The Paris End of '62 by Geoff Page

The Paris End of '62


In Armidale at Tatts Hotel
in 1962
the Ladies Lounge

became a bistro - but that was not
a word they knew.
The 'continental' had arrived,

a sharp, up-country coup.
The tablecloths were
chequered French

and muzak with accordions
seduced the knowing few.
We smelt the mist across the cobbles

from some romantic rue -
outside all up Beardy Street
it was our winter too.

The bread was long and thin and sliced
precisely on the skew
but memories of that meal from here

are curiously few,
chicken in the basket, maybe ...
a three-day-old ragout?

It could have been a Steak Diane
or Steak Die Anne for two.
There might have been a beaujolais

or Mudgee red for all we knew.
The philistines still stuck to beer.
The girl, or my companions, who

that night mixed up their verb or two
have slipped successively from view -
the decor and the day survive them.

It would have been around then too
I somewhat existentially discerned
the guy I'd always rhymed with Seamus

should really be Camus.


Geoff Page

A Queer Thing by Nancy Keesing

A Queer Thing


Wasn't this a queer thing? I stood with your mother
At mid-day in her hot, still, polished kitchen
Preparing a mountain of ordinary bread
And wholesome butter. Where can be more quiet
Than stifling Brisbane noon? I heard a tread
On the wooden stairs - a slow, deliberate climb.
"They're back early, and lunch not ready in time,'
I said. And she: 'It's my husband, ten years dead;
He often calls when all the house is empty.'
'But I am here.' ' You are not,' your mother said.


Nancy Keesing

Tuesday Poem - 'Agnus Dei' by Marty Smith

Agnus Dei

I carried the lamb in a sack on my horse

It's buggered, said Dad, throw it in the creek.

The creek leaped, dimpled. Small bubbles

whirled, it rumpled where I was looking

the water shadowed half-blue-black

deep just there with duckweed floating out

the yards behind all noise, the cattle swirling

up air swelled with dust and bellowing.

Flies lighted on and off the rails.

I took the lamb and kneeled in the pudgy mud

both hands under it, under the water,

laid it carefully into the shocked cold.

It hardly struggled, there was so little left.

Put the bloody thing out of its misery

I heard in my head as I pushed it under

and the water shuddered.

Get the hell out of that he yelled at my back

you macabre little bastard!

It might have been ghoulish, he was good with words.

The yards were sweating hot

Dad wiped his hatband, the sack smelling

of dry stiff flax, I wiped my nose

my hand all mud and numb.

The birds hummed. In rain, in wind

I go out all hours on my lambing beat

he's the shadow of me, always riding beside me.

Let it go he said, quietly. I let it go floating

it bobbed and the sun caught the eye, closing.

Shush, shush, said the creek.

Marty Smith

I heard Marty Smith read at the NZ Poetry Conference and she was an astonishment. She was on last, and everything had been pretty tip top – but my goodness me she blew me away. And one of the nicest people you could hope to meet in a month of Sundays. She posted me her book Horse With Hat (Victoria University Press) which had won Best First Book at the NZ Post Book Awards, and that was an astonishment too. I won't go on and on. Get your hands on the book and read it for yourself. (And also look at it, because the illustrations in the book are another astonishment.)

Marty will be in Melbourne for one week and it would be a shame to miss out on the chance to hear her read and have a bit of a chat. (But in case you do here is the link to her poem 'Hat' in Best NZ Poems with a recording of her reading.)

http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/iiml/bestnzpoems/BNZP09/t1-g1-t17-body1-d1.html

But don't. Don't miss out. Three chances so your chances are good.

