A non-poetry-lover's poem. If you can get past its occasional deliberately-self-aware poetic style, that is. Kit Wright is one of the more enjoyable poets I've been experiencing recently so expect to see more of his work here in the future.
An automatic and unquestioned nostrum
Currently purveyed from page and stage and rostrum
Is that all true verse, diminutive or discursive
Is subversive.
Oh never ask subversive of what!
It is not only the Armani Anarchist who will then berate you as a sans-culotte;
Nor the Gucci Guerilla alone, nor soley the Alternative
Millionaire,
But everyone from everywhere.
On no account enquire how it subverts or with what degrees of success;
You will then be deemed a dinosaur and an undesirable denizen of Loch Ness.
Oh hear the binding law from which there is no severance:
About all things shalt thou be
Irreverent, except
Irreverence:
A paradoxical orthodoxy upon the air dispersive --
And I think I may have said something mildly subversive.
Taken from Hoping It Might Be So: Poems 1974-2000, a long collection that "brings together all of Kit Wright’s previous collections for adults as well as three dozen new poems". This is one of those new poems, first published in 2000. Hoping It Might Be So is currently in print from Faber Finds (a Faber & Faber imprint, of course).
No comments:
Post a Comment