Ken Bolton


WIESENGRUND

So here I am,

                               Adorno in hand

                                                                  —it's

going to be a tough day—

                                                   Ready, in case.

And a list building, of things to do

                                                              (Make a copy

—not just by hand—of the passages from Aira

Reflecting

                    his agreement, with Donald Brook,

                                                                                    and me,

& Clement Greenberg

                                                and Thomas—that 'individual

talent'—Stearns Eliot)

                                            In a cafe

                                                                       

alone,

                          if you don't count Adorno

                                                                              or John

Levy

              whom I mean to address.

                                                               "Hullo, John."

"I think we can all agree—to disagree"

                                                                        I say to the

bunch,

                             since we always did.

                                                                         And they

                                                                              relax

No longer expectant

                                           and look   in different directions

Donald looks

                                 out of the corner of his eye

at Adorno

                          Clement wanders outside,

                                                                                     spits,

lights a cigar

                                    Eliot greens

& fades away

                                        bilious?  'Cheshire cat'?

                                                                                         I,

                               —in an

                               early tute—

Donald: "You are not going to defend

the Expression Theory, are you?"

                                                              "Yes.  I think

                                                                         I am"

                                             my reply.

And with a panoply of epicycles,

                                                           demurrals, riders

—& acknowledgement

                                  that 'all is reading' and

                                                              'learned response'—

                                                                                    have,

maybe.

                    Tho could you call that 'consistently'?

John's poems might be apropos

                                                             and a 'test case'

                     because tact might be their

                                                                      greatest

                                                                         asset

Tact that is his

                                 —not even a strategy

(an ethic ?

                        a private code)

                                                                    reticence

invisibly in play with FULL DISCLOSURE

& invention

The poems allow us to bring feeling to them—

washes and touches of colour, that the pictures

drawn allow —'elicit'?— support anyway.

WAS MARQUET AN EXPRESSIONIST ?

                                                              I think you see

                                                                    my point.

Ha ha.

                  "But anyway" !

                                                         (a turn of

phrase

                             rhetorical move

                                            tactical move

                                                                           it

can't be solely Australian, can it?)

                                                        (Beginning a

poem with "so"

                                :

                                       an own goal) …

                                                                    Greenberg

is going to stomp back in—

                                                    "So let's see these

                                                                   poems,"

—or maybe, true to form—

                                                    "You stink!"

and punch me.

                                 "Punch Donald," I say,

                                                                           "I never

abandoned you!

                                         Entirely."

                                                                  Men

are so full of shit.

                                    I watch the handsome

                                                    young man

address a small table of women & 'graciously'

take his leave

                                            Of course, what should he do?

                          Be graceless?

                                     #

—Too blandly confident: a gift to the ladies—

                                      #

The gender balance

                                      is all wrong here—I should introduce

Pam Brown, Lucy Lippard

                                                    a few of whose

                                                                                  'remarks'

—the merest phrases—

                                          have been touchstones

"visual muzak" (Jules Olitski), 

                                                            "the cult of

the direct and the difficult"

                                                          reliable

for firmness, position

                                              & where's Laurie

                                                                               (to

ruin the gender balance again) ?

                            #

                                                            Poems "that

look too much like poetry now

may look a lot less like it in the future"

                                                                  [Laurie Duggan]

                                                      #

which returns me to Aira

                                                    on 'Creation' versus

'mere production',

                                      and Most art

                                                                 (it being the latter)

as 'craft'.

                    That distinction.  (Hullo, Donald.)

Or 'as kitsch',  I offer Greenberg,

                                                              at that moment

grinding his cigar underfoot

                                  He stands and looks out at a bus

that passes us

                            outside the Middle Store coffee shop.

The bus stops

                                            & off gets Rosalind Krauss

Very swish clothing

                                         An art-world princess

"from New York"

                                     or, by now, dowager warrior.

                                      #

Greenberg  —(I look)—   has disappeared

                                                                                A small

Cheshire cat smells the remains of his cigar

                                      #

                                                                        This poem

shows no tact

                                tactless

                                                         Except where

grace might be particularly required

                                                    or out of cowardice.

