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Let's begin with a ripe cliche! If you only buy one poetry
book this year make sure it's this one. Well, perhaps that isn't so much a
cliche as an oft-repeated sales pitch, and it's this shifting from topic to
topic in Stannard's poetry, aided by a circuitous, around-the-houses rambling
style and a goodly dose of the non-sequitur, which makes his work so utterly
entertaining. Don't be fooled though, this is a serious poet, though his
notion of serious may not fit the usual descriptions. I've always found his
poetry intriguing and full of interest though have to add that, back in the
day, I also found his work as a reviewer to be both irritating and
obsessively negative. I've since changed my mind about this and now find him
to be one of the most interesting poet/reviewers on the scene, singular in
his outlook and all the better for it. His poetry has benefited hugely from
his engagement with the American poetry scene and his laid-back, offbeat
style, which combines the mainstream with the avant-garde, is simply so good
to read, entertaining, sophisticated and stimulating, sharp but unpretentious
at the same time.
The opening gambit 'One Week in the Life' comprises seven poems - loosely
structured around the days of the week - and has the feel of a post-modern
rewiring of a description of a puritan agricultural community, it could
almost be the text for a film script, setting a scene in anticipation of some
future action. There is some neat alliteration which adds humour and
adornment to the otherwise pared down style, tending almost to the sombre but
with a hint of menace which it's difficult to pin down - 'we have/all seen
the fat farmer chasing his fedora futilely across a fallow field' - and while
the suggestion of a possible narrative seems closely tied in with the style
of the writing itself, the final line of the last poem 'Watching the Cattle',
underlines the sense of foreboding which I found throughout the sequence -
'There is something wrong with me. There is evil. It exists'. For some reason
I was reminded of Peter Ackroyd's chilling novel Hawksmoor while reading this. It's an unexpected and
intriguing intro to a collection of this kind as it's notably different from
most of the work which follows.
The bulk of the collection comes under the sub-heading - 'Occasional Poems' -
and combines a rich mix of textures and formal devices. Take this piece from
the sequence 'Letters form the Light to the Darkness', for example:
Dear the Day
I wish you
were more handsome.
Some say you
are charming
but I can't
see it: charm,
as far as I
know, is more than
possessing
the ability to act the part
others
expect. Also I do not care
for the way
you come and go.
The next time
you go, please stay gone.
Yours in the
shape of a coming dishevelment,
ÒThe Fear of
DawnÓ
His take on Hamlet, which has
little to do with the play except perhaps in the sense of the narrator's total
confusion has a wonderfully amusing conclusion and is perhaps? the result of
Martin Stannard's job as an English teacher in China:
Well, Horatio,
there's a
damn sight more to this than meets the eye;
at least, that's what I think I've come to
believe.
He also mixes found texts with improvisations to produce rambling narratives
which are as much displays of wit and exuberant storytelling as they are Poetry, as in 'On Death - (slightly extracted
from Montaigne)' , so while there's
clearly an element of grandstanding or showing off in these collusions
between high art and popular culture, there's also a more serious intention
here, even if the conclusion is that it's best not to take anything too seriously:
To
philosophise or so I read is to prepare for death
And thinking
about it as the black and white bird alights
On the
balcony to feed on the peanuts placed there
Especially
for him and his friends it occurs to us that
We once were
of the mind that pleasure was our target
In life or
what passes for life in the modern age but
An argument
might be had even between romancers
Over what
constitutes pleasure for it says here
The pleasures
of the mind and body are different
Which perhaps
needs elucidating but this is not the place
And the black
and white bird is flown away and now
The less
flamboyant but more numerous wagtails are
Arrived to
take their share as the afternoon sun
Bathes in
unseasonable warmth É..
The long sequence entitled 'Chronicles' is made up of 23 poems, each
beginning with the disarmingly colloquial sentence - 'I've been having a
time'. I've previously noted that American poets often have a way of
presenting their work in an easy conversational manner as if it's a matter of
'make it up as you go along'. I once saw Robert Creeley read live and he had
this ability to perfection, it was simply as if he was engaging the listener
in the most interesting details imaginable, yet reporting this in a very down
to earth and friendly fashion. Martin Stannard has assimilated some of this
technique at least 'on the page' (I've only heard him read live once and
can't recall the occasion too well) and there's a charm and immediacy about
this kind of writing which is appealing and certainly has the 'feel-good'
factor, even on the occasions when the material is lugubrious:
But I've been
having such a time of it lately
all my plans
are under review because they appear
to have not
been properly thought through
and the
outlook appears distressingly cloudy,
nobody
understanding what it's like in here. So
I go to the
cake shop to buy a cake and come home
with a look
that would kill if you could only've seen it,
there's a
persistent drizzle gracing the day
and at home
one glance told me I should dust.
(from
'Chronicles' (6)')
There's so much variety and experimentation within this collection that the
reader can have hours of fun pondering the improbable and admiring the way in
which Stannard's adept adaptations of avant-garde techniques fuel his ongoing
flights of creative outpourings. The surface may appear smooth and facile but
there's a lot going on here and his causal, almost throwaway style belies a
serious talent. He also has a great way with introductions. Take this from
'Maps and Plans':
Maps need to
be the right way up. A book called
The
World Turned Upside Down turned out to be
about
not what I
expected. Do not predict. Maps are to know.
What Christopher Hill may have made of this we'll never know but Stannard's
almost facetious jokiness always has a point. He's a maverick and an outsider
in the poetry world, not fitting easily into any of the 'square holes', which
is probably why his reputation never really took off. This is a shame because
as I said at the beginning - if you only buy one poetry book this year make
sure it's this one. You won't be disappointed.
© Steve Spence 2016
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