{"id":6932,"date":"2017-02-01T19:45:45","date_gmt":"2017-02-01T18:45:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6932"},"modified":"2018-03-11T13:05:11","modified_gmt":"2018-03-11T12:05:11","slug":"penguin-modern-poets-1-reviewed-by-lucy-burns-and-callum-coles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6932","title":{"rendered":"Penguin Modern Poets<\/em> 1, reviewed by Lucy Burns and Callum Coles"},"content":{"rendered":"
Penguin Modern Poets<\/em> 1, If I’m Scared We Can’t Win<\/em>: Emily Berry, Anne Carson, Sophie Collins (Penguin Books, \u00a37.99).<\/h5>\n

 
\nL<\/em><\/strong>   I have a few of the Penguin Modern Poets<\/em> collections from the first series on my shelves, I think maybe the Levertov\/Rexroth\/Williams and the Corso\/Ferlinghetti\/Ginsberg, and I vaguely remember paying over the odds for the Elmslie\/Koch\/Schuyler because I stupidly thought I could start collecting them all before I googled it<\/a> and found out how many there are. Though the books are meant to be introductions to the selected poets (via \u201crepresentative selections\u201d) \u2013 I think I only ever bought and read them for one poet on the cover. With this Berry\/Carson\/Collins collection in the now twice-revived series though, I was excited to read the whole thing cover to cover, and not just by picking and choosing poets I thought I liked. What was your first Penguin Modern Poets<\/em> book?<\/p>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   I bought one in a second hand bookshop for 10p I think…a 1966 edition of Penguin Modern Poets<\/em> 8: Edwin Brock\/Geoffrey Hill\/Steven Smith. The cover was black and featured a large image of the underside of a mushroom cap in a darkroom…<\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   Well remembered. Number 4 is a nice pink so I guess we have that to look forward to. Next is Michael Robbins\/Patricia Lockwood\/Timothy Thornton \u2013 and number 3 (Malika Booker\/Sharon Olds\/Warsan Shire) has just come out, too. These books are supposed to be a sort of poetry guide for everyone, from \u201cthe curious reader\u201d to \u201cthe seasoned lover.\u201d I think I\u2019m somewhere between the two for all three of these poets in this first collection. I think we were both introduced to Berry\u2019s Dear Boy<\/em> at the same time in creative writing class, and I remember immediately trying to write my own bad versions of some of those poems \u2013 trying to recreate some of those incredibly quick and sharp changes in tone that Berry does so well.<\/p>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   …they weren’t great.<\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   Weirdly I think that one of the reasons why I like Dear Boy<\/em> so much (and the selections of Berry\u2019s work in this collection, which we can get on to) is that I find her poems so<\/em> difficult and confusing. Not difficult and confusing in the way I find a lot of poetry though, where I might just read it once and forget about it, or move on to the next poem like huh<\/em> (which I probably do too often), instead there are some poems in that book, and in this sellection, that I feel like I\u2019m now a bit obsessed with.<\/p>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   I agree, and I find that particularly true of Berry’s poems; they demand that you keep thinking about them.<\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   Recently I took Berry\u2019s poem \u201cThe Tomato Salad\u201d to a close reading workshop with Edna Longley. I had say why I\u2019d chosen it and all I ended up just saying was that I had no idea what was going on in the poem and had no idea what it might mean, but that I think about the last few lines of the poem basically every time I chop tomatoes. Those lines have really stuck around for some reason. I\u2019ve even made some mad attempts to translate the tomato in parts (with varying success), and sometimes think about interjecting my own anecdotes with, \u201cDid I mention this was in California?\u201d<\/p>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   Don\u2019t do that.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nI can only imagine the perfectly
\nsuspended seeds, the things a cut tomato knows
\nabout light, or in what fresh voice of sweet and tart
\nthose tomatoes spoke when they told my dearest
\nfriend, \u2018Yos\u00e7i yos\u00e7i lom boca s\u00e1 tutty foo twa
\ntamata,\u2019 in the language of all sun-ripened fruits.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Tomato Salad,\u201d 12.<\/em>\n<\/div>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   I\u2019ll admit that line has been rattling around my brain for the best part of a month to the extent that, reading it now, I can\u2019t help but feel I\u2019m being mocked.<\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   What do you mean? Like the tomato is laughing at us…?<\/p>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   There\u2019s something mocking about it as a kind of nonsense, particularly as we’re in the realm of the completely unknowable \u201cthe language of all sun-ripened fruits,\u201d but that might just be playing on my own insecurities.<\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   …of not being able to speak to fruit…<\/p>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   As for knowing Berry I\u2019d read Dear Boy<\/em> and tried to get that Aurora’s Escapes<\/em> pamphlet<\/a> after you mentioned it.