Yes, it's true—this is the self with whom I

'must abide' —

                                    ME  

                                                  ("I'll get that—

I pay the bills"),

                                          And this bozo here

—who thinks

                        (holds the pen)—

                                                          …

                                                                    ( "I pay the bills" )

John —

               John's new book—

                                                      could teach a few

lessons

                         that I'll probably never learn

                                                       

"… tact as the saving accommodation between alienated human beings … seemed to him [Goethe] 

inseparable from renunciation, the relinquishment of total contact, passion, unalloyed happiness.  …  

But what has happened since makes Goethean renunciation look like fulfilment.  Tact and humanity—

for him the same thing—have in the meantime gone exactly the way from which they were to save us.  

For tact, we now know, has its precise historical hour.  Now it lives on only in the parody of forms, 

and in arbitrarily devised or recollected etiquette for the ignorant, of the kind preached by unsolicited 

advisers in newspapers, while the basis of agreement that carried those conventions has given way to 

the blind conformity of car-owners and radio-listeners.  …   Other than convention there was nothing 

by which tact could be measured. 

                                                                                                                                

"... The question as to someone's health, required by and expected by upbringing, becomes inquisitive

or injurious; silence on sensitive subjects empty indifference—as soon as there is no rule to indicate

what is and what is not to be discussed. Thus individuals begin, not without reason, to react antagon-

  istically to tact: a certain kind of politeness, for example, gives them less the feeling of being addressed

as human beings, than an inkling of their inhuman conditions, and the polite run the risk of seeming

impolite by continuing to exercise politeness."

pages 36—37, Minima Moralia, 'On the dialectic of tact'

I played with the word 'tact' last

night, reading Levy's book

                                                               SILENCE LIKE

                                                                               ANOTHER NAME

toyed with using it in my commentary.

To open up—today—on this page in Adorno is surprising.

                                                                                           #

                                                                                  I expect to find

                                                                                                              how

                                                                                                           ( 'exactly' )

dated this makes me

                                          #

                                                But I always find the

Negative Verdict

                               of an earlier age

                                                                  chastening

Salient, valuable

                                    to exactly the degree

it is chastening

                                         Hold that bus, conductor!

Chase that train, Coltrane!  etcetera.

I change the subject.

                                            "Anyway!"  

                                                                   (a kind of

sigh

                             the ellipses stretching out

                                      from the phrase

an atoll, a diaspora, a line of Pacific islands

                                                              Where to now?

2

[Near Shepherdess's Walk, and Adrian's, Chiswick]

Across the way the kids play & I watch them.

On the roof, down a level & two levels further—

chasings, desultory cycling, one pretends

to shoot people—the others—'pretends'—

I mean, he does but a toy gun that

can do no physical harm.  Our building—taller,

so I can see them …  or look

at the sky: London's many shades of grey

the softnesses of clouds, the

buildings in the distance; a

mostly low horizon line   of dark

(the odd very new build with colour in it)

reflecting late afternoon sun. 

•

oyster

moonstone

dove grey

flecks & hints

of mackerel, pitch

•

The sound is the key—I can hardly hear them,

the occasional shout,

the pellet he shoots, one time, goes clack against a door

#

I pass & look in

& see Cath asleep on the bed—

a horizontal—echoed above

by wall, window—the framing de stijl

of the iron, & the colour of the frame:

sky, curtains, screen partially drawn

It reminds me of a like scene

more than twenty years ago,

a wondrous room—the Hotel Andrea.

Florence, 1997.

Umbrous—creams—& biscuit tans—

a soft dark room, generous proportions.

We're in Allan & Linda's temporary flat.

Temporarily. 

Small.  But canny, hip, efficient design. 

London 2019. 

                                We're 'old' …

Tho not dying—not any more

than anybody else is.  The kids opposite are living tho—

faster than us.  Collaborating, cooperating, laughing,

                                                      shooting & hiding,

the human stuff.

