L | Commentary | Ralfo's Brother, by Jack Underwood

Somebody shouted he was in the tree,

so we blasted and he fell like an ape.
His hand smudged at his lapel,
a hole above the knee was gulping.

A leaf settled on his head and he said
“I wish my brother Ralfo was here,
with his rough wood knuckles
and landlord’s voice. By god he’d set you!”

After the perimeter checks and the parakeets
were packed back in the trees,
the jungle lay down to sleep
in green mist. A lone Baboon kept watch.

Ralfo took root, grew from the earth,
tore through the floor of my tent:
his eyebrows were tensed like a slingshot,

his nostrils wide as his eyes!

*

One of my favourite stanzas in Jack Underwood’s Faber New Poets pamphlet also centres on a tree (or multiple trees, anyway):

But he remembered the panther enclosure

where he had waited for thirty minutes,

staring up at a dark hut hidden in trees.

Suppose there was no panther.

            From ‘Theology’

To write off that last line as straightforward bathos, a punchline, would be to do it a considerable disservice, I think – its construction is much more original than that, much more strange. Throughout the preceding lines ‘Theology’ has been tritely efficient and not much else. It describes a visit to the zoo, ‘a good day’ because of a bird with an ‘anvil head’ and ‘slinking lizards’ amongst (we presume) other things. It represents, in many ways, a distillation of several extremely irritating but alas, increasingly prevalent poetic ‘techniques’ – self-aware prosaicness, metaphor emphasising the futility of metaphor, ‘meaningful’ simplicity. But then that last line pounces, five open-ended words sounding exactly like something that somebody would actually say, fenced within a single self-contained sentence-line, emphasising that there is so much within idiomatic, real language that is useful for poetry. More useful, indeed, than ‘poetic’ construction. And more capable of stopping the flow of the flatly mediocre than any supposedly shimmering fragment of imagery.

Actually, perhaps punchline is the right word – providing the punch is correctly identified as a stylistic construction, the sound of a poem physically knocking itself out, rather than a narrative ‘twist’.

As clichéd as it is, the vast majority of poets would probably tell you, if pushed, that one of the principal motivations for writing poetry is still (will always be) the desire to make language new, to make it do unprecedented things. Jack Underwood succeeds, where many, many other poets largely fail, by finding the potential for linguistic strangeness in the most banal, written-off places. The surprisingly eloquent child-voice. Ambiguous ‘he’s and ‘I’s. The exclamation mark.

All three find their way into ‘Ralfo’s Brother’. In a sizeable majority of cases (including Wolf Hall, not that that’s especially relevant here) I find the use of a self-consciously ambiguous ‘he’ and ‘I’ to be gratingly false, grimly writerly, but here it elegantly frames Ralfo, whose presence is almost entirely dependent upon the singularity of his name. It is also pre-empted by the fact that, Withnail and I-like, the poem is entitled ‘Ralfo’s Brother’ rather than merely ‘Ralfo’, a fact that makes the 'real' subject of the poem (narrator, brother or Ralfo himself?) a rather enjoyable knot before it’s even started.

I think ‘rough wood knuckles / and landlord’s voice’ is wonderful as well, a flash of eloquence that has just enough tactile, genuinely descriptive truth within in to be a viable child’s outburst, whilst still displaying a linguistic energy that justifies the brother, and not Ralfo himself, being the initial focus. Half victim, half different, faerie-like perhaps. A carefully constructed balancing act – the ‘gulping’ knee and the leaf on head similarly.

Like ‘Theology’ though, this poem wouldn’t amount to much without its closing line, a sudden spurt of emphasis that leaves one happily bewildered as to why it is being emphasised at all – for all three of the other lines in its stanza are potentially more emphatic, more threatening – whilst making perfect sense in a Beano, cartoon angry bull, old fashioned schoolboy imagery kind of a way. It is a line that made me completely reassess the potential of the exclamation mark, usually the serious writer’s nemesis, because of what its connotative baggage can bring to a sentence that isn’t expecting it. Is it neatly ironic? Is it an admirably honest attempt at melodrama? And to finish a poem with it? Imagine if the final line of a novel you’d seriously engaged with concluded with an exclamation mark! You’d be completely fucking appalled.