Passionate Tongues

Monday July 11

Brunswick Hotel 140 Sydney Road

7-30

Tago Mago

744 High Street Thornbury

Wednesday 13^th July

8pm – 10-30 pm

Dan O'Connell

225 Canning Street Carlton

Saturday 16^th July

2 - 5 pm

http://vup.victoria.ac.nz/horse-with-hat/

Tuesday Poem - 'The Violence of Work' by Geoff Goodfellow

The Violence of Work

I work in a factory

Monday to Friday

       punch on    punch off

i work a rotating roster

Monday to Friday

       punch on    punch off

i wear earmuffs & gloves

Monday to Friday

       punch on    punch off

i stamp on a press

Monday to Friday

       punch on    punch off

i still had my fingers last

Monday to Friday

       punch on    punch off

i work on a tally

Monday to Friday

       punch on    punch off

i'm told to work faster

Monday to Friday

        punch on    punch off

i have smoko with Billy

Monday to Friday

       punch on    punch off

i play euchre at lunchtime

Monday to Friday

       punch on    punch off

i just do my best

Monday to Friday

       punch on    punch off

i'm paid the award for

Monday to Friday

       punch on    punch off

i don't complain to the boss

Monday to Friday

       punch on    punch off

but complain to my partner

Monday to Sunday

       want to punch on

                   punch on.

Geoff Goodfellow

Punch On Punch Off was published by The Vulgar Press in 2004, so it must be kind of hard to come upon now. It was one of the books being chucked by Frankston Library, so that's how I got my hands on it. My father worked in a factory. A wooden box factory. Yes, he and his brother owned the factory, but they both worked on the floor. And yes, they both lost fingers. Law of averages. One careless moment. So I was very moved by this book. And very taken, also, with the musical intensity, and the compassionate simplicity. Simple is never easy.

http://www.geoffgoodfellow.com/

Tuesday Poem - 'Green' by Tracy Ryan

Green

It began with marigolds

that never showed

alongside the bungalow

when I was twelve

I learned you could tend

and tend without

recompense — you either

had it or not.

Perhaps it was earlier —

those broad beans we all

cajoled on damp cotton-

wool in primary school,

soil-less, dislocated

as an idea without

context, one blunt end

marked with a sly smile

or was it a lid? the blind eye

of a coconut where

they told us the milk

came out, though it looked shut

like the secret aperture

our baby sister

must have come by

that I tried to picture

somewhere near

the upper thigh

thinking it must seal over

when out of use.

I was clueless

as the broad beans, isolate,

generic, never given

a real chance

feeding no one.

Each lonely monad

aligned on the sill

worshipped in term-time

as if that would boost them,

then on the holidays

forgotten and gone

to mould.

Tracy Ryan

Frankston Library decided it had too much poetry on the shelves, so it dumped a swag of it onto the sales table amongst the other rejects. 50 cents a pop or a bag for 5 bucks.

So I was trotters in the trough, elbows out, fending off the other foragers — until I twigged that no one else was after what I was after. So I calmed down and just scooped up the lot.

(Except the self-published book of bush poetry by an old contender, because, after all, one must draw the line somewhere.)

I came home with Kelen (S.K. and Chris), Salom, Hewett. I came home with Watson, Caesar, Komninos, Croggon and Maiden.  And Yasbincek, Lenore, Kerdijk Nicholson, Tsaloumas, Wynne, Goodfellow, Skovron — and Ryan.

What a handsome book Hothouse (Fremantle Arts Centre Press 2002) is. And what a pleasure to catch up with it after all these years. I don't know how I missed it back in the day. I do remember hearing of it, I think it won a prize, but somehow or other, you know how it goes.

And as to the experience of reading the book, well — 'Hothouse comes off as a precise and lucid aggregation of effects. Without wasting a word, with quiet authority and integrity, the poet makes it plain.'

PS The cheeky things at Frankston Library were throwing out my play The Big Picture so I put that in my bag for 5 bucks and took it home.

PPS On my next visit I fell upon Weeping For Lost Babylon by Beach which somehow I had missed. I don't know how I missed it. But I had.

https://www.fremantlepress.com.au/products/hothouse

Tuesday Poem - 'Round' by Ouyang Yu

Round

One student stood up and said,

'the subtle factor that makes live endurable' is not right

as the word 'endurable' is not a correct

translation of the Chinese characters yuanhua

'What do you think?' the teacher asked

Cai, a broad-faced man-boy. 'What words

Would you use: “smooth”, perhaps?'

Chen, the man-boy, with a constant hat, offered.

