seething since 2001
If I had to write a complete list of all the things creative types do that really give me the jitches, I’d be here all day. So, in my own therapeutical interests, here’s three literary devices that cheese me off no end. What cheeses you off?
Continue reading “Three literary devices that really cheese me off”
Now if anyone wishes to vent a little spite against me, or take a casual swipe at me, I can count on his bringing up my Lubeck origin and Lubeck marzipan. If some ill-wisher can think of nothing else, he invariably thinks of connecting me with comic marzipan and representing me as a marzipan baker. Such stuff goes by the name of literary satire. But it does not bother me . . . And I certainly do not feel in the least insulted about the marzipan. In the first place it is a very tasty confection, and in the second place it is anything but trivial; rather it is remarkable and, as I have said, mysterious. And if we examine this sweet more closely, this mixture of almonds, rosewater and sugar, the suspicion arises that it is originally oriental, a [Haremskonfekt] confection for the harem, and that in all probability the recipe for this barely digestible delicacy came to Lubeck from the Orient by way of Venice. And it turns out that those wits are not so wrong as they themselves think, that Death in Venice is really ‘marzipan’ although in a deeper sense than they ever meant it.
Thomas Mann, ‘LUBECK AS A WAY OF LIFE AND THOUGHT’ (1926)
Inevitably, choosing a new WordPress theme (in my case, the wonderful Lovecraft theme by Anders Norén) involves going through old posts and cleaning up dead code and formatting. Given that there are over 1200 posts on this site, it’s quite a job.
But, I’ve been working away in the background and have now re-jigged the first four of my reviews of Chris de Burgh’s lyrical output in the 1970s: Far Beyond These Castle Walls . . . (1974), Spanish Train and Other Stories (1975), At the End of a Perfect Day (1977) and Crusader (1979).
Specifically, I’ve added record covers, quotes and links to the lyrics, in order to make the reviews (even) easier to digest.
Right now I’m also working on a review of de Burgh’s first 1980s collection, Eastern Wind.
More on that shortly!
Imagine a city with no streets
but networks of amputated limbs.
An officious city of criminal investigations
and inquests whose soul is a square of cheap,
grey carpet
and a water dispenser.
The tinkle of pachinko,
the sudden sirens of attack.
Those women with the hand bills,
so stubborn and intent upon their mission,
invading the bodyspace of the factory workers like an influenza.
Sheets of steel carried by a dozen men at a time
towards the railhead.
Rain in bursts of noise upon their heads.
Somewhere there is a map of the city's improvements
but no one I speak with has seen it.
Wheelchair-bound ladies protest at
the new constructions rising up around them
in terrifying spirals.
No-one is allowed to see them.
Behind their riot shields,
the policemen are only boys.
Some of them wear white sneakers,
as if they have been called in from basketball practice.
Sleeping street people
curled up like scraps of paper
on the subway stairs,
trusting that the spirits will protect
their small change,
their street salaries.
Mandarin peels in the gutters.
Sewer smells that hit the face like a nervous pigeon,
the frightful proximity of disease.
A hollow city,
stained with sad skirmishes
and pickled fistfights.
Gouged-out eyes that speak.
Tables hoarded under orange shelters.
Old men dancing in parks for citizens,
while other citizens peer out at the sky
like lost kittens in bamboo.
Squeals.
Drums.
Discarded cloths,
blood-stained.
News of another separatist attack filters through
stale cups of coffee,
cigarette butts neatly stacked like bullets.
A simulated odyssey through virtual historical battles
gains popularity in the parlours.
No one speaks of it;
these things require no advertisements.
Beware the reconstituted cutlets of crumbed meat:
that way annihilation lies.
Pull back the tarpaulin to reveal today's wares—
a rack of twisted and burnt squid,
dried suckers and flattened jerky.
Remove hospital identification barcode.
Shoulder arms.
i sing the dead body of a dolphin drift-netted,
snatched from the envelope of the glinting sea
& i sing her name replaced (& i sing her gender
inverted but that jingle? you'll never hear me
crooning no one you see is smarter than he
coz he was a she & her real name was Cathy
i sing the remorse of her tanned TV trainer's
tears—they struck a false note, as i recall, on
the day he returned to visit long after the
cameras had packed up & left her, forgotten
her body, her brain captive on film stills in a
deep tank, discarded just like yesterday's meat
she swivelled & turned to sadly fix her one eye
on the old man's boat shoes, their salt-water
stainings, sand engravings & mackerel scents,
memories of bud & little sandy (wunderkind
brothers, grown-up, with fame in their blood
faster than lightning (or was it boned-up on speed
could they give a rat's about Cathy the dolphin?
did they ever come to visit? can you spare a light?
sorry, no smoking in Sea World, but if i had a dollar
for every youngster who knew her I'd pass my hat
to her sobbing old trainer who'd punch it & shout:
you killed her! all of you idiots killed her! gaaaaaaah!
(although apparently dolphins can commit suicide,
the tears in his glass eye never did seem to dry
when he described her last moment in the tank
& the bubbles as she sank to its fake sandy floor
& just . . . stayed there, forever, or at least until
her breathing stopped (it, too, neglected, abandoned,
no longer just living in that world full of wonder,
let alone flying there under ( . . . ah, under the sea
a slave to its glinting theme-song death march:
no-one you
(no-one you see
(is smarter than
(smarter than she,
she, she, she
. . .