress Shakespeare tragedies (Hamlet and MacBeth at least) to be set in a totalitarian police state monitored on CCTV and surveillance equipment, or perhaps it's only been those I've seen. It's not a bad idea but it is no longer shocking or original and it's not in Saxo Grammaticus. However, whether the novelty be a modern setting, all-female cast or even, as here, a Bob Dylan soundtrack, the play's the thing.
Robert Icke's production from the Almeida Theatre, transferred here to the Harold Pinter, is also 'adapted' but not intrusively so and one adapts quickly to the development of this monumental play that is a huge challenge to do well but has plenty in it to ensure that it takes a lot to fail completely. Andrew Scott is a convincing prince, his soliloquies arriving at their conclusions as he thinks aloud in the way Tony Blair used to pretend to do rather than delivered as if they were pre-meditated dissertations.
Beginning with the ghost but continuing through Ophelia's descent into madness, prompted by the complexities of her father being killed by her boyfriend and her conspicuously close relationship with her brother, to the dispatch into the great beyond of all the central characters, Hamlet is on the brink of the unknown, not least because the characters are enquiring into each other but also because nobody knows whether the prince's adopted 'antic disposition' has transformed into a real one. Three and a quarter hours pass unnoticed as Shakespeare's layers of potential meaning refer us into a compelling canvas of double revenge, subterfuge, paralysis and loss, none of which is to suggest that it can't also have jokes as well. If Lear is somehow profounder by being even darker, I've never understood how many authorities overlook Hamlet as Shakespeare's best, his signature masterpiece, in the later play's favour.
Jessica Findlay Brown puts in a storming performance as Ophelia, a big highlight being a thrilling 'more deceived' scene with Hamlet's fake madness apparently triggering her own genuine case before the rest of her life collapses around her. The production, or her performance in it, makes her thread more central to the play than it sometimes is. But, modern technology and its uses being what they are, which can be threaten to be distracting gimmicks; the screens, 'use of the whole theatre space' and the direction of this film of a staged play, they are used to great effect during the play within the play when the main protagonists sit in the front row of the audience to watch The Mousetrap and are filmed in close-up and seen on the big screen behind the stage. Like the other major tragedies, Hamlet takes place much of the time in dark places but benefits from intimacy, too.
The point of Dylan songs as commentary was lost on me, not being sufficiently conversant with his work to know anything apart from the final One More Cup of Coffee from the Desire album and it might have been that an admirer was dragging it in a bit gratuitously. However, Scott, as well as his Ophelia, Juliet Stevenson as a helplessly complicit Gertrude and Peter Wight, most famously for me one of the constables in Early Doors, as Polonius, in a strong cast, lured us into the downward spiral of suspicion, human fragility and corruption to the inevitable rest being silence.
It was a rare treat and, as ever, one is grateful for having the BBC to provide such things, it only being a shame that there was still plenty of Cosi Fan Tutte remaining on the wireless when it began on television. But we had better not complain. It was a luxurious decision to have to make.  
 

A Sort of Sorting

It might have been my version of Spring Cleaning to tidy up some CD's but it was prompted by the pressing need for more shelf space.
Oh, I see, if I move those over there, put the mini-system and a speaker on top of them, that rack can come out of the bottom of the bookcase, the DVD's that I rarely touch can be piled up down there and that frees up half a shelf that Elizabeth Bishop and books in current use can stay on until the classical CD's annexe that territory, too, with their ongoing expansionist policies. But it does rather mean it's not before time that the pop music CD's are put into some sort of order as opposed to the prevailing filing system of trying to remember where one saw them last.
So, the wire rack comes into a more prominent position. It has two columns. It is not apartheid to make these Soul and Rock respectively because Dusty Springfield is soul. So the left side has Al Green, Candi Staton, Aretha, Beverley Knight, Motown, etc. and the right side has The Velvet Underground, Lou, Joni Mitchell, the Ramones, Dylan, and, yes, this rack is predominantly American.
In the other three wooden racks, the substantial blocks of The Magnetic Fields, T. Rex, Gregory Isaacs and R.E.M. can stay almost as they were. Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes and Chaucer stay resolutely in place at the bottom, not often called upon, it has to be said.
So what remains is a game a bit like Pairs, remembering there is another Cliff album to go with that one, and he can go with Buddy Holly, Billy Fury and Roy Orbison. But I know, or thought there was a fourth Matchbox Twenty album and another Garbage album somewhere but they don't show up.
Family, Medicine Head and Stone the Crows are put with the Sutherland Brothers in the black plastic filing system under the DVD player which is no disgrace because the Northern Soul compilations are in there. Neil Young gets retrieved from there to be put with Joni, Carole King and Dylan.
There are no Beatles CD's, no Stones, not even any Bowie. Having been through vinyl and cassettes, it is a rare honour for anything to be acquired in new formats, although it has happened.
I couldn't be judged only on CD's. There is only one Jesus & Mary Chain, only a free-with-the-Observer Libertines that it took six months to play, when I was persuaded to give it a go. The best of them is either The Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs, in its fallen apart casing, or Early Music by Bob Marley & the Wailers ft. Peter Tosh but the most played track is almost certainly Saving a Life by Cliff and Freda Payne from the Soulicious album.

Having imposed some sort of order on the chaos, with not only the Tears next to Suede but McAlmont & Butler next to both of them, how long do you think it will last. Not long. And will I now be able to find anything. Probably not as well as I could before.