You know what’s happened, if you’ve been following my posts.
I’ve run out of the sonnets of Michael Drayton from his 1619 Idea,
which I have been using to write my sonnet sequence Bad Idea, the latest part of The
English Strain. I thought Brexit would be over before I’d written all of
its 64 poems! I write about it extensively (with lots of explanation, the odd photo,
and links) in the hub post HERE:
Despite the various schemes outlined, I’m continuing this
Brexit work with Idea’s Mirror, using
selected Drayton sonnets jettisoned on his way to the definitive 1619 edition. The
narrator is Idea herself, Drayton’s shadowy muse. Politics is moving too fast
(even as I compose) to keep up, to limit myself to one a week (the previous
periodicity) at the moment! I’m returning to one a week but it might not be
that easy. But with an election called, with a Flexibrexnextension accepted,
it’s not clear how long this work will be. I’ve been trying to think that
through. Does this finish with the election, with Brexit, with a referendum, or
revocation? It depends who wins the election, I suppose. I turn to the
possibilities at the end of this post.
Here’s number 8. A poem using an outdated cosmology (again,
like last week’s). But I got it to work. Patricia was washing her hair, had
dropped something down the plughole. I went out to her to check that word for a
mechanical cosmos: orrery. And she ended up in the poem, as Idea’s analogue.
The wrinkled patches belong to Idea (and to Saturn in the original poem, of
course)! There has been much about Bo’s upside down wreath. Of course it was an
error (but imagine the furore if Corbyn had done that). BUT it speaks to the
lack of ‘care’ in the man. He literally ‘couldn’t care less’. The foot on the
table with Macron.
8
motor of this globalised
world
in its entropic cosmos
human orrery I
drop down the plughole
dye my hair with a plastic
bag
on my head pour
unguents for my wrinkled
patches
my mirrored dark eyes blur
starry fantasy
Corbyn scorches among
his prime movers
praised in his idea’s orbit
sunny Bo bursts from the PM’s
car
to lay a wreath upside
down
11th November 2019
As I say, I have
selected these poems so that they move (backwards) through the various editions
of Drayton’s poems. The originals are pretty rare, which I why I’m posting each
here. Here’s today’s model: Sonet 23
To the Spheares
Thou which do'st guide this little world of
loue,
Thy planets mansions heere thou mayst behold,
My brow the spheare where Saturne
still doth moue,
Wrinkled with cares: and withered, dry, and
cold;
Mine eyes the Orbe where Iupiter doth
trace,
Which gently smile because they looke on
thee,
Mars in my swarty visage takes his
place,
Made leane with loue, where furious conflicts
bee.
Sol in my breast with his hote
scorching flame,
And in my hart alone doth Venus
raigne:
Mercury my hands the Organs of thy
fame,
And Luna glides in my fantastick
braine;
The starry heauen thy prayse by me exprest,
Thou the first moouer, guiding all the rest.
The poems are to be found in MINOR POEMS OF MICHAEL
DRAYTON
CHOSEN AND EDITED BY CYRIL BRETT OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON
PRESS 1907
The first epigraph derives from, ‘To Idea’, in
E N D I M I O N and Phœbe , IDEAS
LATMVS. This is drawn from the
Renascence
Editions text, which was transcribed by Risa S. Bear, November 2000, from
the edition of 1595.‘Endymion and Phœbe,’ n.d., 4to, entered in the Stationers'
Register, 12
th April 1594.
The issue for this on-going work now, which I have been making
public (as I have not been with other projects, it is worth noting), is what do
I do with it after the election? So far I have written the following poems:
(Dates of composition and sources in the editions of Michael
Drayton’s sonnets)
1: 8th October 2019; 1605: Sonnet 57
2: 15th October 2019; 1605: To Sir Walter Aston,
Knight of the honourable order of the Bath,
and my most worthy Patron
3: 17th October 2019: 1602: Sonnet 63 (To the
high and mighty Prince, James, King of Scots)
4: 20th October 2019: 1599: Sonet 1
5: 24th October 2019: 1599: Sonet 3
6: 30th October (one day short of Brexit Day 2,
Halloween) 2019: 1599: Sonet 9
7: 5th November 2019: 1599: Sonet 11 (To the
Moone)
8: 11th November 2019: 1599: Sonet 23 (To the
Spheares)
As you can see this has not
advanced isotemporally, if there’s such a word, and I will hit the election
date (also Idea’s birthday, as one of the poems declares, in horror) in a
number of weeks’ time. There are only 4 possible outcomes of the election
(although Jo Swinson, not a very bright button, Idea thinks, has other plans; I
was going to say ‘other Ideas’!) They suggest 4 outcomes for both ‘Bad
Idea/Idea’s Mirror’ and for the whole of ‘The English Strain’ project (again,
see the hubpost for that in its full glory). They are:
1.A Bo Majority. Brexit will happen quickly and Idea’s mirror
will be shattered, as would she be. The poems would stop. At 14 maybe? At one a
week from now on that would be Christmas, so probably a few more. Maybe time to
move on to the Wordsworth poems mentioned in the hubpost? Even take a short
break. I admitted to Brexit-fatigue the other day, in my diary. Yes, even me,
and possibly Idea too!
2. A Corbyn Majority. Re-negotiation and a further
referendum. Idea would be much more hopeful under this scenario: perhaps she
could carry on with her Braidottiesque deleuzoguattarianism (i.e., her unfashionably
utopic politics). More poems (or the same number of more hopeful poems might be
written then). But her ‘mirror’ would not be shattered. The Wordsworth poems
could only be transposed if the referendum vote was to Leave.
3 A Bo Minority administration. Could Brexit be delivered?
If not, what poems by Idea (or another?) could track the chaos? And for how
long, or for how many could I carry on? But mirth would be possible, although
it would be ‘deja vu all over again’!
4. A Corbyn Minority administration. Could Brexit or a
referendum be delivered? If not, what poems by Idea (or another) could track
the chaos, the breakdown, the compromises? Best to vacate the little room
(stanza) quickly.
What would Idea do under
these two last conditions? At the moment, I have to admit, I don’t know, quite.
I am left in the odd position that politically I really want the outcome to
be 2, but that 1 or 3 suits the poetry better. I need to put country before
party … I mean:
poetry!
There is a fifth outcome for the poems, of course. Which is:
‘The English Strain’ will end at the end of ‘Idea’s Mirror’. But then, just as
the ‘Brexit’ theme developed out of the poems (it appears towards the end of
‘It’s Nothing’, when I made a joke about the word ‘Brexit’, which I thought
might need explaining like ‘stagflation’ or other temporary and ex-contemporary
expressions), ‘The English Strain’, in its versioning of canonical (and not so
canonical) sonnets, need not be completely stuck on the Brexit theme. It is as
much a formal exercise as a thematic one. And an historical one. I still feel
the lack of transpositions of Romantic sonnets. Then I’d be through.
As I recently wrote to Clark Allison, who has been following these temporary
posts in a comradely (and comforting, to me) way: ‘Drayton could run out again
if I carry on at this rate! The 'jump' to Wordsworth would only be so if Brexit
arrives with all its nationalistic pomp (and 50 pence pieces!). That would
constitute The English Strain Book Three. But I might ditch all that. I had
plans to move onto Christina Rossetti after the Barret Browning poems. But I
cut it short. That Miles Davis advice: 'End your solo before you're done'!’