<\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   We get a sense of the huge range of Anne Carson\u2019s poetry in those excerpts from Plainwater: Essays and Poetry<\/em> (1995), Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse<\/em> (1998), The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in Twenty-nine Tangoes<\/em> (2001), and Red Doc><\/em> (2013). I guess that one of things I think is so great about this Penguin selection is that Carson\u2019s work sets off Berry and Collins in a kind of way. What do you think \u2013 had you read much Carson?<\/p>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   I really only knew Autobiography of Red<\/em> and had read some reviews of Red Doc><\/em>. As you would maybe expect from the poet with the most major publications here, Carson\u2019s poetry is quite varied, and this at times makes it rather difficult to approach some of her poems as you\u2019re keenly aware of them being only part of a very different work.<\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   That\u2019s true \u2013 I guess you can see the \u201crepresentative selection\u201d working hard in the Carson section, whereas (though we\u2019ve just talked about Berry\u2019s first collection, which lends some poems) the Berry and Collins sets fit together pretty neatly.<\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   I\u2019d seen Sophie Collins read twice before, and give a conference paper once on ekphrasis and google image searches. Her poems in the 2014 Test Center I Love Roses When They\u2019re Past Their Best<\/em> seem to be pretty different to the Penguin Modern Poets<\/em> selections (only \u201cNolita\u201d appears in both), and I’m looking forward to reading her first collection, which is out with Penguin this year. We’ve spoken about tender<\/em>, the online journal<\/a> that Collins co-edits with Rachel Allen \u2013 but otherwise were you familiar with her writing?<\/p>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   I\u2019d only come across one of Collins\u2019s poems before, and in fact I didn\u2019t even realise I had until I read \u201cHealers\u201d in the collection for the second time. Aside from this, and what you\u2019d told me about tender<\/em>, the other encounter I\u2019d had with Collins was an interview<\/a> she did with Charles Whalley on poetry in translation covering, albeit briefly, Carson\u2019s verse novels.<\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   I hadn\u2019t seen that. Maybe we can get to that Currently & Emotion: Translations<\/em> anthology<\/a> another time. I know we\u2019ve talked about being a bit uneasy about this impulse to try and pull all three sections together, but I wonder if we might start with this question of how the collection is put together and what might ~bring together~ these three poets. Penguin Poetry editor Donald Futers has written that \u201c[a]ll three write about female experience from present-day Britain to Ancient Greece,\u201d though I think this is probably a bit too straightforward. What do you think?<\/p>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   I\u2019m still not 100% sure of the unifying factor beyond, like you say, a \u201cfemale experience\u201d line. Given the three poets we have here, I think it\u2019s really difficult to categorise a lot of these poems or think of them as being in any sense connected to each other, but perhaps there is a progression? It certainly isn\u2019t obvious.<\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   That there might be a progression through the book is pretty interesting, maybe we can come back to this when we get to Collins. Either way, the book definitely starts with a bang with the Berry poems, beginning with that devastating combination of \u201cDear Boy\u201d and \u201cLetter to Husband\u201d \u2013 Berry\u2019s strange ventriloquism at its best. I think what\u2019s incredible about the Berry selection is that it\u2019s seamless; there\u2019s this uncanny, uninterrupted voice running through the poems (helped perhaps, by our coming back to Arlene, \u201cSweet Arlene,\u201d \u201cArlene\u2019s House,\u201d and \u201cArlene and Esme\u201d). Given how anxious some of these poems are \u2013 it\u2019s kind of mad that we\u2019re able to go from one to the next without thinking wait, where has this come from<\/em>. I wonder how that works. \u2013And coming off of that: what do you think about the Arlene poems?<\/p>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   For me these poems are the best part of the Berry component of the collection. I think the fact that they\u2019re separated from each other, that the voice keeps coming back as you say, provides a way into the collection through what might otherwise be a kind of wall of schizophrenic speech. Unlike Carson, Berry has chosen not to categorise the poems in the contents as being from Dear Boy<\/em> (2013), Stranger, Baby<\/em> (2017), or elsewhere, and more so than Carson or Collins, I feel like Berry\u2019s selection has been carefully arranged to mimic a collection in itself. Of the three, \u201cArlene\u2019s House\u201d stands out for me.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nOur mood rings
\nhave stopped changing colour. You can get used to
\npretty much anything. Arlene just turned up and knew
\nall the house\u2019s tricks, the way the wind sucks doors shut
\nand the twist in the shower hose. Outside they see her