Jack Underwood draws attention to the unique linguistic experimentalisms, strangenesses and, yes, sillinesses that are available to the poet – specifically, the poet – in a way that I haven’t come across since reading Glyn Maxwell’s debut collection, Tale of the Mayor’s Son. I’ve included a couple of excellent stanzas from that collection below because I see absolutely no reason not to. I’d love to see Jack write a poem as long as ‘Tale of a Chocolate Egg’, see what happens after the exclamation mark.

*

…he went unbreakfasted

in a quiet room of feasible breakfasts.

There was a silver lining. There were some

seventy-five teabags he could use.

He used one, took it black, and used the lemon.

‘I’m having lemon tea,’ he said, truly.

            From ‘Tale of a Chocolate Egg’

It’s just the same to look at, like my book

with the straw witch on page 9, the frightener!

It doesn’t frighten me, but nothing does.

            From ‘Farm Close’

Sam Kinchin-Smith

Music Editor

Post | Fiction | Where Have All The Postmodernists Gone?

Thank you, Nick Clegg, for finally providing me with something I could possibly write about on the theme of ‘post’, which for the past week has seemed to me so utterly impenetrable that I’d started to try and rearrange the letters in an attempt to get an article, any kind of article, out before the end of the week. (‘Stop’ and ‘pots’ were my favourites.) And thanks also for reminding us that there may actually be a thoughtful and even well-read person behind the mask of the politician. Possibly a speech-writer. But still.
It seems in his speech to the UN – which apparently some delegates idly chatted over, the poor bastard – Clegg stated the following;

“The work of international institutions must continue to be guided by the values on which those institutions were founded: the rule of law – both domestic and international; the right to freedom of expression and belief; democracy; and equality before the law.”

Little Nicky: "The US was not responsible for 9/11."

"These values are sometimes described as 'western' values – but only by people who do not know their history. Four centuries ago, the great Mughal emperor Akbar was legislating for religious freedom and equality in what is now India, while in parts of Europe 'heretics' were being burned at the stake.

"The truth is that these liberal ideals of equality, law and self-determination cannot be claimed by any nation, or hemisphere.

"They are global values with global force. They are also the values at the heart of the UN charter."


Pissy nasal historical reference aside, this is a pretty forthright kick in the face towards cultural relativism, isn’t it? A reminder of the insidious rhetoric of rulers worldwide who like to equate religious freedom, sexual equality, et al. with corporate greed and cultural decadence by labelling them all as ‘Western’, and of various cliques who justify their questionable practices by telling outsiders they have no right to judge them.
Hell, I thought, sitting back in my chair, was cultural relativism the most lasting and widespread effect of post-modernism? I mean, I don’t know that many people – one or two, perhaps – who would try and use Derrida in an ordinary conversation. But all too often, if you start a debate about any important subject with someone who disagrees with you, you’ll hear those horrifying words,


“Well, I’ve got my opinion, and you’ve got yours...”

"Who are you to tell me what the truth is?"

“No!” I want to scream, grabbing them by the lapels. “No! Don’t put up these barriers of the equal value of opinion between us! Let me into your opinion, where I can dissect it for you, lovingly and near-erotically, and you can do the same to mine, and let our combined research bring us closer to objective truth.”


What, in short, the hell happened to post-modernism?


When I first started reading Seamus Heaney, I was struck by one of Faber’s blurbs (I can’t now remember where it was from) that lauded the great poet for – and I paraphrase – “avoiding the abyss of post-modernism.” A strange place to be in, you might think, that (what is presumably still) the major cultural movement of our day should be noted only as a pitfall that our best writers manage to dodge. And, when you think about it, when was the last time an author who described themselves emphatically as post-modern was accepted by the literary establishment? Caryl Churchill?

If I was being optimistic, I’d suggest that perhaps this was the final, noble, unacknowledged sacrifice of the post-modern; by attempting to show the relativity of all cultural movements it rendered itself, and all movements to come after it, meaningless. That from now on, there will simply be authors, and their surges will be individual, not as part of a larger wave. Fractism, we can call it (ironically), and it will contain every sort of opinion and every sort of movement.

