LIDIA VIANU

The Desperado Age

British Literature at the Start of the Third Millennium

II/16. DESPERADO POETRY

What does Desperado poetry do differently from other kinds of poetry? Why the name?

Poets are governed today – as are novelists – by one great fear: the reader might not get the meaning. Clarity pushes Modernism to the back of the stage. Concentration is no longer the tool. Conversationalism is. The music of poetry – sacred to Eliot even when he was changing, defacing it (though never giving it up) – is dead. This music is replaced by another convention, of course, since as long as poets jot their words down on paper there is a rule, an artificial common ground, a convention. The new convention is scared to death by the difficulty of Joyce and Eliot. It simplifies where Modernisms complicated, and it reveals where Modernists hid, encoded, asked to be found out.

Desperado poetry is like a stretched out hand. You take it and it grabs you, you are trapped. You find it easy to read and slip further, but in the meantime the poet’s tentacles work upon you and the octopus which is the poem moves. You begin by a simple reaction, such as, So what? By the time you finish a volume, it is too late to take refuge in indifference. The difference between Desperado poets and their forerunners is one of  degree: the degree of deviousness. A poet was usually supposed to impress. Desperadoes are casual. They seem to say, Do not look for ulterior motives, my poem is just words, paper and my life – so common. So accessible.

Accessibility is the big change. No plan, no cipher, no concentration. The images flow, the story – if there is one – begins and ends, the rhymes are noiseless, as if ashamed, hiding behind very small words (a syllable, a preposition, a pronoun, an imperfect match). The poet seems to be intimidated by the drums in Eliot (haunting musicality, intense images, raging pain). He is the quiet passer-by, whom we may easily overlook. Poetry has acquired a modesty it never used to possess.        

The paradox is that this quiet, shy poetry dreams of wild gestures, behaving like a Desperado. The poet’s sensibility defies all accepted borders, even the boldest lighthouses of Modernism. A Desperado feels he is free to rush anywhere his poetic mood takes him. If he writes about love – not very often, though – he makes a clean breast of absolutely everything. If he writes about death, he digs a grave under our own eyes. He exhausts his themes. He attacks poetry gun in hand, robbing it of all mystery. He may be modest, but his tools are obvious. His weapons, rather. He conquers the reader and, when he does not, he will try again. He is the bandit who is never tried. Pointing a gun at us, he will never take no for an answer. Afraid or intrigued – sometimes we tend to identify with the criminal – , when the poems are good, we give in to this bullying Desperado. Violence and modesty are his hallmarks, and the two hardly go along together. Thence the paradox. A Desperado is a constant contradiction. He teases and (dis)pleases.       

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DANNIE ABSE

PETER ACKROYD

FLEUR ADCOCK

JEAN BLEAKNEY

ALAN BROWNJOHN

CATHERINE BYRON

JULIA COPUS

PETER DALE

MICHAEL DONAGHY

MAURA DOOLEY

NICK DRAKE

IAN DUHIG

RUTH FAINLIGHT

U.A. FANTHORPE

ROY FISHER

DAVID HARSENT

SELIMA HILL

KATHLEEN JAMIE

ALAN JENKINS

MIMI KHALVATI

JOHN MOLE

SEAN O’BRIEN

BERNARD O’DONOGHUE

DON PATERSON

PASCALE PETIT

PETER PORTER

CAROL RUMENS

EVA SALZMAN

FIONA SAMPSON

ANNE STEVENSON

MATTHEW SWEENEY

GEORGE SZIRTES

ANTHONY THWAITE

JOHN WHITWORTH