\nstanding at the window. The neighbours try to ask
\nif we\u2019re all right. She stands at the window and drains
\nthe world until there\u2019s nothing left to get up for.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cArlene\u2019s House,\u201d 10.<\/em>\n<\/div>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   There\u2019s something of the American Gothic in all the Arlene poems, but especially this one. The focus on the house, a sort of grounding in real space (mimicked by the solid wall of text) is misleading here though, since this place of stasis, where even mood rings have \u201cstopped changing colour,\u201d has no sense of order. The workmanlike sentences, the simple statement of fact without sentiment (\u201cYou can get used to pretty much everything\u201d) populate the poem with stark, haunting moments, which are held together only by the omnipresent Arlene. This is not a place where things happen, this is a place where things don\u2019t happen and keep not happening<\/em>. The figure standing at the window, a staple trope of psychological thriller and horror film, who \u201cdrains the world until there is nothing to get up for\u201d creates a sort of void in the middle of this poem which, on the surface, you would imagine to be very dense.<\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   There were two highlights for me in this mini-collection, as you’ve put it, \u201cTrees\u201d and \u201cPicnic.\u201d Both of these poems seem completely occupied in the language (and linguistic acrobatics) of psychoanalysis: the \u201ctextbook relationship history\u201d and debate about the \u201cpseudo-science\u201d in \u201cTrees,\u201d and the weird analysis and metonymy happening in \u201cPicnic.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nAlso, I had a friend who was very concerned about the lowness of her ceilings, even though, upon inspection, her ceilings were no lower than anybody else\u2019s.
\nWas the problem hers, or was it ours, for having all come to accept an unconsciously low level of ceiling?
\nDid those who were happy and self-confident always reside in high-ceilinged homes?
\nI could give other examples.
\nAnother friend, an academic, became irate once while denouncing psychoanalysis as a pseudo-science, and afterwards described the work of various other academics as \u2018gibberish\u2019.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cTrees,\u201d 22.<\/em>\n<\/div>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   Yeah, this poem has my favourite line from Berry\u2019s section: \u201cFor god\u2019s sake, the colour dominated the room.\u201d<\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   That\u2019s terrifying isn\u2019t it. It makes me think of \u201cThe Yellow Wallpaper\u201d or those red drapes in the red room in Twin Peaks<\/em>. There\u2019s so much colour in these poems: the \u201cfear of colour leaking from vegetables\u201d in \u201cSome Fears\u201d; the mood rings in \u201cArlene\u2019s House\u201d that \u201chave stopped changing colour,\u201d and it\u2019s the uncanny similarity between the colours of the curtains and the upholstery in \u201cTrees\u201d which triggers the \u201c[f]or god\u2019s sake\u201d in your favourite line. In the last poem we also have the \u201cmood of the sea,\u201d whose \u201ccolour became the colour of my eyes[.]\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nI started to be able to see in the dark
\nIt hurt my eyes
\n                        My, yes, salty, wet, ocean-coloured eyes
\nAlbeit that in the dark they were the colour of the dark, and on fire<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cPicnic,\u201d 29-30.<\/em>\n<\/div>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   And, of course, the tomatoes<\/em>, \u201cred and yellow tomatoes so spectacular she would | never get over them.\u201d Again there\u2019s this sense that the speaker is skirting the edge of sensory overload, like they’re about to lose their grip on the narrative.<\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   Ending on \u201cPicnic\u201d is brilliant, I think, because the poem is so bleak and devastating. After we\u2019ve seen Berry be so composed in the other poems (a kind of master of other people\u2019s voices) \u2013 here that kind of breaks down in an analysis scene.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nAll that year I visited a man in a room
\nI polished my feelings
\nSometimes I think if the devil came and offered to swap me into some other body without me knowing what I\u2019d be getting,
\nI\u2019d say…Sure<\/em>
\nAnd, sure, I believe in the devil<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cPicnic,\u201d 28.<\/em>\n<\/div>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   I don\u2019t mean that it breaks down in an incomprehensible way, but after the brutal narratives of the Arlene poems especially \u2013 the gymnastics of this poem is staggering. We seem to move between (and have unprecedented ~access~ to) these kinds of free associations. The key part here for me was the intervention about half way through: \u201cI like it when I am writing a poem and I know that I am feeling something,\u201d then we get the digression, this time an address:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nRemember when we used to imagine
\nOur correspondence would make us famous or that
\nOnce we\u2019d become famous our correspondence would too?
