Poetry and Modern Criticism
(taken from the Apocrypha to The Norton Anthology)
ojogno ojhotpogt bgi
Adapted from 'Og',
Jean-Pierre de la Poofsin,
(1957)
This contemporary post-modern statement on our
society is also a deep reflection on our inner selves, splitting
our lives into three: birth, life and death. Notice that the
three sections are jumbled up cleverly by the artiste, with
life '...bgj...', being the longest and central part of our
existence but placed at the end of the piece and having the
shortest part of the poem. However death, '...ojogno...', the
quickest of the three themes, is cunningly placed at the beginning
(where logic would dictate that birth would be placed) and given
quite a long part. We now come to birth, '...ojghotpogt...',
the dominant part of the poem. While there are no obvious contrasts
to be had with the length of the section and length of time
it takes to be born (without resorting to the pretentious exercise
of speculation) I am led to explain this artistic phenomenon
by the importance of birth as a process itself, for without
birth there would be no life or death.
Unfortunately, the poem was burnt in a fire in the Musee de
l'Artiste Boloxe with many like it, but insurance investigators
at the time could not account for it, for there was 'nothing
of value in the building'.
The tap is not
quite off.
Drip.
Drip, drip.
Dorothy Pastel-Shades
(1884-1935)
When Mr. Harold Arpingthorp of Woking discovered a battered, patent-leather bound manuscript in his loft in 1972, little did he realise that between the finest pig-skin pages lay a literary message for our time. The poem 'The Tap' is a beacon of genius for this neo-Fabianist, post-anti-classic modernist (not to say pre-emptive Partisan) age. To give a criticism of this work is hardly more an honour than a betrayal, for the music of the soul is all too often disturbed in its reverie by those that would with it plague the mind, and yet this is the task upon which I am set. I therefore attempt it only after first assuring my audience of my unbound reverence for this icon of emancipated new-thought.
The first sense to shock the nerves is a true sombre joy, as the
deeper meaning of the ending repetition is revealed in all its
newly-bathed glory. The repetition of 'drip' is multiple, and
yet abstract. The coarse, off-toned scansion roots deep inside
the soul. As a symbol of death it is unparalleled. At the end
of the third line it feels complete. The tale is told and re-emphasised
by this final 'drip' - and yet the journey is not quite over.
The second and third 'drip's are bold and strong and physical.
What are the connotations? The afterlife? An iconoclasticism for
the future? I doubt that we will ever know. The answer is buried
with she who wrote it, and yet her message lives on.
The primary negative aura of the first line is baffling and yet
we feel its power. Her reasons for starting the second line in
a symbolic lower-case 'q' are clearer. She is opening our minds
to the bizarre in connection with the negativity of the first
line, culminating in a deeper understanding of our own erstwhile
mourned souls. It is a poem of death and of hope; of despair and
of free volition. Those who read it cannot but weep under its
force - it is a poem whose strength and power has subjugated Eliot,
Larkin, Heaney et al to sixth-form status, only finding
its match in the biblicalist gospelising of the MHRA handbook.