#

I read Kleinzahler who is worrying

about death a lot

Well, who isn't?  Ken, Ken

the young they don't worry

Life, this

is Augie's

                     getting the best of it—

flavours

                        smells,                                       

                                            sounds, mostly—

& scenes

                       And a melancholy that

attaches & he refuses

So a rueful beauty glows,

a nimbus around each vignette—

as trucks roar by

stirring dust & chemicals,

a stiffening the character needed.

                                                      "August,

have I got it right?"

#

A young woman passes the

window of my coffee shop

—Artisan—

hair a frosted silver pink I'm sure

not currently fashionable.  Tho just right.

She is beautiful.

Gone in seconds—I will

remember her, now —will I?— remember

the fact of her—

because I've written.  Someone else

will remember exactly how beautiful—

pale, pale, pale—

as they do in England

#

Kleinzahler: slightly bluff,

concerned to be authoritative—

but why not—should he be

uncertain, indecisive?

#

An old lady ('little'—the

full complement—but tough

in dark brown weather gear)

rides her bicycle

gestures remonstratively

to a motorist

—a beemer—

who has not given way

as she rides on, a moderate pace,

& is gone too

#

A very tiny, slightly older

woman I nursed when I was

young.  A nursing home:

I would regularly fall asleep

—two long, back-to-back weekend shifts—

in the first lecture Monday

The guy who explained the Baroque

mystified, that this happened

every week.  He gave me

high marks.  I never came

to tutes, he never knew my

name, tho I knew his, once.

Of couse I did.  I mean

I knew it, even, ten years ago.

German, a crazy accent I

still remember  "per-soock-er-

logical."   Small older women

their fierceness,  fragility. 

His name.  Hers, I think, was Maudie

#

Durer's mother

      —not quite so old, so gnarled

I see her appear left

      shake her hand, reprovingly,

at a motorist

                                who fails

to give way.

                         She pedals on,

on the footpath, her hand held up tellingly—

in the right

The beemer goes past

& out of the picture

                                      'Beemer'—

do they use that term here?

&, as I'm in London,

             must I use their terminology?—

A BMW

                        She rides on,

                                      a moderate pace

calm

                  remonstration made.

                     •

Maudie: carolling, light,

bird-like conversation, wordless

Her very tight grip

3

WIESENGRUND AGAIN

[AXAT and LONDON]

Fluted tones ('birdlike') rise & fall

Richard cooks

                                        a complicated but

promising dish

                                  Suzy moves around

rearranging the kitchen,

things are put away — we read,

guests, a little guiltily 'off duty'

Emails I send to Anna

                                               images

of today's journey — French towns

their windows shuttered, their

pleasantly-coloured facades, trees,

a picture of us all at a table in a square

with some expatriates

                                                         

                 #

The radio—the 'fluted tones'—

provides comforting filler

for this quiet time

                                    of 'work'

                                                            an inane

Lord Peter Whimsey

                                            first broadcast in 1959

the accents showily civilized

London, when we get home to Chiswick

is hard work  —  but livelier.

                                                      Beautiful at

dusk & at night

                                The Chiswick shops lit up, the

streetlights,

                        the trees, the traffic

                                                               High-ceilinged rooms

of restaurants

                                              brightly lit,

enshrine those dining, advertise their

enclosing, caring, privileging function

                                      The Thames is high,

& coming away from the Carpenter's Arms

we find a street partially flooded.  An

expensive car attempts to pass thinks better & reverses.

A beautiful girl on the train who has ruined her face

with subtle but too overall surgery: she keeps her face

covered with her cap's visor, attends to her dog, a

white French bulldog.  Her clothes—leggings,

expensive trainers, a funky cotton or denim jacket—

very stylish. She looks up & her face is alien,

'beautiful' but frightening.  She looks down, attends

to her dog.

Amongst the hipsters, & ordinary workers, customers

I watch a man—seventy?—in cardigan, T-shirt, rumpled

cargo pants—attend closely to the columned figures

of the financial pages, occasionally he marks things

with his pen.  He finishes his coffee up & lights

a cigar, finances done, sets off.

The girl at Artisan has a fabulous, scornful pout, lips

in dark red, dark hair tied back & up: she does the job

well, is good with customers, in repose her face says,

How many more years will I have to serve shitty coffee

to shitty customers before I can go back to Poland?

