These Days by Leontia Flynn

Leontia Flynn’s These Days is an exciting book. The opening poem, “Naming It” not only does the work of placing her immediately, but not subordinately, in the realm of Longley/MacNeice and their concern with lists and names of things, but grounds the collection in its self-deprecatory and curious voice that is comparable to no other writer I can think of. Granted, Jen Hadfield springs to mind, particularly in their interest in Morgan, but Flynn is far more steeped in urban (suburban?) life, more wrapped up in the elaborate mundanity of being (variously) a student, a godmother, a waiter, a lover, and – very strikingly – a clued-in reader of poetry. There is a cluster of four poems, “When I was Sixteen I met Seamus Heaney” (“I had read The Poor Mouth – but who was Seamus Heaney?”), “My Dream Mentor” (“don’t write about anything you can point at”), “Snow” and what feels like its partner poem, “Nocturne” (“Whaddya mean already written? What? / Louis? Louis who?”), that make up something not unlike a centrepiece to the collection, a kind of hub from which the others radiate. Behind the humour is a playful up yours to her poetic forebears, a desire to evade the long shadows of Heaney and the rest. Flynn handles her influences lightly – besides the impulse to name and include everything, she also adapts Longley’s preoccupation with extremely short poems: “Doyne”, “Bridges”, “April, 7 P.M.” and “The Morning After Ruth’s Going-away Party” all clock in at six lines or under, while the book's first twenty-four are variations on the Longleyean ten-liner, in which his otters and herons are subbed for pints and pick-up lines. They are no less lyrical or gracefully poised for the change in subject matter. The collection is also littered with poems of one or two long, syntactically complex sentences that throw the reader off at odd angles. Look at “The Furthest Distances I’ve Travelled” – “why, if I’m stuffing smalls / hastily into a holdall, I am less likely / to be catching a Greyhound from Madison to Milwaukee // than to be doing some overdue laundry / is really beyond me.” Lingering only briefly on how sumptuous a platter of rhymes is likely/Milwaukee/laundry/beyond me, this poem is probably the best, or at least most memorable, of the collection, and bears a closer look.

It cracks off with “Like many folk”. This is a lie. Leontia Flynn is not like many folk, no matter how she might try and signal it. The poem’s delicate play with rhymes, line-breaks/lengths, its exotic vocabulary of places (“Krakow / and Zagreb, or the Siberian white / cells of scattered airports”) make it tricky to take everything in at the first go – the impression remains of a landscape shrinking, becoming intimate, finding uncommon nooks and hideyholes after the initial motions toward escape and dispersal and anonymity. That the poem breaks that particular word over a line doesn’t seem like a cheeky reach for rhyme – “anony / mity” feels rejected as a concept in what becomes a strong tribute to home, however mutable that concept might become during the poet’s “routine evictions”. The last few stanzas are the most formally consistent in the poem, and look and sound more recognisably like metric quatrains than the slippery early ones. Here they are in full, again, just two sentences draped over multiple lines:

However
when, during routine evictions, I discover

alien pants, cinema stubs, the throwaway
comment – on a Post-it – or a tiny stowaway
pressed flower amid bottom drawers,
I know these are my souvenirs

and, from these crushed valentines, this unravelled
sports sock, that the furthest distances I’ve travelled
have been those between people. And what survives
of holidaying briefly in their lives.

“[A]lien pants” might be my favourite thing in any poem. While you could argue that the last couplet sounds just a touch neat, I think it earns it. It feels more like an addendum – the full stop (rather than a comma) after “people” should be the end of the poem, but it keeps going, makes room for the scraps and physical memories of time spent trying to escape.

The collection has a heap of great moments. On the other hand, the brevity of each individual poem (and maybe the collection itself – 54 pages) makes it feel occasionally, if only momentarily, bitty or shallow, or lacking in broader significance. But Flynn seems alert to this as a potential difficulty – in “Satis House” she describes “[her] usual gift for avoiding ‘the issues’ with humour” – and provides too engaging and energetic a voice, too various a critical mind to let these instances detract from the book at large. Who knows what’s coming next?

