Welcome, Major Poet!

by Sean O’Brien

(Downriver, Picador)

We have sat here in too many poetry readings

Wearing the liberal rictus and cursing our folly,

Watching the lightbulbs die and the curtains rot

And the last flies departing for Scunthorpe.

Forgive us. We know all about you.

Autumn gives way to the midwinter once more,

As states collapse, as hemlines rise, as we miss both,

And just as our teeth fall discreetly into our handkerchiefs,

Slowly the bones of our co-tormentees will emerge

Through their skins. QED and hic jacent.

Except we are seated bolt upright on customized

‘Chairs’ of the torturers’ school. Here it comes,

Any century now, the dread declaration:

And next I shall read something longer. Please

Rip out our nails and accept your applause!

Stretch-limo back to the Ritz and ring home:

Bore the arse off your nearest and dearest instead,

Supposing they haven’t divorced you already

Or selfishly put themselves under a train.

Please call them, at length and at public expense.

Send flunkies for cold Stolichnaya, an ox

Or an acre of coke and a thousand-quid hooker.

Why not make it three, in a chariot

Flown to your penthouse by eunuchs on leopards?

Whatever you like, only spare us the details of when

You were struck by your kinship with Dante and Vergil.

And don’t feel obliged to remind us just now

What it was Robert Lowell appeared to be saying?

You’d read him the poem you mean to read us?

When the doors of the lift he was in and you weren’t

Began closing. Just leave us the screams

You could hear as the vehicle descended: Poor Cal.

Up to then he’d been perfectly normal. Ah, well.

We would all like to climb higher in our chosen field, and here is an irreverent poem about a poet who has obviously reached the summit. I imagine the poem to be drawn from the writer’s own experience of attending poetry readings ? as opposed to being about the poet himself, looking out over his audience and interpreting their rapt attention as something else. This poem describes (thankfully few) events where I harboured similar sentiments to those described here.

One of those occasions was a Leonard Cohen concert. Back in the mid1980s I sat enraptured through an entire performance until the end when my backside felt as if it were perched on broken glass, my legs ached, my hands were sore from clapping, and, having heard the great man sing, I longed to go home. There was much applause and the demand for an encore, after which I forced my atrophying limbs to move and rose from my seat. So did the rest of the audience ? for more rapturous applause and a second encore. I prayed that Leonard wanted his limo and a room at the Ritz but, smiling sheepishly, he sidled back on stage for another number.

There were two further encores, each time the audience vying to outdo its previous effort at persuasion so that the great man might reappear from the wings; the applause was lifting the roof. There was, I understand, a fifth encore, but by then I no longer cared; I’d climbed over the laps of the people in my row and had left the building. There is only so much entertainment that a person can take despite the privilege of being there.

Here, the writer encompasses other members of the audience in his expression of frustration; they are all in it together: “We have sat here in too many poetry readings” he says, as if now realising the foolishness of overattendance. They are “Wearing the liberal rictus and cursing our folly”. And that is what we do; we adopt an expression of engagement that displays our interest, fasten it to our faces and hope to hide behind it as our concentration disintegrates despite our good intentions.

Frequent attendance at poetry readings has devoured time, and now the writer is exasperated; he and his “co-tormentees” have been “Watching the lightbulbs die and curtains rot/ And the last flies departing for Scunthorpe”.

Sitting before another Major Poet, the writer’s interest has long since evaporated. “Forgive us,” he says, without meaning it: “We know all about you.” The Major Poet is a continuation of all the other Major Poets who have read here; they have become interchangeable. References to a change in season, the collapse of states and a rise in hemlines emphasise the writer’s sense of life outside the auditorium that does not include him. His own evolution is caged inside the auditorium with the rest of the audience. He imagines how “teeth fall discreetly” into handkerchiefs as they all age, imprisoned as they are in “ ‘Chairs’ of the torturers’ school”. Joining the flies in Scunthorpe must seem an attractive proposition.

“QED and hic jacent ” he tells us. Quod erat demonstrandum means “which was to be shown, or proved”. My old Latin dictionary, untouched since adolescence, also tells me that hic jacent means “here lie” and is a common inscription on gravestones in the singular hic jacet .

Meanwhile, the Major Poet remains oblivious and is about to say (“Any century now,”) “And next I shall read something longer.” This is what speakers mean when they assure their audience “I’ll be brief”; their intention is to keep going until their vocal chords snap.

“Rip out our nails and accept your applause!” begs the writer, and “Stretch-limo back to the Ritz”. In other words “do anything you like to us, but just go!” (This major poet benefits from transport and accommodation that exceed anything any poet I know has enjoyed.) The writer suggests that flunkies fetch “cold Stolichnaya, an ox/ Or an acre of coke and a thousand-quid hooker” (or three), as enthusiastic bribes in the imaginary world into which he has retreated ? if only the Major Poet spares his audience the tale of his “kinship with Dante and Vergil,” (the ancient spelling of Virgil) and his brush with Robert Lowell, the major American poet who died in 1977.

Lowell ? whose nickname was Cal ? is described as standing in a lift as the doors close, while the Major Poet continues to read him a poem from the landing. “Just leave us the screams/ You could hear as the vehicle descended” pleads the writer, who plainly feels the screams echo his own. “ Poor Cal./ Up to then he’d been perfectly normal. Ah, well .” the poem ends, and we are left with the mental image of possible madness that overly-extended exposure to an assault on the senses can cause: And there I am, right back with Leonard Cohen on his fourth encore.

frieda.hughes@thetimes.co.uk

Times Recommends

• The Sunday Times 100 best holiday reads
• What will we be reading this summer: the booksellers predict
• Literary festivals: a survivor’s guide