\nMaybe it still will
\nI\u2019ll need to make a lot of cuts first
\n<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cPicnic,\u201d 29.<\/em>\n<\/div>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   We move back again to the left margin in the same breath, wondering \u201c[w]hen did everybody start wanting to be famous all the time | Or has it always been this way[.]\u201d After a brief return to the scene of writing in \u201cthe October rain\u201d (\u201cI wrote that when it was still October | It must have been raining\u201d) the bottom of the poem just sort of falls out and we manage to sink even lower:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nThis is sadness: men in waterproofs dragging the deep lake
\nThe warm American voice says: There is no lack or limitation,
\n      there is only error in thought<\/em>
\nMy thoughts are wrong. My thoughts are wrong
\nThe thought that my thoughts are wrong is wrong<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cPicnic,\u201d 29.<\/em>\n<\/div>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   Yeah, the repetition without resolution, the draining away of punctuation (that full stop above is our only pause), it gives a feeling of, well, I wouldn\u2019t say sinking, but a kind of creeping panic…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nStop, language is crawling all over me
\nSometimes if you stay still long enough you can make it go
\n[…]
\nI remember just one thing my mother said to me:
\nNever look at yourself in the mirror when you\u2019re crying
\n      I did not follow her advice<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cPicnic,\u201d 30.<\/em>\n<\/div>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   It is brutal. It\u2019s brutal because of everything this does to \u201cPicnic\u201d when you work back through it, and the more I think about it, to the previous poems. All the ventriloquism, the simmering horror of Arlene, the underpinning narratives of \u201cOur Love Could Spoil Dinner\u201d and \u201cHer Inheritance,\u201d all of it unravels in front of a mirror that we never see.<\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   Let\u2019s move to Carson now, and we have to start with that first poem, which works like a kind of ars poetica, I think.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nEvery day he poured his question into her, as you pour water from one vessel into another, and poured it back. […] There is a moment when the water is not in one vessel nor in the other \u2013 what a thirst it was<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cShort Talk on the Mona Lisa,\u201d 33.<\/em>\n<\/div>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   For me that \u201cmoment when the water is not in one vessel nor in the other\u201d perfectly describes the uneasy feeling I have reading these poems…like you\u2019re waiting for the poem to resolve in some kind of way?<\/p>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   It\u2019s an interesting choice, when Carson does have such a range of voices in these poems, that the opening is a kind of quiet meditation, ostensibly about a portrait. It provides a nice segue (horrible word) from the Berry, a kind of palate cleanser.<\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   We\u2019ve spoken before about Carson\u2019s section is a kind best-of or highlights reel, maybe more like that \u201crepresentative selection\u201d we have in the inside cover. How well do you think these poems sit together (though this probably a clumsy way of putting it)?<\/p>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   Initially I didn\u2019t enjoy reading these poems together in this order, though with re-reading they seem increasingly well-suited. I think not knowing Carson\u2019s work well is the most obvious barrier to enjoying these poems, which is not to say they\u2019re not brilliant poems with Carson\u2019s impeccable talent for dry humour, but that they\u2019re considerably more self-conscious of their intertextuality than any in the Berry or Collins sections. This is most acutely obvious in the poems taken from longer works (those from Red Doc><\/em>, Autobiography of Red<\/em>, and The Beauty of the Husband<\/em>), but is perhaps true of most of them.<\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   Though the selection is much longer than both the Berry and Collins sections, I really raced through these poems. We pick up the pace with that back and forth in \u201cInterview (Stesichoros)\u201d from Autobiography of Red<\/em>. Since we mentioned particular lines we remembered from the Berry, mine for Carson are in this poem. You can hear them so clearly.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nI: Which brings us to Helen
\nS: There is no Helen
\nI: I believe our time is up
\nS: Thank you for this and for everything
\nI: It is I who thank you
\nS: So glad you didn\u2019t ask about the little red dog
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cInterview (Stesichoros),\u201d 41.<\/em>\n<\/div>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   I agree, though sometimes (and maybe this is true of the Carson poems in the main) I feel like this poem is too clever for itself. <\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   What do you mean?<\/p>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   The meta-joke of a poem in formal imitation of an interview belying its content…and becoming, in a sense unresolvable is for me a bit irritating. It\u2019s more irritating to know that it might be the purpose, and so on and so on ad infinitum.<\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   Besides this interview, there\u2019s so much dialogue in these poems. Straight after the \u201cInterview\u201d we have that back and forth between husband and wife in the extract from \u201cThe Beauty of the Husband, XXII. Homo Ludens,\u201d where by this point we\u2019re so familiar with this form that we don\u2019t even need a H<\/em> or W<\/em> to prompt us:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nWhy so sad.