#regularupdatefail

Gettin' fewer and further between these things. I'm on twitter now, of all things, @roxyreadings, and also shoutouts to Aiko who is going to be on the next SPL podcast which will update in the next day or two. While you're there, check out Stuart Kelly's cast, it will make you think. I have no idea what this poem is about, and while I probably say that about most things, I've got a much clearer idea that I've got no clear idea about what this one's about. Here it is.


Leith


The voice at night said, “Don’t
mind me. Don’t run each mistake
across your tongue like a spoon
of crème brûlée. Don’t slide open
the overflowing bottom drawer.

“Don’t unfold the neat green throw
that holds the red-wool plaits
from her hair as the air
of her scent expires, packed
with a snap shot of her smiling,

“flattered to be found. Don’t
go out. Don’t leave me here.”
I posted my keys through
my own locked door, walked
to the hilltop and eyed the spot

where the sea began. The water
tainted pink with the sunrise
as if bleeding from the strain
of making day. This won’t be
easily solved, or soon.

When we are rich, me and You –
you, still nothing but potential
until we decide who you are –
when sushi is not a reward,
when we’ll consume nothing but sushi,

we will raze to ashes each building
between our home and the sea, so
wading birds and otters will make
the trip unhindered to our door –
even otters have second homes –

when we’ll throw away our keys,
yes, and strip off our clothes
and our phones, our hair and skin
and dander, should the fancy take us,
to the spot where the sea begins,

then keep going, have the talk
that will take the rest of our lives,
and not drown – to drown is painful,
and pain too much like hard work –
but become that shadowy kingdom,

forgetful, forgotten, notched by
the claws of the herons on our skin,
admit the otters’ late retreat
to their hovers in our alcoves,
safe in the grass and close to home.

Thanks for reading,
Dave.

Suddenly! Three Weeks Later!

I've given up on trying to give titles to these friggin things. I kind of feel like I'm letting my children down, but I just want them to grow into their names, let their names choose them. God.

Anyway, this was inspired by a painting by George Braques, which at this point down the creative road is almost irrelevant, but still just relevant enough to warrant mention. Check it out here. Poem here:


How many of those candles flashed their small semaphore
that night, how many tussled in a bag by the fridge
that night, when the fuses shot in the bar and by candle-
light we searched the shelves like Diogenes,
and the colour in the glass was only candle-made.

How could we compete with that marbled darkness?
A man giggled as we totted change in the glisteny haze
and carried a gift of tea-lights to his girlfriend’s table.
And then the angles the candles lavished seemed to constellate
a new scene where the candle was a row of candles, and then a row

of rooftops candlelit, where we slubbed together for heat
and shared the icy fuzz of sweat on our cheeks in a gesture
as simple as the brocade on her duvet. I touched her hair
as I might a candle that catches but refuses to hold a flame.


Oh oh oh and and there's the Bowery/Roxy thing tonight. COME SEE COME SEE.
Thanks,
Dave.

2010 2010 its like a brand new yeeeeear

So on Sunday Ida Mae and Gwen went to the Meadows and made a snowman and generally frolicked around. Ida is from the Tropics and had never made a snowman before. Anyhow, I'm just saying this because this poem has the snowman in it but neither Ida nor Gwen and I don't want them to feel left out. This poem does not have a title, but it really should. Some day I will come back and add the titles in.


I left you, dear, and your duveted warren,
your butter-orange french toast and darjeeling,
to crack my lips on the crispening air,
though, to be fair, I kept in mind your hair,
your mouth, your embellishing flanks
when I passed a patch of untouched snowbank,
untouched but for the orange of Irn Bru,
two neon cans. I blanked the Big Issue
man, his evangelic don’t be shy
come and buy, my less-than-sacred alibi
waiting in the Meadows. The floury snow
was barely wet enough for snowmen, snow-
cairn, Jabba the SnowHut. Another can
full of fag butts I stacked where I rammed
in his arms, angled for hosannas; a switch
and some leaves made his face a Buddha of kitsch,
shielded his eyes from the Irn-Bru-toned sun.

That night, we tottered home, cold-nosed and drunk
and saw yer maun alone and here’s you: cmon
and we’ll build a snowmate like the bride of fucken
Frankenstein and with just one broken stick
made arms eyes ears nose mouth and, with a twig
doused in muck, her sandy hair. We left them there
together with the dogs and orange stars.