'Because it's more like “skillful” I'd say'

an instant knitting of her brows appeared on the fresh-faced

girl sitting in the middle that did not escape the teacher

who said 'What about you?'

She said, 'I'd use sophisticatedly', when the hat boy said,

'No, it's more than just that.' The girl went silent

the teacher, instead of giving his translation, asked if any knew what

'long soup' and 'short soup' meant

seeing no one did he went online in search

of the pictures but they were not right at baidu.com

and were not available on Google or Yahoo

so he revealed that long soup stood for noodles

and short for huntun or what is known as 'swallowing clouds'

'Now,' he said to the class. 'You tell me what tangyuan

is in English.' One girl said, 'dumplings', and before the teacher finished

saying 'no' the hat-boy said, gropingly, 'round soup'

he won an 'Excellent' from the teacher

who claimed that that was exactly what he had coined

and said that if there was fangtang, it would have to be

square soup before he turned to the yuanhua again

saying how much delighted he would be if there was

an equivalent in English, a language still too primitive

for the yuanhuaness of the Chinese

a two-character combination that literally meant

round-slippery, not eel-slippery

not oil-slippery

not even unctuous-slippery

but round-slippery or round and slippery

on his way home, the teacher was defeated again

when he thought of the impossibility of match

making the two languages in this single expression

that describes a person's unctuousness, like oil or an eel

or that denotes life's smoothness

in a round manner

as round

as a ball

Ouyang Yu

This salty, transgressive book is such a delight. It is so tasty. With a big dollop of larrikin spirit on the side. I am not a bit surprised it is shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize For Poetry this year, alongside some other very toothsome books.

http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/2016-kenneth-slessor-prize-poetry

I do prefer to type up the poems for my blog, even if they are very long, because I get the feel of how they are put together. It is like unpicking a dress to find the ins and outs of it. Any secret gussets? How are the sleeves set in? Is the lining skimped? Etc etc. And I didn't notice, until I was typing Round, how very eccentric the punctuation and capitalisation are. And then I got the rhyme and reason for it. It signals the arbitrary and laborious effort of match making two languages. Amongst other things.

http://fiveislandspress.com/catalogue/fainting-with-freedom

Tuesday Poem - 'Making a Rat' by Kevin Hart

Making a Rat

I forget everything, and make a rat.

With little ambition at first, an amateur,

I try a roof rat – grey, long tail, sharp ears -

But with a will that staggers the human mind.

For months I labour on those teeth, that jaw

With strength enough to gnaw through beams of wood;

For years on end I fiddle with those ears

That make the lowest noises stand erect.

I give up dinners, seminars and sex

To breed the things it carries in its mouth -

Those strains of typhus, rabies, fever, plague.

I give up sleep for weeks to make its eyes

That pierce the darkness as I slowly work.

All day the mind will multiply itself

Just dreaming of a whisker hanging right,

A foreleg muscle tensing for a leap.

My mother dies, my father turns to drink,

And churchbells grow threadbare warning me;

And then one day the postman brings a book

Wrapped in brown paper, without card or note:

One Hundred Reasons Not to Make a Rat.

I put in longer hours, buy classy tools,

But still the rat won't work. I'll try again -

This time a Norway rat, eight inches long,

And from today I'll get it right from scratch.

I have my knives, my books, a practised hand.

Don't worry about that, I'll get it right.

Kevin Hart

How remiss of me to not have made an effort at Kevin Hart's work. I knew 'The Members of the Orchestra' (and love it) but had hardly come upon his work at all. Or if I had I suppose I promised myself that one day I would get around to it. And then op shopping recently I came upon Flame Tree: Selected Poems (Paper Bark Press 2002) and that day had come. (Inside is written 'For Gayle with all good wishes, Kevin Hart July 2002.') (Who is Gayle and why did she off load such a splendid book?) A Selected is an excellent way to feel as if you have truly delved into the span of a poet's work. Kevin tells me it was reissued (revised and with more work) in 2015 as Wild Track: New and Selected Poems (Notre Dame UP) so available for your delving needs, without haunting op shops in the hope Gayle had taken a job in Brussels and dumped all her books before heading off.

http://undpress.nd.edu/books/P03172