The Wolf Review
Jeremy Reed
Duck and Sally inside
Published by Enitharmon
Price: £8.95
After The Wolf interviewed Jeremy Reed back in issue 5 the author told me how he generally finishes a new collection of poems every 2 months. Bearing in mind how it often takes many leading poets 7 years to collate a slim volume one wonders how many collections Reed has readied since his new book Duck and Sally inside. The truth is the author himself wouldn’t be counting. However, it is worth noting that this kind of prolificacy was one of the central reasons Cape decided to abandon Reed back in the 1980’s: they simply couldn’t keep up with him. Staunchly what Enitharmon have produced in Duck and Sally inside is a thickness of book that for other poets would suggest a New and Selected. Staggeringly the roll call of poems numbers 84 and weighs in at a bumper 118 pages. Reed is a writing machine by modern day standards.
The title is borrowed from the lyrics of a little known Velvet Underground track entitled Sister Ray. For those new to Jeremy Reed’s work; pop culture has provided an increased source of inspiration for his poetry, including the recent collection on Billy Holliday and Heartbreak Hotel: 200 poems about an aging Elvis. And yes, if a poet can write 200 varied poems on the martyrdom of a former King, you will appreciate he has enormous range!
Two of the first three poems in Duck and Sally feature more contemporary musical influences for Reed: Morrissey and Sade. While both poems are laden with Reed’s trademark vernacular, they are far from being among the best tributaries in the book. Indeed, the ‘chocolate’-voiced reference to Sade is a little expected and the abstractive metaphors of the singer’s stillness resembling ‘a Swiss lake’, and being ‘stylish as a Mercedes’ are slightly nebulous. Yet, the poem becomes more pointed towards its excellent finale, and essentially, Reed is a master of the tribute; something that is proved throughout this collection.
His heroes in Duck and Sally largely incorporate the underdog, the beautifully damned and sometimes the wilfully destructive. A heavy spattering of elegy features throughout and Reed conjures fresh perspectives on each of his chosen characters with extravagance and lucidity in equal measure. Poems A Guide to Pink Elephants and Nifty Jim are distinguishable as definite winners, both expertly conveying the author’s love for the the mad, the eccentric and the unremembered. Reed’s finest tributaries are reserved for two poets: Arthur Rimbaud and David Gascoyne. The Gascoyne poem is quite exceptional for its visceral honesty, impeccable detail and formal elegance. A particularly poignant moment in describing the friendship between older and younger poet follows as:
Your letters, I have 63,
punctuated reclusive years,
your blanks in time, no impetus
to get back, just your memories
turned to past highlights, like a film
in which you were the commentary.
If the Gascoyne elegy is the best of all, Rimbaud’s Formula rides a close second. It serves up a neat encasing of the then young poets life before his self-imposed exile to Africa culminating in a glittering summation that ends: …He’s the criminal / who broke into himself, ran for cover / and kept on running right across the world.
However, if elegy is a constant undertone in Duck and Sally then many of its most luminous poems come from everyday objects and experiences. The poem Lapsang Souchong is a remarkable and unrivalled tea poem describing fat leaves that ‘bloat like tadpoles’ while the poet pours himself another steeping in order to ‘win the tea’s distinctions, cup by cup…’. Other exquisite examples of Reed musing upon the everyday can be found in the excellent Buying Avocados (reprinted in this issue) and during a walk beside Hampstead Ponds where ‘pike cruise the bottom in swamp-camouflage’ and ‘trout come up with circles the size of CD’s’. Such vivacity concerning the natural world repeats in the flora inspired poems Tulips and Hyacinths (the latter with its cunning allusions to Oscar Wilde).
Mixing object with experience goes to a new level in the poems Prozac and St. John’s Wort. Nothing is out of earshot for Reed’s ever-attentive ear. The application of scientific terminology (cue: ‘anxiolytic’ ‘enzymes’ and ‘serotonin’) is seamless and endearing. Even the taking of medicine is somewhat celebratory. In the case of St. John’s Wort: these ‘sunshiny uppers’ enable the poet to ‘go out and celebrate / their resiliently clumpish… / rainy-eyed-garden thereness / sewn by the wind and confident with it’.
It’s quite phenomenal how Jeremy Reed has maintained a knack for over 20 years to tap creatively into any given stimuli. A real ‘poet of the imagination’, Reed has been castigated by certain members of the literary establishment for his peacock-like flamboyancy, his glam-rock exuberance and his sci-fi cyborg poems. OK, so the latter genre can be somewhat baffling and there indeed occasionally peculiar extremities in this collection (emailing William Blake is amusingly innovative and fascinating but undoubtedly odd). Yet ultimately, in reading Duck and Sally, the carefully tapered, often insipid, table-mannered poetics of some of his prize-winning contemporaries can be seen to look malnourished and apologetic by comparison.
Jeremy Reed has effectively been airbrushed out of the picture when we scour the scene of contemporary poetry. Hopefully the balance will be addressed someday. After all Reed is, like the best poets, tapping into a zeitgeist further on down the road. Yet why wait? If you have not yet read one of England’s truly astonishing poets, now would be a good time to start. Duck and Sally inside proves that Reed is at the height of his extraordinary command. This book has so much density and pull; it will be difficult not to keep returning to many of its poems again and again.
Page(s) 50-52
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