\nNo I\u2019m not sad.
\nWhy in your eyes \u2013
\nWhat are you drinking.
\nOuzo.
\nCan you get me a tea.
\nOf course.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Beauty of the Husband,\u201d 43.<\/em>\n<\/div>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   Yes, and it\u2019s so easy to gloss over on a first reading.<\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   Carson\u2019s insistence on conversation, on lots of voices speaking over each other leads to that terrible mix up between mother and daughter (speaker and addressee) in \u201cLines\u201d that we almost miss:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nTo my mother,
\nlove
\nof my life, I describe what I had for brunch. The lines are falling
\nfaster
\nnow. Fate has put little weights on the ends (to speed us up) I
\nwant
\nto tell her \u2013 sign of God\u2019s pity. She won\u2019t keep me<\/em>
\nshe says, she
\nwon\u2019t run up my bill<\/em>. Miracles slip past us.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cLines,\u201d 49.<\/em>\n<\/div>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   The move to italics after \u201cshe\u201d (on both occasions) leads us to thinking we\u2019ve moved from the voice of the daughter-speaker to the reported speech of the mother. Except the italicised \u201cme<\/em>,\u201d (\u201cShe wont keep me<\/em>\u201d) if it was reported speech would really be you<\/em>, otherwise the mother has said \u2018I won\u2019t keep me<\/em>.\u2019 The same goes for the confusion between \u201cmy<\/em>,\u201d (\u201cshe\/ won\u2019t run up my bill<\/em>\u201d) and your<\/em>, otherwise it would read as \u2018I<\/em> won\u2019t run up my<\/em> bill.\u2019 In this small detail of mixed pronouns and possessives (which I read past the first few times) Carson has packed a kind of misrecognition of Greek proportions between mother and daughter.<\/p>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   Of the two \u2018interview poems\u2019 (\u201cInterview (Stesichoros)\u201d and \u201cInterview with Hara Takimi (1950)\u201d) it\u2019s the Takimi one which I found myself going back to, even though the start is so disarmingly pedestrian. It achieves more than the Stesichoros poem, I think, because of its ending, which cuts so neatly to heart of the interview process being parodied elsewhere.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nI: Laughter.
\nHT: I wish I had a splendid laugh.
\nI: War.
\nHT: Ah war.
\nI: Humankind.
\nHT: Humankind is glass.
\nI: Why not take the shorter way home.
