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- Herausgeber: The Poetry Business
- Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
Talking to Stanley on the Telephone rummages through the desires, frustrations and waning faculties of old age. The stories it tells add up to a vivacious celebration of life-spans and the darkening comedy of growing old.
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Talking to Stanley on the Telephone
ALSOBY MICHAEL SCHMIDT
POETRY
Very Selected, Smith|Doorstop, 2017
Selected Poems, Smith|Doorstop, 2014
The Stories of My Life, Smith|Doorstop, 2013
New and Collected Poems, Sheep Meadow, 2010
Collected Poems, Smith|Doorstop, 2009
The Resurrection of the Body, Smith|Doorstop 2006, Sheep Meadow, 2007
The Love of Strangers, Century Hutchinson, 1989
Choosing a Guest: new and selected poems, Anvil, 1983
ANTHOLOGIES
New Poetries I–VIII, Carcanet, 1994–2021
The Great Modern Poets, Quercus, 2006
The Harvill Book of Twentieth-Century Poetry in English, Harvill, 1999
Published 2021 by The Poetry Business
Campo House,
54 Campo Lane,
Sheffield S1 2EG
www.poetrybusiness.co.uk
Copyright © Michael Schmidt 2021
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
ISBN 978-1-912196-44-9
ePub ISBN 978-1-912196-45-6
All rights reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, storied in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Designed & typeset by The Poetry Business.
Printed by Imprint Digital
Cover Painting: Western Electric Rotary Phone & Blue Table
by Christopher Stott (https://christopher-stott.tumblr.com/)
Acknowledgement and thanks are due to Herb Leibowitz, editor of Parnassus, and to Ann and Peter Sansom, editors of The North, where ‘About Homer’ first appeared.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Smith|Doorstop is a member of Inpress
www.inpressbooks.co.uk.
Distributed by NBN International, 1 Deltic Avenue,
Rooksley, Milton Keynes MK13 8LD.
The Poetry Business gratefully acknowledges the support of Arts Council England.
Poems written in age confuse the years.
We all live, said Bashō, in a phantom dwelling.
Judith Wright, ‘The Shadows of Fire: Ghazals’
For Miles Burrows
Contents
BEFORE
Exceptions
First and Last Things
Running Away
Anniversary
Guo Nian
The Costume Party
Alone with the Hairy Ainu; Or, 3800 Miles on a Pack Saddle in Yezo and a Cruise to the Kurile Islands by A. H. Savage Landor (1893)
Walkie Talkie
A Bright Jewel in an Aethiope’s Ear
The Lord of Aratta
Chaque cheveu a sa place
Mercy
Saint Thomas’s
AFTER
The Bath
Hair and Memory
Saying Thank You
Threes
To the Dentist
Tuba Mirum
Sunday Morning
An Easter Carol for Edward Taylor
Stanley and Me
Bedside Table
Annunciation
About Homer: an epyllion
BEFORE
Exceptions
Texas, 1950
Yes, I could read.
No dogs
or Mexicans the large
round caps declared. ‘Papa,
we can’t go in.’ My new
red passport said as much.
‘They don’t mean us.’ He pushed
open the loud screen door
to a stale interior.
Little white serviettes
defined the seating plan.
Ketchup, French mustard. Our
bug-spattered Pontiac
with dust-dulled number plates
said ‘Mexico D.F.’
It shivered in the heat.
He was right. They didn’t
mean us. We fit, our skin
at home. The slow-bladed
ceiling fan made shadows
surge and plunge, like breathing.
They served us up the stuff
they’d eat themselves, unspiced,
prepared for the littlest
bear, neither too salty
nor sweet, not too hot or
too cold. We sipped, we smeared
bland red and yellow on
our burgers, overdone;
and grinning there, alert,
infernal black and brown,
a monster Doberman.
First and Last Things
There was, first off, the house we seemed to build
Up in a tree, or under the floor, and lived
With all our creatures and with all we were –
Pirate and doctor, sailor, angel, priest;
And then the first house made of mud or brick
Furnished with whatever we could find
Of real stuff, like wood and parakeets
And cushions, pottery and even framed
Pictures on the walls, they were real walls,
Nails could be driven into them.
The pictures were of us as we grew older
And they faded with us too as we grew older
The way pictures do or antique mirrors
Discolour as the isinglass gets tired
Of showing what is there and turns instead
Interpreter, an eschatologist
Who shows only what will be, which in the longer term
Is, after all, what is, and ever shall be.
Running Away
When they called I was running away, from the first call, running.
As soon as I could, I ran. Before, I’d imagined running
Away from the liquor amnii, the rippling endometrium,
The muscles’ hum and squeeze, light breaking into the hot
cramped cave,
Tugging the cord until it gave way, I was running away
From the snare, from the needle, the prick in the heel,
the swaddling,
The sweet acrid smell of her skin (the slime and talcum were mine),
From the breast, the shiny spoon, the tub and the tepid water,
Apple scent that was soapy and made grey froth on the water,
The light that hurt the eyes and the dark that was so like water.
As I ran I shouted and hollered. I floated on tears.
I gave them no peace. They’d waked me up, no sleep for them.
Had I known, as soon as that half cell of me flushed from his body
Entering the throbbing shaft of her I’d have chosen a way
To not be. But I was, without a choice in the matter except
Running away.