This is probably balls. But, my God, I’d like to imagine it’s not. And anyway, who the hell are you to tell me I’m wrong?

Jon Ware
Fiction Editor

Bees | Mixtape | Mixtape X, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, by Jack Underwood

 

Music As Reading: Mixtape X, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, by Jack Underwood

We could drive down to another beach,
Even tan, your skin seems white;
All our friends have gone away from here,
So let’s disappear from sight.

We were going to save this one for a special occasion. But earlier this week, I saw Bonnie “Prince” Billy sing in a gorgeous late-medieval church in Coventry, and it was such a sublime experience that I figured we owed it to the Silkworms readership to offer them something of it.

Jack Underwood wrote a poem about Bonnie “Prince” Billy in his superb Faber New Poets pamphlet, the fourth of the first crop. We thought getting a chap who’d attempted to distil something of BPB into verse to then re-soundtrack his poem, as it were, via a sequence of songs, by BPB and others which constitute the musical basis of his relationship with the singer’s work, would represent a fascinating (if somewhat confusing) Music As Reading experience. The following represents a compelling insight into one of the most interesting Young British Poets Working Today’s ideas about music interacting with reading/writing and vice versa (and, indeed, a pretty good introduction to what makes BPB such an extraordinary artist).

(The poem, Bonnie “Prince” Billy can be located in Faber New Poets 4, published by Faber & Faber. Jack’s mixtape is, due to even more pronounced Spotify shortcomings than were apparent last week, our first YouTube Mixtape. Click on the track-title for audio/video.)

1. My Home is the Sea – BPB and Matt Sweeney (Superwolf)
2. You Will Miss Me When I Burn – BPB (Greatest Palace Music)
3. FYH – Mat Riviere (Follow Your Heart – Riviere’s brother, the poet Sam Riviere, first played me BPB. I was in his room, we were at art-school, the song was No More Workhorse Blues I think.)
4. No Bad News – BPB (The Letting Go – I don’t know this album that well, but I like the prickly folksong verses.)
5. Kiss – Scout Niblett feat. Will Oldham (This Fool Can Die Now – when I went to see BPB I bumped into Scout Niblett in the foyer and got my ticket signed! I’m a big fan. I think her shrill voice on this track is skin-crawly good, and the video’s good fun too. Just a beautiful, dangerous song really) 
6. I See A Darkness – BPB (I See A Darkness – lots of people think this is BPB’s best album. I’m not so sure. I think I like the spangley, slightly ‘too-much’ country and western stuff on Greatest Palace Music more. Palace Music, the earlier record, is also interesting because it’s earthier and more DIY. Anyway, the point is, this is a great, moving song, but I think it’s a bit self-consciously reaching for a dark place, or ‘minor place’ as he puts it, and I think he does that better when he’s not trying so hard.)
7. The Brute Choir – BPB (Greatest Palace Music – this is precisely that OTT, lush country and western thing I was talking about: those ladies singing ‘the choir, the choir’ at the end and the wonderful slidey lapsteel. I also love how this song develops without really repeating itself. And of course, that rolling piano.)
8. Joan of Arc – Leonard Cohen (Songs of Love and Hate – I think BPB lives in this song a bit. Perhaps it’s the voice of fire speaking, which has that kind of melodrama about it, but in any case there just has to be a common lineage here: see/hear next track!)
9. The Way – BPB (Master and Everyone – see/hear what I’m getting at?)
10. Sittin’ In An All Night Cafe – Warner Mack (No real link to BPB here, except that I think he generally makes country music accessible or more palatable to the more ignorant, pop-washed listener. So I thought I’d put one of my favourite country songs on here!)
11. The Static That Comes From My Broken Heart – Herman Dune (Mas Cambios – people who bought ‘Bonnie Prince Billy’ also bought ‘Herman Dune’.
12. Gulf Shores – BPB (Greatest Palace Music – this is my favourite BPB song: the candy-striped swimsuit, letting the family down and the suggestion that ‘we could drive down to another beach’ as if that might somehow help the situation. I just think this is so lyrically well-pitched, and although I never had one in mind, if one song were to prompt me to write my poem again, it would be this one. But of course, if the poem works, it’s really about all songs, or at least whichever one the reader brings to mind.)