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In 'Epistle', Ahren Warner
writes 'there are no signs of our times' (19), which, when paired with the
epiphany in the second 'Dactylogram (Nietzsche)' poem, acquires a sense of
self-reproachment ('we have killed
him') in the wake of the notion of understanding, of being able to understand, having been wiped out (by WWII, in the
case of the latter poem). The line also draws authority from its reference to
Jacques Derrida's early essay, 'Force and Signification', in which the dream
of reducing anything down to 'a sign of the times is to dream of violence'.
The broad ontological and ethical/moral sweep of Warner's statement should,
one might expect, be reflective of a renewed and vigorous engagement with the
state of the world in light of the bloody modern history which precedes and
characterises 'our' 21st Century, particularly in light of the learnedness
Warner has projected in print thus far, and which is frequently evident in
the text in question. Instead, Warner's debut release is in many ways
standard lyric fare albeit with references to philosophers, presenting a
young, intelligent, academic man in/of the world, in the cities of the world,
Baudelaire-indebted, wide-eyedly enamoured with his intellectual reference
points - in short, a sign of his
times, a collection of personal lyrics. Perhaps I'm being too harsh. By
standard lyric fare I do not mean this
is an pamphlet of mediocre poetry; on the contrary, Warner is clearly a
gifted poet, one I have been looking forward to reading for some time, and
one who has the potential to produce lasting work, a potential his
philosophical immersion can only support. So let me rephrase: from the
evidence of Re:, Warner is one of the
most interesting and enjoyable young British poets I've read (others, off the
top of my head, would be Annie Katchinska, and Sam Riviere's recent
'Austerities' pieces); the problem is that his poetry, despite the novel
(over here in the more mainstream circles, at least) philosophical dressing,
ultimately suffers from many of the problems the average 'product' poem
suffers from (see e.g. Nathan Hamilton's 'On Product and Process' in The
Rialto #70). This is probably my major
gripe with this short collection. Am I myself doing violence against the text
by berating it for not doing things that it is not doing? Possibly, though I
think it is a valid concern, and that there is more than enough banal lyric
poetry in the UK, let alone the world, at the moment, 'self-expression' and recognition
being the tiresome endpoint. Warner is
different, in a way, in a good way; I guess I just expected something else.
With this in mind, or out of mind, I will now attend to what is in the text.
'la brisure' is probably the best
poem in the book. It fuses the philosophic grounding Warner continuously
refers to without the need for explicit, name-dropped reference. Drawing on
Derrida's notion of la brisure (the
hinge) but not contained by it, the poem forgoes the lyric self that is
present throughout much of the rest of the poetry and attends to finding a
clearing in which observation and representation can operate. There is no
denoted speaker, only the sound of ringing bells:
each toll
sustains itself as if expecting
its own next sounding
or
another's
to which it
will defer
(2)
Warner's distinctive form, conceived, he says, 'to try and express a kind of
affective music, which has led me to make frequent use of spacing as
something that can denote a more subtle variety of pause and punctuation' (Identity
Parade, p. 348), is here perfectly
deployed, exactly dressing the poem's content. The spacing cranes towards the
bells, reflecting the liminal experience of listening to them, the concealing
and unconcealing of 'the becoming sound', as well as visually rendering the
silence on
which each sound hangs
It is an act of looking at the world from the world, of imposing interpretation on a thing in
search of truth, but never forgetting the position of the observer, in this
case 'you', who must both try to make sense of the bells at the same time as
knowing the impossibility of ever finally doing so:
you
listen to the
last toll
draining
retained
only in the
space it becomes
you're
unsure
if you're still waiting
or
hearing
what has come
I want to be able to read the poem as a manifesto, or rather a guide, to what
Warner's poetry is doing throughout, but it is only here that Re: reaches this level of shared intellectual and poetic
force. Nonetheless, 'la brisure' is
in a sense reading itself as it writes, itself an act of rendered reading,
simultaneously a finished product and an unending, circular act of process.
Elsewhere, the craftsmanship and subtlety is lacking. When in the title poem
he rhymes Spinoza with alētheia (written, however, in Ancient Greek), it
is either smugly witty without any of the charm of the ironised smug
witticism par excellence of Luke
Kennard, or a 'pubescent attempt at apprenticeship', as Warner depicts
Cranach in the following poem (7), towards the likes of Pound. Again, I think
it is great that the poet's engagement with art and philosophy are being
integrated with his poetry, and that there are few, if any, young poets
around at the moment stretching this fairly conventional lyric mode into a
wider, more intelligent and transdiscourse mode; I just don't think Warner
has here quite mastered it, and that his present time in which, presumably, he is engaged in the beginnings of
an academic career, assimilating and formulating, is what is being signified
most clearly, as opposed to the meticulous formal skill, precise depiction
and epistemological clarity, and lack of dominating self evident in 'la
brisure'.
Despite these complaints, the poetry is always a pleasure to read. In
'Hangin' Round', the lyric self Warner presents works flawlessly. There is no
incessant name-dropping - name-dropping which seems to form the basis for the
poem(s) instead of vice-versa - but a carefully controlled utilisation of the
artwork to further the poem's lyric narrative. Its autobiographical aspect is
compelling, not excluding as is sometimes the case elsewhere, basing the
poet's conception of himself and where he is now via his past and learning,
away from the 'Middle England city / barely / big enough to be a town' (14)
in which he grew up. The Derrida quotation at the beginning is necessary in
terms of characterisation, and as such does not jar and narrative
development; likewise, the Lou Reed line from the song from which the poem
takes its title is vital and charmingly used, reinforcing the expression
instead of being it. Alongside 'la
brisure', the poem represents the other
side of Warner, the lyric poet with a penchant for 20th Century French and
German philosophy, at its best and most appealing. These two poems alone
justify the poet's growing reputation, as well as the various routes his
future work, let alone his forthcoming collection, may take. I look forward
to seeing how his work develops, and recommend this small (and, I must add,
beautifully designed) book as a perfect entry point.
© Joshua
Jones 2011
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