Bad Machine

By George Szirtes

The body is the 'bad machine' of George Szirtes' latest book of poems. The sudden death of his elderly father and of his younger friend, the poet Michael Murphy, remind him how machines - sources of energy and delight in their prime - go so easily wrong; and that change in the body is a signal for moving on. But language too is a body. Here, politi, assimilation, desire, creatureliness and the pleasure and loss of the body, mingle in various attenuated forms such as lexicon, canzone, acrosti, mirror poems, postcards, and a series of 'minimenta' after Anselm Kiefer whose love of history as rubble and monument haunts this collection. George Szirtes is one of our most inventive -and constantly reinventing -poets, and Bad Machine shows him developing new themes and new ways of writing in poems which stretch the possibilities of form and question language and its mastery. Poetry Book Society Choice, shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Release date: Mar 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781780370651

Book preview

GEORGE SZIRTES

BAD MACHINE

Poetry Book Society Choice

Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2013

The body is the ‘bad machine’ of George Szirtes’ latest book of poems. The sudden death of his elderly father and of his younger friend, the poet Michael Murphy, remind him how machines – sources of energy and delight in their prime – go so easily wrong; and that change in the body is a signal for moving on.

But language too is a body. Here, politics, assimilation, desire, creatureliness and the pleasure and loss of the body, mingle in various attenuated forms such as lexicon, canzone, acrostics, mirror poems, postcards, and a series of ‘minimenta’ after Anselm Kiefer whose love of history as rubble and monument haunts this collection.

George Szirtes is one of our most inventive – and constantly reinventing – poets, and Bad Machine shows him developing new themes and new ways of writing in poems which stretch the possibilities of form and question language and its mastery.

COVER PICTURE

Daughter Born without Mother (1916-17) by Francis Picabia

SCOTTISH NATIONAL GALLERY OF MODERN ART

© ADAGP, PARIS AND DACS, LONDON 2013

George Szirtes

BAD MACHINE

CONTENTS

Title Page

Grey Wood

Grey Wood

Colours

Dictionary

The Lump

Postcard: From a Tower

1  Tower

2  Reverse Side

Postcard: The Rower

1  Rower

2  Reverse Side

Postcard: Joke Shop

1  Joke Shop

2  Reverse Side

From You to One

The Best of All Possible Worlds

MINIMENTA

: Postcards to Anselm Kiefer

1  Rubble, Light and Voice

Postcard: Untitled, monument

1  Untitled, monument

2  Reverse Side

The Best of All Possible Worlds

Honour and Pride

Abstraction

The English Vowels

The Immigrant at Port Selda

Trojan Horse

Meeting Walt, 1959

At Rosehill, Whitehaven

Snapshots From a Riot

Children of Albion

Goroo

The Cat Speaks of Hunger

Postcard: Thirty-three Propositions

1  Thirty-three Propositions

2  Reverse Side: Thirty-three Propositional Stories

Dreaming the Budapest Zoo

Creatures

Fish Music

Some Sayings About the Snake

Snake Ghost

Postcard: The Swan’s Reflection

1  Cygnus

2  Reverse Side

Words from a Diary

Homages

Half an Eye

Prospero

Paleface

The Lost

Southern Belle

Bad Machine

MINIMENTA:

Postcards to Anselm Kiefer

2  Wind, Cloud, Drilling

Canzone: The Small of the Back

Footnotes

Canzone: A Fantasy after Roethke

Actaeon

Demi Monde

Nautilus

Plain: A Seventies Marriage

Canzone: Bad Machine

Working Towards the Edge

Working Towards the Edge

Leading a Charred Life: Seven Short Songs

Limit Frame

Cloudscape

MINIMENTA:

Postcards to Anselm Kiefer

3  Allotments

The Covering

Canzone: Terror of, Desire for

Long view

From the Armchair

My Father’s Eyes in Old Age

Canzone: Animal

When Night Falls It Will Be Orderly

MINIMENTA:

Postcards to Anselm Kiefer

4  Stones, trees, wind, river

Our Beautiful Mothers

A Photograph in Old Age

Magister

A Blue Shirt

Dead Child

Survival

Perdita

Actually, yes

We Love Life Whenever We Can

Songlines

Mony Mony

Easy Listening

McGuffin’s Tune

The Time It Takes

Cryogenic: The Big Freeze

If You Say So

Say So

A Man without a Face

Magister

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

About the Author

Copyright

Grey Wood

Grey Wood

Out of this wood do not desire to go. Here is where enchantment starts. Here is where confusion begins. Here rulers of different realms assume masks of faun, ass, wall, moon and lion.

Out of fallen beeches creep the ghosts of time. The wood is full of ghosts. Of burned leaves if nothing else. Then they disappear and then the trees are burned.

It is a strain talking on several levels like this. Wood is not wood. Ass is not ass. Wall is not wall. Enchantment is not enchantment. Talking like this is just talking. It is like being stripped naked.

The naked are enchanted. That is where we begin. That is a faun. That is a lion. The ghosts of time enter the wall. We don’t talk of ghosts in walls. The wood is the ghost. The word is a ghost.

Here is where the confusion begins. It is a strain talking. Like this. Like that. What will they do with all that grey wood? Wood is not wood. Ass is not ass. It is like being stripped naked.

Colours

1

Burlywood, Chartreuse, Gainsboro, Ghostwhite, Greenberg,

Maroon, Orchid, Moccasin, Peru, Demosthenes, Snow,

Papayawhip, Popper, Peachpuff, Hotpink, Hothot,

Darkred, Darkgrey, Dodgerblue, Drudgery, Derrida,

Fuchsia, Fondle, Fricassee, Firebrick, Fenfall,

Coral, Cornsilk, Crimson, Coleridge, Coolidge, Honeydew,

Hellebore, Hartshorn, Honegger, Jet, Jellaby,

Lavenderblush, Lascar, Lightcyan, Lightlight,

Gray, Grey-Green, Garrulous, Golightly, Garrick,

Indignant, Insolence, Irked, Ivory, Ilk,

Jeremiad, Asclepius, Goldenrod, Arriviste, Glock,

Cyan, Chocolate, Cadetblue, Camisole,

Fallen Grey, Flecked, Lost Blue, Amaretto, Shrubbery,

Yearning, Absinthe, Abstinence, Grey Holes in Green.

2

Had these been voices, the wind might have sung them

Through a hedge or an empty head. It was winter

Then spring then summer then autumn. Thunder

And lightning. The beating of a red drum.

Had it been blue guitar, or purple rose, or black Sunday…

Had it been brown study, devil’s dyke, or dun

As in dunnock… Had it been greyfriar or redeye

Or permanganate or potassium..

Had their names been their being… Had the retina

Been in service… Had the hot stores burned away

With the seasons… Had it been anything but dinner

In the provinces… Had the spectrum not gone awry…

Had it ever fallen out like this with the light lost

In the jungle of the voice with its brilliance and dust.

Dictionary

The problem of continuity – of syntax, to think of this is to think of something else

Ways of moving:

        Pulse of wind, press of wind (as in fingers of wind gently pressing against eardrum), swandip, swanbulge, swanstretch, peeling (as in gull peeling, as in off the horizon, breaking into bribs and blebs,

Reviews for Bad Machine

[sometimeunderwater · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not a huge amount that's profound here. A lot of formal play, which either interests you or it doesn't. The poems in the first section are the best, and 'The Lump' is the best of those. 'Children of Albion' is quite charming, but nothing to write home about.

[annebrooke · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Definitely better and sharper in the short form poetry than in the longer pieces. In the longer poems, the author gets lost in the shape and pattern of the words and it all comes across as muddled and not a little smug. However, the short poems are worth reading.