Kant found the sublime to be located in “nature” – a term that becomes more and more vexed the more it is studied. I tend to think that one of the great lived lessons of late total modernity (or whatever one wants to call the concatenation of conditions within which we have found ourselves since, say, the 1860s) is that if nature is that which we can’t domesticate, well, hell, we can’t domesticate anything. And therefore, as Robert Creeley famously put it, “the darkness surrounds us” no matter how brightly we amp up the lights.

If White, who is paraphrasing Barthes, is right when he writes that narrative must arise “between our experience of the world and our efforts to describe that experience in language”, and I think that he is, it would seem that a writer has no choice but to narrate. The question is: must a writer narrativize? What happens when s/he does? What happens when s/he doesn’t? Not just aesthetically? Is there a politics related to the distinction between the beautiful and sublime?

This issue is at the heart of my reading of Rupert Loydell’s work, at least as represented in these three volumes.

Clue: the quote on the back cover of Familiar Territory reads: “The unexpected may be a good place to begin.” I note the key word is unexpected, not inexplicable. Or no clue?

I think what we have here is an attempt to walk the line, the precise line, where the beautiful becomes sublime. Where narrative becomes narrativization. It’s not an easy feat. And it’s not one that comes without a certain (non-aesthetic, political) price.

Or no, that’s not what we have here. Loydell is in fact an ironist, subtly revealing what happens when one does attempt to pretend that what we can’t control is in fact a garden?.He is, rather, entirely aware of the politics related to the distinction between the beautiful and sublime, of the certain (non-aesthetic, political) price of attempting to walk a certain not-in-fact existent line.

Or no, a third time …

2.

Loydell has written, “Most of my work over the last 10 years has been collage, though I tend to deliberately not use poetry for source material. I also give acknowledgements of source material in my books, though I’m never scared to bastardize, change or mess with what I originally cut & paste together. It’s only another tool/process/device for me as an author.”

In collage, it’s always possible to more-or-less erase the joints between the various items pasted together; it’s equally possible to leave those joints as blatant as can be. Or some of each. Loydell tends to more-or-less erase the joints, at least syntactically, and often semantically as well. But. And this is important. But. Putting the joints under erasure, while admitting to collage … once again: I ask: ironic or straight?

I don’t ever want to play cards with this guy.

For example, and this poem (from Familiar Territories), while describing his collage technique, his reasons for it, also cuts right to the heart of the conundrum:

PERCENTAGE

What is perhaps most impressive

is their willful subversion of roles.

How far these sounds can stretch

toward what you experience inside,

shattering mirrors of perceived self.

Pummel and prise apart pungent motifs,

find ways to use these slivers of glass;

make cogent use of a question mark

and ellipsis rather than exclamation

mark and full stop. Tithe regularly –

only those who give will be given to.

When you’ve got ill-fitting elements

there is necessity for a group leader

able to subdue the spirits, guide us all,

and master the hazards of our journey.

The first stanza brings up the interesting paradox that the closer one comes to an accurate representation of the “inside”, the more one finds the “perceived” [narratized?] “self” shattering. That pushes me towards a reading in which I begin to experience the sublime. The second stanza describes how collage, appropriately constructed, can lead to that experience. But the third stanza pulls back back back: “When you’ve got ill-fitting elements / there is necessity for a group leader / able to subdue the spirits, guide us all, / and master the hazards of our journey.”

A group leader? Able to guide us all (the disparate elements of which a self is comprised?). If, indeed, we do want to believe we can subdue the spirits and master the hazards of our journey, we will need to narrativize. But a leader to narratize for us?

Let’s turn back to Hayden White, and to narrativizing’s “cultural function, and … general social significance.” Narrativizing

is revealed to be a particularly effective system of discursive meaning production by which individuals can be taught to live a distinctively ‘imaginary relation to their real conditions of existence,’ that is to say, an unreal but meaningful relation to the social formations in which they are indentured to live out their lives and realize their destinies as social subjects.

Ah.

Ok.

A group leader? Yeah, right. This poem must be a send-up of those who would wish to foist an indenturing ideology upon us. Better to let the spirits run free and to risk the hazards of the journey.

I have to believe.

Another poem from Familiar Territories:

BACKGROUND

For Andrew Bick

You called your exhibition Gloom,

despite the paintings’ glow

and your happy disposition.

Background colours seep

through a Perspex filter,

cities of wooden blocks

hidden behind squiggled lines.

Your art is an imaginary country

you hope we want to visit.

Starting with a grid you elaborate,

introduce detours and distractions

to make us consider where we are.

A more accurate map

would look worryingly chaotic,

be no use to us at all.

Man, can Loydell keep a straight face! Familiar Territory is very fine.

3.

Ex Catalogue continues Loydell’s ironic elision of the joint between the unexpected and the inexplicable, all the while refusing comforting narrativizing while appearing to give in to it. I’m simply going to proffer one poem. Note: Ex Catalogue is a collection of prose poems. It’s important to know that, given the following:

10. MAIN EVENT

Revelation uses alphabetical or other structural devices, prose poems with fraudulent habits and wildlife, test-tube culture and socio-politics. Fear is becoming the fastest-growing experience in the shock of the world, a kind of framing device around us all. Smaller houses are grouped around the courtyard, an expression of collective identity: fixed moments in series, scenes we should never forget.

Scenes we should never forget … something to remember when turning to The Construction (yes) of Memory. This is subtitled “(download poems)”. And, kiddies, when we download where do we download? Here’s the last poem:

The Luxury of Dirt

Quiet midday song,

another hollow scream.

Final journey into light:

one, two, three, four.

Leaf and rock, working hands.

The last days of mankind.

Stay bright,

Stay hungry.

Reticent feedback

some other time.

The Construction of Memory is interesting in that, though it’s a very small book, it operates in two very seemingly-opposed ways. The first is that the sometimes, as in the poem above, the collage joints are left showing, and no attempt is made to provide the reader an easy route from one bit to the next (though it’s still possible to read these ironically). On the other hand, there are a number of love poems here, in which collage, though probably present, don’t interfere with emotion, and irony appears to disappear:

Shamshack

Remember me

as a time of day:

magic hours,

hand in yours.

Somewhere

fortune smiles,

a dark stain

on the future.