\nHT: There was no shorter way home.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cInterview with Hara Takimi (1950),\u201d 48.<\/em>\n<\/div>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   We also have to talk about those translations in \u201cA Fragment of Ibykos Translated Six Ways.\u201d Going back to that first poem, and that \u201cmoment when the water is not in one vessel nor in the other,\u201d it felt like these poems were attempting some kind of mad resolution of their own, all the way from Greek lyric to microwave manual. Do you know translation party<\/a>? It\u2019s a site where you enter an English phrase and it tries to find an equilibrium in Japanese by repeatedly translating between the two languages. Sometimes a phrase enters a resolution fairly quickly<\/a>, but often it spirals off into an infinite loop.<\/p>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   Translation party has eaten so much of my time. It does produce some outstanding lines though.<\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   (As an aside, if we put in the first few lines of \u201cA Fragment\u201d we get: \u201cSpring Maiden of the total length of the garden, on the other hand, wood Kydonian apple, if present, have been watered down by the flow of the river.\u201d)<\/p>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   …it\u2019s uncanny…. The anchors in this poem are those \u201cOn the one hand,\u201d \u201cOn the other hand\u201d and the \u201cNay rather\u201d phrases that run throughout. As with every poem of Carson\u2019s in this book, they\u2019re incredibly well crafted fragments, though again I wonder if they lean too hard on their ideas…<\/p>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   The other poem we should talk about is \u201cBy Chance the Cycladic People,\u201d which is made up of fifty-eight numbered fragments divided into sixteen irregular sections, all arranged out of order. One thing to note is that online versions of this poem carry the note that it was written with the aid of a random integer generator.<\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   I didn\u2019t know that. They seem so perfectly arranged though! Reading them in order again, it\u2019s even stranger how this poem works because of how tightly the phrases are linked (i.e. tuna\/boats \u2192 boats\/night \u2192 insomnia):<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n1.0. The Cycladic was a neolithic culture based on emmer wheat, wild barley, sheep, pigs and tuna speared from small boats.
\n[…]
\n1.1. The boats had up to fifty oars and small attachments at the bow for lamps. Tuna was fished at night.
\n[…]
\n1.2. The Cycladic was an entirely insomniac culture.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cBy Chance the Cycladic People,\u201d 69-71.<\/em>\n<\/div>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   What that says about the poem I\u2019m not exactly sure\u2013<\/p>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   \u2013chance operations meets the Cyclades, the circular isles?<\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   Maybe. It\u2019s not exactly circular though, is it? Either way it\u2019s one of my favourite poems in this collection and<\/em> (thinking back to your comments about Berry) one of the most frustrating. The \u2018Cycladic\u2019 of the title refers to an Early Bronze Age culture that arose in the Aegean around 3000 BC known, chiefly, for their white stone carvings of smooth, featureless human figures<\/a>. I\u2019m curious how the random integers came into the writing…the flow and<\/em> dissonance between the lines is so spot on.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n8.2. Left arm below right was considered uncouth.<\/p>\n

7.0. To play a stringless harp requires only the thumbs.<\/p>\n

5.0. The Cycladic people were very fond of Proust.<\/p>\n

4.3. Is it because you don\u2019t want the impact.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cBy Chance the Cycladic People,\u201d 73.<\/em>\n<\/div>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   There is something satisfying about these lines as fragments<\/em>. It may be, as the poem supposes, \u201cbecause [I] don\u2019t want the impact.\u201d The full line breaks between the fragments stress their self-sufficiency, though nonetheless, the poem invites you (or more accurately cons you) into grouping the fragments in their respective ordered verses.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n2.0. They wore their faces smooth with trying to sleep, they ground their lips and nipples off in the distress of pillows.
\n[…]
\n2.1. It was no use. They\u2019d lost the knack. Sleep was a stranger.
\n[…]
\n2.2. Well, they said, these are the pies we have<\/em>. It was a proverb.
\n[…]
\n2.3. This became a Cycladic proverb.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cBy Chance the Cycladic People,\u201d 69-71.<\/em>\n<\/div>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   Aside from this process being oddly reminiscent of a choose-your-own-adventure book, in this difference between the random and the ordered fragments we see Carson\u2019s most successful experiment with form. There is a sense that these poems, which appear as conversation, interviews, biography and translation are part-reality, part-fiction. Carson plays with the nuances of intention, as with the Cycladic people who \u201cground their lips and nipple off in the distress of pillows,\u201d becoming the statues which are now their only recognisable cultural product. These are poems that try to find an equilibrium between Carson and their source material.<\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   How many times have you said well, these are the pies we have<\/em> this week?<\/p>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   …a few…<\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   Well finally then, let\u2019s look at the Collins section. Like the opening Carson poem, I think in \u201cArduous,\u201d we get a sense of what\u2019s to come: that kind of unravelling between Arduous<\/em>, Andre is<\/em>, A girl dates<\/em>, and that incisive, pointed last line.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nI\u2019m not saying they bother me
