"Bloody Men"

Firstly, let me apologise to any of our regular readers who might have felt disappointed by the absence of two weekly posts during the course of this month. We seek your understanding, as with the case of future leaves of absence. In truth, most of us have been busy lately, and it's tough juggling everything. I have been occupied myself and was tempted not to post this week, but seeing that there wasn't a post last week, and that some of my stuff aren't that urgent and can wait, here's a short post for this week. [Guys. please don't brand me a traitor.. i'm not trying to ingratiate myself with the ladies with this poem].


Bloody Men

Bloody men are like bloody buses -
You wait for about a year
And as soon as one approaches your stop
Two or three others appear.

You look at them flashing their indicators
Offering you a ride.
You're trying to read the destinations,
You haven't much time to decide.

If you make a mistake, there is no turning back.
Jump off, and you'll stand there and gaze
While the cars, the taxis and the lorries go by
And the minutes, the hours, the days.

by Wendy Cope

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Having debated with others last week on the distinction of prose, poetry and prose-poetry, I thought it would be good to put up this very short and simple poem. Interestingly, a friend honoured me recently by asking me to make some comments on a very old poem he wrote long ago, and as I wrote my reply, certain things came to mind on the craft of what makes a poem.

Well, today's poem is straightfoward and a teenager would easily understand it. The poem is very much colloquial in tone, and seems very much like one of those 'b-tching' sessions (pardon the expression) between a couple of girlfriends about the terrible fate of dating "bloody men" in general. In fact, the first line of the poem seems almost common enough, perhaps even overheard before. It's like one of those witty aphorisms that we hear from time: "Bloody men are like bloody buses".

Nothing remarkable so far, and even as one reads on, some may feel that one might have written this poem oneself. That might be true, as why shouldn't we attempt to write poetry ourselves?

Looking closer at the poem, it is clear that as simple and as down-to-earth as this poem is, it takes some effort to sustain and develop the metaphor of men being like buses that never seem to appear when one is wating or looking for one. The poem then moves to the problem of having a couple of buses all turning up at the same time, just like how the dating scene is. With this nice turn of irony, it neatly plays with two of the common problems we face. The second stanza goes further of how it is difficult to decide the best bus to take, as with the people we would like to date, not knowing what to expect from them.

While we delight in the witticisms of this poem, we might have also unconsciously enjoyed the flow or rhythm of the lines. The poem is structured as a quartrain (4 lines per stanza) rhyming abcb, with a couplet (2 lines) like division of parts (at least that's what appears to me) that ties each stanza as a whole, being able to stand on its own. It is obvious then to see the control of language and form in crafting this poem.

Finally, the third stanza sees the poem come to a close. The first line is a common truism, and together with the second line, they are syntactically structured into two parts, that give them a similar rhythm pattern. This 'flows' on to the final two lines, which are also rhythmically similar, with the pauses between the commas. Reading this final stanza again, one will feel a kind of slowing down at the end, giving it a soft but genuine sadness, of waiting for the right guy to come by.

This poem by Wendy Cope is simple, but it goes gently from the usual frustrated complaint of women on men, to the witty 'talk', and finally to what may be said to be a personal, felt grief.

"Lovesong"

Lovesong

by Ted Hughes


He loved her and she loved him
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite
She bit him she gnawed him she sucked
She wanted him complete inside her
Safe and sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered into the curtains

Her eyes wanted nothing to get away
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows
He gripped her hard so that life
Should not drag her from that moment
He wanted all future to cease
He wanted to topple with his arms round her
Off that moment's brink and into nothing
Or everlasting or whatever there was

Her embrace was an immense press
To print him into her bones
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace
Where the real world would never come
Her smiles were spider bites
So he would lie still till she felt hungry
His words were occupying armies
Her laughs were an assassin's attempts
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
His glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway
Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors
Like an animal dragging a great trap
His promises were the surgeon's gag
Her promises took the top off his skull
She would get a brooch made of it
His vows pulled out all her sinews
He showed her how to make a love-knot
Her vows put his eyes in formalin
At the back of her secret drawer
Their screams stuck in the wall

Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop

In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage

In the morning they wore each other's face



Ted Hughes wrote Lovesong as part of his collection featuring his famous Crow character. The collection came out at the end of the 70s, and I got to read it a few years after. What stamped onto my consciousness then was the Crow poems more than the others. Today I am reading this poem, and all the other Crows one, from his recent tome Collected Poems - more than a thousand pages of all his oeuvre, including some he never published before.