More soon,
Dx

Merry Solstice!

As promised, here's the second of them two poems I promised. Still haven't thought of a title. The lines should be staggered slightly, Mark Doty-style, but you'll have to use your IMAGINATION.


The music is skipping, then the radio
goes livid with interference. The waiter tinkers
with it briefly, then leaves it to its silence.

The tea is nut-brown and body-hot and on the wall
on what passes for a mantlepiece
is a mug, some candles, a wooden

mule, a vase with purple-black flowers
and above that the painting that caught
my attention: a single raven

silhouetted against something like
twilight, the oyster-blue of dawn or just after
sundown, between two splintered trees

and another raven half-
lurched into shadow. The first raven
- centre stage, our raven -

is peeking back across its shoulders at some
signal maybe, maybe some threat. No sign of you
yet, and in a minute you'll be late. It's nearly dawned

on me that ravens' eyes are on the sides
of their head, the whole body at an angle
when a draught shifts the fire of the candles

on the mantle and there you are
with your hair raven-black and silhouetted
against the silvery dusk outside the door



Thanks for reading,
Dave.

Yesterday there was snow

I have a poem to show you! And another one that will come either tomorrow or Monday, depending on when I next get to a computer. Neither of them have titles yet.


She is watching for you from the tree-house.
Judging by the tulip-blackness of the sky,
the corona of moonlight, you are late.
The ginseng root in your hand has come alive,
and when you touch the tree with your other hand,
too patched and grubby to live, and all this
luminous scrub, these overdone set-props
seem too flat, too farfetched, will you filter

back to life where her snoring fills the morning
as if she's angry to have missed it,
and all things seem connected to that
one abrasive sound that breaks from dream,
because air would no sooner meet your lungs and leave
and not believe your body something sacred

than you would stop her goddamn snoring.
How can desire live in what's perfected? Root
yourself in the pillow, the wet jewels of her sweat,
when there is nothing between you
but the bundles and nooks
of the blankets and a little human sleep.


Thanks for your patience, it's been a while.
Dave.

CAPS 2: DARK VERMOUTH

As promised, there is a brand new poem coming your way in just over four sentences. Also, if you are reading this today (27th of October 2009) or tomorrow morning, then might I invite you to the Bowery, 2 Roxburgh Place, tomorrow soir at 8pm? I think I may just have done. There will be poems and stories and all kinds of lovely drinks in teacups and cocktail glasses. Now it's time for that poem I mentioned!


Curtains


His cue is the flute.
There’s over a minute to kill, he’s thinking of food:
roast parsnips, turnip mash, all the trimmings
of Thanksgiving and the snacks in the dressing room –
the donuts that are there and the donuts that are not
her, mis-lit by the stagelights in the last rehearsal
and the meat of her limbs lithing in the boudoir
of his dreams, the seams of her crosspatterned dress
yet unable to release the last inches of her svelte
shifting thighs, a faint return of hair to her once-shaven pelt
was the last thing on his mind when the flute
started playing, and, at a loss for a script,
started mouthing
and thinking of nothing
except

now
no, now

no


Thanks for reading, and I hope the formatting for that poem works. Else I shall be sad. The next gap between poems will be much shorter.
Yours,
Dave.

THERE ARE NO CAPS BIG ENOUGH TO HOUSE MY EXCITEMENT

HOLY

GODDAMN

SHIT

I'VE WRITTEN A MOTHERFRIGGIN POEM

here it is


Zion


What I learned at Church
is that the body is a Temple
and the Church too is a body,
and I have never been to Jerusalem
but I have touched your body
as the angel touched Jacob
and made him Israel,

and I have never been to Granada
but I have heard Spanish
read from Poet in New York
and with your English tongue
seen you light up like a little town
beneath where a star hung

like the carvings in Yorkminster
of the broad-tongued heads
with wide eyes and fig leaves
or oak leaves or banana leaves
or just leaf litter through their hair

though I have never spoken
in tongues or knelt before an altar
or carved pagan good-luck charms
in your Temple, your new-found land.


And there's another one tomorrow! :O
Thanks for still reading,
Dave.