As we walk Suzy produces a squeaking, high-pitched toot

through a plastic straw—funny—mosquito-like—but it is a

reparative vocal exercise, she says.  She does some

histrionic Edith Piaf song and an old man, at the

rural French market we are walking through, applauds

as he passes.  Then a devilish 'Tomorrow Belongs To Me'.

No takers.  I get her to try the theme from The Untouchables

(Eliot Ness)  & The Perry Mason Show.  Everything—anything—

sounds amazing.  'I See The Bad Moon Rising'.

The Carpenter's Arms, out the back, where a woman

tells us of her mother's teenage love of 'Sydney-in-the-sixties'—

her dream of going back there.  Her father's making

'the most expensive' (the longest ever) 'phonecall of his life'—

so as to persuade her to return & marry him

Lars en Vercors where the Jewish kids were protected in WWII

                                                                         (under the Italians, who—at least

                                                                           until the fall of Mussolini—

                                                                                        administered

                                                                           that part of occupied France)

           #

Perec was there.

            #

Richard's taste in music

                                                            —songs

chosen, valued—always, I think, for the significance

of the lyrics

                         their aptness to the age      David Bowie

Johnny Cash

                                                where I go

                                                                            typically

                                                                          shamefully?—

for expression

                                                My ludicrous suggestion

                                                'No One Knows'

                                                       by Dion

(the 'Italian'

                              —Italian-American—

                                                                           softness)

& Adorno

                            —

                                                also Italian

                                                                             (a little)

What?! I hear the world protesting

                                                                    Well, German

                                                                               then

WHAT ?!

                             "Well, for a while there I thought

                                                                        I was,"

'for a little bit,'

                                  says Adorno 'ruefully',

joking.

                    Jewish

                                                The desire to wear

                             two hats

Or design the new, 'composite' headgear

                                                                         #

                                                                    What am I?

                                                                              #

                        What kind of man are you?
                                              ask the Raelettes

                                                       Jewish, I sometimes think?

                                                       No I don't.

                                                       Western, I guess,

                                                       culturally.

                                                       An atheist, an

                                                       'Australian' —

                                                       who writes quietly in a

                                                                               restaurant

                                                       Anglo sort-of

            if Adorno says, 'It's all shit' (not to

quote him directly: a paraphrase)  who's

to disagree ?

                                       "For this I fight!" I say

(a joke I haven't tried in a long time) —

                                                  & to Adorno — "are

you with me?"

                                  Ha ha.

                                                     He gets up from

                                                                the table

pushes back his chair

                                                grabs a weapon  (a

fork!)

            & we exit onto Winston Avenue

(the Winston Avenue   

                            of the 'Mind'?)

                      to solve this problem.

             ( 'to mess up a hair of the night' ?)

                               to solve every problem

I look to Abstract Painting —

                                                          "Abstract Painting,

can you help?"

                              Lucy Lippard, "Maybe.

I think not."

                        "Christopher Wool?

                                   can he?"

                                                             "I doubt it."

Suzy's art, Richard's, might be more to

                                                               the point.

Poetry?

                                 "Just maybe" — Patti Smith.

Pam Brown: "I doubt it. I'd like it to—

but I doubt it."

                                       Rosalind Krauss

says nothing,

                             has ordered an affogato.

Tough.

                     John, where do I go from here?

#

                                             An expensive car

attempts to pass thinks better & reverses.  Why

are we here?  In fact to see all this—

life, normalcy, 'conditions elsewhere'—

to return & live our own.

The many, very various, faces of London.

Wendy tomorrow, for tea or lunch, & then we are in the air.

Ken Bolton lives in Adelaide where for a long time he ran the Experimental Art Foundation’s Dark Horsey bookshop and the Lee Marvin reading series. Recent collections are Starting at Basheer's (Vagabond) and Species of Spaces (Shearsman, UK)—and in 2020 Salute (from Puncher & Wattmann). Shearsman issued his Selected Poems in 2013. In 2019 Wakefield Press published Elsewhere Variations, a book co-authored with Peter Bakowski, and which first appeared in Otoliths.
 
 
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