When Collected Poems came out a while back in hardback it cost over RM200. I decided to wait a year for the paperback. Then two editions were on offer in our local book stores, the British and the American ones. The American one costs less, below a hundred. I confess that I opened the Faber and Faber one - and cracked the spine – right there in the book store! I put it back, carefully, looking around for any of the store assistants. I didn’t have any alternative but to check out the American edition. Its spine doesn’t crack that easily, and is more supple. But the paper quality is rather crap. The sweat from your fingers or hand tend to dent the pages.

And talking about sweat, the love making in Lovesong is some of the most intense I’ve ever read. Hughes starts off with a mere declaration of love:

He loved her and she loved him.

This line is so deceptively simple and straightforward: two short sentences co-joined and ending with the only punctuation, a full stop. There seems to be 3 beats, and the rhythm seems to start to rise and to fall at the end. The rhythm seems regular, like steady heartbeats. The falling rhythm at the end seems to be it, but not really so. The full-stop gives a very long or heavy pause, and this is meant to prepare you for the passion and intensity to follow.

What begins in the love making is a kiss, a very, very deep one. There are more beats here and the rhythm starts out regular – fall-rise – but gets broken in the course of the long line, like heartbeats rising. Note the new lines all have no punctuation to signal pausing or the end of a sentence or clause. That’s because the entire scheme now predicates on the way you have to read to the end of a line and make your own mind up to pause if there is an end-stop or to read past to the next line if a run-on. This underpins the theme here of two people or bodies becoming one. Notice also how this theme is encapsulated in the poem’s title not as Love Song, separated, individual words, but as Lovesong, one merged word. The ending five lines have the lovers completing their love making with exchanges of limbs and faces, beyond mere merging of two bodies.

Line 4 tricks you into believing, when reading, that there is some regularity in rhythm here: 'She bit him she gnawed him she sucked'

Try to read this line at a faster clip, without pausing. You’ll find the rhythm is almost staccato – like heavy heartbeats - when there are no punctuations between the perceived clauses. These clauses repeat the structure SPC (Subject-Predicate-Complement). So, you somehow expects the last or third clause to have a complement as well, a second repetition of "him". However, this anticipation is dashed as its structure closes with an intransitive verb. This effects such a poignant pause, such a heavy end-stopping; even if there is not full-stop and the next line starts a new clause.

The last three of lines of this stanza are very intense:
‘She wanted him complete inside her’ goes back to some regularity in rhythm. ‘Safe and sure forever and ever’ is pregnant with an abundance of sibilant sounds, both unvoiced or voiceless and voiced, from “s”, “f” to “v”. This may sound a bit close to the bone to some – sorry – but the shifting of the sibilance from unvoiced to voiced seems to bring out a sensation of going into some depth and of vibration even. The last line of this stanza is like the lovers’ climax, which is so high that they seem to feel or hear their cries flying into the room’s curtains. If you think this is their most intense climax, you have to read through to the line near the end of the poem, “Their screams stuck in the wall”. This is so graphic in detail, almost pornographic even.

The rest of the poems have details just as graphic. You see these a lot particularly in the largest stanza, the third one. These details are not about the actual physical act itself. They are mainly powerful and S & M-sounding metaphors: "immense press", "spider bites", "whips and jackboots","surgeon's gag", as a couple of instances.

"Divorce"

Divorce
by Carrie Etter

Forced to apologise
for the dirty sheets, he looks
proud in his shame.
I left that bed years ago
and have returned to collect
a forgotten book, a favourite blanket.
He knew the names of trees better
than makes of cars, but neither well.
He remembers which sister
I like least and asks
how she is doing.


First off, this poem is found in the latest issue of the British Council-sponsored New Writing series, this year’s New Writing 14. Actually, the poet Carrie Etter is American, but if you live and work in England – or anywhere among the countries under the Commonwealth - you are eligible to send your work to the New Writing project. As it is, she teaches creative writing in Bath Spa University, working there as an Associate Lecturer.

As I’m writing this I’ve completed reading through a third of NW14. No, you won’t be able to get this book in Kino or in any bookshop in KL now – I already booked a copy months back, and last I checked, last week or so, the bookshop didn’t stock it yet. How is it I’m reading it? I got a free copy from the British Council, KL, about two weeks back, as one of the first 20 winners of a little contest (Answer this and be the one of the 1st 20 people to get a free copy).

