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Peter Dent
FOR CAMOUFLAGE
A sense of occasion a regular coffee morning
wouldn't be the same without talk talk till
the references come apart and don't they always
reproduce what's felt not what I have in mind
Too many interruptions someone blocking the
way to the counter then flashes off chrome till
something I read years back in physics owning
a particular corner of beauty told me straight
Re-energise the exit quit the cave never more
one thing than the other like fireworks with the
eyes closed and clear enough a subtler body
if that's the word of words forget the usual
Defence and oh the way love's advertised wear
fiction on your sleeve till meaning closes up I
did to find not just a blond perspective but the
improbable heart it's time I knew to check on
Income via this fit of grace a last next move
OPPORTUNITY
Can't think of it as empty a childhood
Cupboard as night is a prime resource
I believe we've tried this out? before
The break it was all perception now
Your whereabouts are dark so theory
Has it the more you leave the less I
Help myself cold intuition or thinking
Making the most? no proverb holds
A star when the clouds I know return
On demand unequal fear still hopes
I'm there to see it mesmerise don't
Put the puzzles and games back odd
As the colours are I consent to 'Murder'
Happenings only happen to fill a space
DAILY ROUND
Good reliable order the usuual cat has
Scaled the fire escape geraniums down
Several wrought iron steps adopting
The best of the weather I'm resolved
I won't assign perfection to a word like
Red or orange come to that or else
When the man in the bright hat says so
Note a rare affinity with clouds but
It's up to you to water shares down
Twenty in the shade that's plenty to be
Going on with effects like mercury are
Known to hang around so much for
The weeklies truth's happier on hold
I take elevenses up there treat the cat
MARGINS OF REMOVE
"For a moment he thought he had come to the wrong place, but then he recognised, one after another, the faces that could be associated only with this particular room, with this smoke and artificial light."
Peter Handke, "The Alteration of a Writer"
1
Nothing, if not artless, there's the same impatience here as delights in ultimata. Flashbacks are key to the absolute, an indeterminate oscillation we know only too well as storm. In this can be detected the most recalcitrant of rhythms and what will surely become an almost completely unfettered contention: that the 'tower of wonder' is a second-by-second, chance suspension of the coded word.
2
Not merely a remarkable deployment of the transparent, this is a fit and multi-seamed exhumation of the melodic and incendiary unconscious. Its gift is largely indifferent to translation; an ecstatic and fluid prose that is culturally and curiously degenerative, at odds with contemporary practice. Nothing before from him has quite prepared us for such a confection of amour and its inevitable waste. No chance whatever is lost in undermining 'wealth'.
3
The digressions experienced in this volume (and experience them we do) are a magnificent riot of what might be termed fractured perceptions. Spiral formulae jostle with guerilla intelligence in the working through of its intense and midnight-dark purposes. This is not just an exercise in desire. Aesthetics tease his every last word to a surprisingly benign saturation. It is not simply the reader that treads with care.
4
Movement, as witnessed in her energetic and more unstable early work, is now sacrificed for a collaging of near-utopian fancy -- something few modes will presently allow. The result of this departure is a release from the burden of idealised and increasingly inoperable restraint. Anaesthesia was always a poor return on understanding. In its surge towards inclusiveness the book affords both conspicuous shade and icy precipitate. We revel and cannot help it, in the glare of a half-suspicious eye.
© Peter Dent, 2005
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