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Every morning dawn hits the
ochre desert with the force of a
lost ideal. A wispy
lavender rises off the desert floor, gauzy &
ethereal, until the sun
burns it off, leaving behind the day's
hard edges
[from
'Letter to Martin Scorsese']
Cinema and poetry don't necessarily go hand in hand. They are two markedly
different art forms. Poetry is a sparse medium, it works primarily on three
levels: the visual i.e. how the words are arranged on a page, the auditory
i.e. how the melody of the words resonates with the reader, then finally,
once the words have been digested, another layer is added, perhaps the most
important: what does it all mean, what memories and desires does the poem
stir. For example, immortal opening gambits like 'shall I compare thee to a
summers day' (Shakespeare) or 'Sylvia, do you remember' (Leopardi) do not
just sit blankly on a page, they paint the air with candour and reach into deep
realms of the reader's past, present and future experience. Poetry is, and
should be, emotive, but it is not usually instantly emotive, at least not in
the same way that cinema is, typically in a poem - unless you're reading
coffee table bound toothless exercises in money making (100 poems that make
grown men cry, poems for life, poems for death, poems for weeping newt blood
etc ) - there is a small amount of intellectual work that has to be done by
the reader.
Anyway, why am I talking about film? Jon Thompson's second collection of
poetry Landscape with Light
concerns itself with film, or moreover it features poems (prose poetry and
verse poetry) written in response to classic American films, the poems are
furthermore contemplations and commentaries on the American landscape (hence
the title). Jon Thompson offers a link between the two art forms, Landscape
with Light is a
moving, deeply reflective collection, and one worthy of high praise. Here's a
telling moment from 'Letter to Chaplin':
The language of eyes has
always been greater than that
of tongues. But, as it
turns out, it does help, at least, to cry out
- to address the ones you
love, even as they're being separated
from you.
These ideas are interesting, they are also well expressed. The chasm that
exists between silent film and the brave new talkies that Chaplin famously
resisted remind me of the chasm between poetry and cinema. Film as a medium
has much more immediacy than poetry, think: image, texture, colour, noise. In
part because of its celerity film has a much wider audience, a much bigger
market. The stars of films are all over the tabloids, the stars of poetry are
practically unknown (go outside and ask a random stranger who won the last
T.S. Eliot prize). Where Jon Thompson excels is creating a world that casts
both poetry and film as alone but together, separate entities and art forms
that feed into each other. The best poetry yearns to be cinematic (the stars
of the Imagist movement were as visually orientated as any Hollywood art
director). The best films are highly poetic (If you don't find Sunset Boulevard, Badlands or One flew over the
cuckoo's nest
in any way poetic then you, my friend, are a clod). A link between the two
worlds is tangible, especially when the poet writes as well as Jon Thompson:
Dusk a
pink-&-vermilion-gashed sky -
the big
screen beauty of it says, learn to die
& afterwards cars with their headlights on race
into darkness
[from 'The
Emigrants Go West, Go West, Go West']
Bleak, black, and in equal parts thrilled and threatened by modernity, Jon
Thompson shapes the landscapes of the American city and the country in the
same way a magnificent film director uses the various tools in his or her kit
bag to shape a magnificent film. Landscape with Light is a serious work and one that
deserves and rewards being read and read again.
One name that feels especially prescient when reading Jon Thompson,
particularly his prose poetry, is Arthur Rimbaud. The prose poetry, which is
finer than the verse poetry, couldn't have been written in the same way
without the influence of adolescent prodigy Arthur and his shooting star
like, futuristic, psychedelic, apocalyptic career highlight Illuminations. Of course Rimbaud himself was
an incredibly visual, or dare I reuse a phrase, cinematic, poet.
I am not the first writer to link Arthur Rimbaud and Illuminations to film and, almost but not
entirely impossibly, the other way round (film began around twenty years after
Rimbaud's death). Jean-Michel Espitallier writes in the introduction to the
pocket edition of Illuminations
(incidentally the best 1,50 Û you will ever spend) that Rimbaud's colourful
prose-plates were the first ever collection of video clips. Furthermore it
is not only the cinematic that links Jon Thompson and Arthur Rimbaud. There
is
something in the way Rimbaud describes the 'opera fabuleux' around him that
has flipped its way into Thompson take on the world, lines like:
The landscape is cruel in
its monotony, in its lethality. Cleverness
here can lead to
intolerable frustration...
Death makes us statutory.
Though few seek it, everyone finds the white
gift of oblivion.
Everyone forced to forge new oaths if exile through an
unknown land
[from
'Snow as different versions of different things']
Could well have come straight from the pen of Eric Cantona's favourite poet
(Rimbaud not Thompson!), at least if they were written in French. Rimbaud is
not the only Gaelic influence on display in Landscape with Light, (a translation of) Paul
Valery's masterpiece 'The Cemetery by the Sea' is name-checked in the note
section. Aside from the French influences that the collection contains the
other name that springs to mind when reading is the father of modern American
verse, Walt Whitman. However, Whitman has left such a devastating impression
on the American landscape that a poet would probably have to write against
Whitman to obviate his influence (and that would be knowingly avoiding him -
which doesn't really count).
So, in the end, cinema and poetry can stroll around the parries, the pastures
and the plains hand in hand. They are both great mediums for expression,
especially when tied to landscapes, especially when tied together to the
American landscape. Unfortunately for those of us with literary ambitions,
new toys like film, video games and television have put poetry in a very
lowly place when it comes to entertaining the masses. Exactly how many poets
make a living out of poetry itself? Unless you're Sylvia Plath, no one cares
for your pain, they just want to share their own. However, I've the vague
impression that some readers still value poetry on an intellectual level
(that's why you're reading my Stride review right?) and as such poets will go
on creating interesting and intelligent pieces of art (like Landscape with
Light). Jon
Thompson will never be Leonardo di Caprio, but then perhaps that's a
blessing. Perhaps with all that fame, money and glory we'd all end up writing
poetry like James Franco (i.e. badly). Thank god for life's small mercies.
© Charlie Baylis
2015
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