At this time, I still haven’t chosen poem to post in here. Incidentally, I’ve just finished the short story section of the book, and the next one is poems. I have quickly gone through those pages, and I stopped to read Divorce – that’s it, then, I found the poem to write about.

I really like this poem, because I’m looking for a short poem to work on, and it is actually the type or style of poem I myself would aspire to write: something not too long, with spare but telling details. Carrie doesn’t tell you what is going on in this divorce; she’s showing you.

Divorce is a short piece but is so very leaden with tension and conflict. The first three lines show a conflict of emotions here : he is ashamed and also proud of the dirty sheets. But why apologise anymore if he’s already divorced? Then, she’s saying she’s left his bed years ago. Conflict again: but why is she back after all these years, just to retrieve some “forgotten book, a favourite blanket”?

Notice the mirroring of these pair of items is foregrounded for us by the initial sounds from the “f” and “b” consonants (even if the first “f” sound is inside a non-stress syllable). Is this implying that he and she are still a pair, a couple, albeit in conflict? Or implying that she is still drawn to him, as from some force of habit? Could this paired items be symbolic of a kind of recurrence, of old habits, of some wont?: he cheated on her in their bed once, and now he is sort-of doing that again.

And what in the world is she doing being that close to his bed? The lines “He knew the names …of cars, but neither well.”: conflict – he knew, not know, these things but really he didn’t that well. Tension here: in the last three lines we can imagine him, now, goading her on by asking – probably very casually, very unaffectedly - after a sister of hers, whom she likes the least. The alliteration in “like least” tells loads about this sister. A very good guess what kind of relationship this sister had – or has - with the husband.

"Superman Sounds Depressed"

As Superman Returns to the big screen, I thought of putting up this poem, having read it some years back as part of an introductory course to poetry.


Superman Sounds Depressed

Nothing could have prepared me for this life
in which all hinges on me,

where it’s only me and my past now left
to reassure the world. The trouble is

they forget me fast and start counting
on krill, or thinking they understand

turbulence; so I have to make regular
appearances on the borders

of disasters, dropping through some backdoors
in space whenever I feel the gravity

of their need. Apples for the teacher
are all I get for it, for holding the railway

train on the high viaduct by a single joint
of my little finger, blowing hard

at the last moment to keep the water upright
in the shape of a shattered dam, for stopping

a model of the earth based on real chaos from
breaking through. I feel spelled all wrong,

stuck in the east wind
with my face caught in an expression

which would mean world financial crisis
if the president wore it. Give me dinner,

a lovely long dinner in dim light, with someone,
someone who will propose something rude

so it doesn’t sound rude — just delicious —
nothing personal, anxious or brutal about it

though it might seem all of those things
to others when it’s not night, over their ordinary

sandwiches: wholemeal, mustard
and fragile morsels. My head aches; I want

that woman and enough passion to blast away
any hope of understanding what’s happening

to me. And I want us to eat scallops,
and I want to lick the juice from her chin

as though I could save the world that way,
and I won’t even ask what passion is for.


By Jo Shapcott

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Far from the unruffled, heroic Man of Steel, Superman comes across here as a lonely, unloved figure in his soliloquy. The use of the couplet form (stanza with two lines) with run on lines that flow from one line to the next breaks the smooth flow of the poem, slowing it down, giving it a sad, plaintive tone. The caesuras (pauses created through the punctuations in the middle of the lines) further enhance this effect further of a world-weary Superman.

The run on line that breaks at “…gravity” emphasises both the magnitude and ‘weight’ of people’s expectations on him. The “Apples” he receives also plays on the “gravity” of Newtonian physics which he is less subjected to compared to the human ‘laws’ that are thrust upon him. It also highlights the disparity between all that he has done and the little gratitude he gets in return, sadly repaid with greater demands that rob him of his life as a person, an individual with his own needs, wants and desires.

Not surprisingly, what Superman craves is normalcy…not to be super, but to be just a man – a man who can enjoy a dinner with a lady he fancies. One can almost feel the desperation of his “want”, the “ordinary” that he yearns for…to “blast away” from the “gravity” of being Superman and just live life, passionately.

Although this is Superman’s soliloquy, does this poem just speak only for Superman?


[On a completely different note, S.B.Toh of The Star wrote an interesting review of Superman Returns, giving a cultural analysis of Superman as an American icon representative of its perceived benign world saving moral duties]