\nor \u2018men are my future\u2019,
\nmerely how hard this has been.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cArduous,\u201d 77.<\/em>\n<\/div>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   The endings of some of these poems are so strange and brilliant, like how did I get here?<\/em> I\u2019m thinking especially of \u201cBefore,\u201d where we start in 1239 with \u201cthe Mongol leader Batu Khan\u201d and end up, without blinking, with a \u201cFiat Panda carrying a team of cleaners[.]\u201d<\/p>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   Yeah \u2013 maybe the endings are even stronger because Collins forms the final section of the collection. I read that first line of the last poem, \u201cFirst I was this, and then I was that,\u201d as a reference to this, and maybe (thinking back to us misguidedly trying to tie the selections together) to the collection as a whole.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nFirst I was this, and then I was that
\nFirst I was a granule of pepper
\non some dolt\u2019s midsummer meal
\nand then I was data, before becoming
\nsomething altogether more tenuous<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cYrs,\u201d 102.<\/em>\n<\/div>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   While we\u2019re on this poem and endings, what did you make of \u201cYrs\u201d as an ending to the collection as a whole?<\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   
\nIt’s like a little goodbye like the Yours X<\/em> at the end of a letter. \u201cHere is the ink print | Here is the archival jet\u201d fits in with your reading, then we end up somewhere completely different.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nThe clouds now broken
\nI spoke Dutch freely
\nMerry Christmas +
\nLove to you<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cYrs,\u201d 102.<\/em>\n<\/div>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   I read it around Christmas though so this was funny.<\/p>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   …and a Merry Christmas to you<\/em>, too.<\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   The ending of a poem like \u201cHealers\u201d though is doing something slightly different. I think this is my favourite poem in the Collins section, and if I remember rightly when I saw her read it once it started off as a kind of funny poem, like it sounded like it had punch lines (something about those \u201cfundamentally insecure\u201d lines and that \u201cunusually pious\u201d child saint, maybe). When I read it here though it was the opposite, and though I think we very nearly get taken in by that slick voice (that seems so confident and in its place) it all falls apart in that mechanical, and weirdly sad, ending:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nWe are rarely independent structures, she said
\nbefore she dropped a bolt pin
\nwhich released a long section of tube
\nwhich released another bolt pin
\nwhich released several wooden boards
\nwhich scraped another tube
\nand made an unbearable sound.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cHealers,\u201d 79.<\/em><\/div>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   You felt sorry for the scaffold. The beginnings of these poems are completely different though. I think that occasionally their simplicity (or appearance of) slackens the poems, and we end up with top-heavy poems like \u201cBunny,\u201d which spend too long wandering in the forest of rhetorical questions to reach that ending, which simmers with anger, but doesn\u2019t deliver in the way some of the other poems manage to.<\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   I disagree insofar as I don\u2019t think those questions are rhetorical. Like I understand that the answers aren\u2019t right there on the page, but for me those questions aren\u2019t just for effect, and I think they all have answers that we just don\u2019t get to see. At Aldeburgh once I saw Collins read a poem called \u201cQuestions (after Tara Bergin)\u201d on a \u2018workshop\u2019 panel. The poem was made up of a series of police interview style questions in quick succession, and everyone in the room got a bit obsessed about what these questions might mean<\/em> and who was asking them and why they were asking them and what this person might be thinking and so on. It seems a bit basic now I\u2019ve put it like this but I think what some people were missing was the way the poem conjured these answers…you kind of ended up answering the questions yourself. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you take some responsibility? | For yourself, the dust?\u201d is a good example here…you can\u2019t help but answer it.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nWhere did the dust come from
\nand how much of it do you have?
\nWhen and where did you first notice
\nthe dust? Why didn\u2019t you act sooner?
\nWhy don\u2019t you show me a sample.
\nWhy don\u2019t you have a sample?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cBunny,\u201d 100.<\/em>\n<\/div>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   I think \u201cEight Phrases\u201d is doing something similar…like you can imagine the awkward response to that overcomplicated chat up line, \u201cMy drink is getting lonely, would you like to join me with yours?\u201d I guess both of these poems are interested in what\u2019s happening between the questions and the phrases, like that \u201cspace between | two untranslatable words\u201d in \u201cThe Palace of Culture and Science.\u201d<\/p>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   The Collins poems are a clear change in gear from the overt intertextuality of the Carson poems, though there are strange structures and networks between the poems like the sisters and the saints. Helpfully Collins provides a guide as to their purpose in the delightfully titled \u201cThe Saints 2: What the Saints Do.\u201d However what the saints actually do remains a matter of some conjecture…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nThe saints see through roofs
\nand through the centuries
\nThey see your thoughts
\nthe future
\nyour future thoughts
\n[…]<\/p>\n

The saints manifest in burning homes
\nThe homes are their minds
\nbut they\u2019re also real homes<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Saints 2: What the Saints Do,\u201d 82.<\/em>\n<\/div>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   Yeah that\u2019s great isn\u2019t it \u2013 it sounds like a child trying to explain the plot of a The Saints 2<\/em> film. Just going back a second I think you\u2019re right about the structures and networks between these poems. I know we didn\u2019t get very far when we tried before to put together the Russia references you pointed out, but I’m more interested in the churches, nuns, saints, and that illustration at the start of \u201cPoor Clare.\u201d I thought it was a reference to the onion router, until I worked backwards from Minoress \u2192 Poor Clares<\/a> \u2192 \u2018Tertiaries\u2019<\/a> \u2192 Third Order Regular…or TOR. I\u2019m still not sure where that gets us, though I\u2019m looking forward to seeing if the new book has more of these illustrations in. \u201cPoor Clare\u201d got me thinking about how some of these poems (\u201cYrs\u201d and \u201cBeauty Milk\u201d especially) work like riddles (\u201cI am a multiplication | and a made up belief\u201d) \u2013 you\u2019re almost waiting for the what am I<\/em>, aren\u2019t you.<\/p>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   Yeah, except we can never quite see what it is. Like we\u2019re examining the I<\/em> of the poem in a roundabout way, through the poems’ sparse arrangement.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nI am a multiplication
\nand a made up belief.
\nI am nothing for days afterwards.<\/p>\n

They say \u2018sum\u2019 about me
\nBecause they believe I am expanding.
\nReally I\u2019m too clean cut.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cBeauty Milk,\u201d 88.<\/em>\n<\/div>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   Perhaps even more so than the Carson section, I find that the Collins poems overlap each other well, often feeling like a \u201cmade up belief\u201d in the same way as the speaker here.<\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/strong>   We\u2019re back to that strange network and coincidences happening between the poems.<\/p>\n

C<\/em><\/strong>   In these poems we see a kind of lightness of touch, like in a riddle, and it works to great effect in both \u201cBeauty Milk\u201d and in a poem like \u201cAnna Karenina.\u201d The final lines of the latter might be my favourite from this section; they seem like a good place for us to finish.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nAuntie says \u2018Do not worry so
\nmuch over your future\u2019
\nbut my future
\n\u2013 there is only one \u2013
\nmy future is heard this
\nand is become loud<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAnna Karenina,\u201d 101.<\/em>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Penguin Modern Poets 1, If I’m Scared We Can’t Win: Emily Berry, Anne Carson, Sophie Collins (Penguin Books, \u00a37.99).   L   I have a few of the Penguin Modern Poets collections from the first series on my shelves, I think maybe the Levertov\/Rexroth\/Williams and the Corso\/Ferlinghetti\/Ginsberg, and I vaguely remember paying over the odds for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[13,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nPenguin Modern Poets 1, reviewed by Lucy Burns and Callum Coles - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6932\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Penguin Modern Poets 1, reviewed by Lucy Burns and Callum Coles - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Penguin Modern Poets 1, If I’m Scared We Can’t Win: Emily Berry, Anne Carson, Sophie Collins (Penguin Books, \u00a37.99).   L   I have a few of the Penguin Modern Poets collections from the first series on my shelves, I think maybe the Levertov\/Rexroth\/Williams and the Corso\/Ferlinghetti\/Ginsberg, and I vaguely remember paying over the odds for the […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6932\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-02-01T18:45:45+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-03-11T12:05:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Lucy Burns\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Lucy Burns\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"29 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6932\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6932\",\"name\":\"Penguin Modern Poets 1, reviewed by Lucy Burns and Callum Coles - The Manchester Review\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2017-02-01T18:45:45+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2018-03-11T12:05:11+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/9cf47d3eef788baca59a16eba98cfd4a\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6932#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6932\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6932#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Penguin Modern Poets 1, reviewed by Lucy Burns and Callum Coles\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\",\"name\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"description\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/9cf47d3eef788baca59a16eba98cfd4a\",\"name\":\"Lucy Burns\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"caption\":\"Lucy Burns\"},\"description\":\"Lucy Burns is a PhD student at the University of Manchester, researching Black Mountain College and post-war American poetry. 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