LIDIA VIANU

The Desperado Age

British Literature at the Start of the Third Millennium

U.A. FANTHORPE (b. 1929) has a tight grip on poetry. Not My Best Side is the perfect example of her mixture of wit and tenderness. She loves debunking and she also loves playing with ideas on the page. She uses language in its most recent clothes. She handles myth as if it had been born yesterday and could be altered at will. She lives in a mythical age of poetry. Sisyphus is a perfect description of her craft:

Apparently I rank as one

Of the more noteworthy sights down here.

As to that, I can't judge, having

No time to spare for tourists.

My preoccupations are this stone

And this hill. I have to push

The one up the other.

A trivial task for a team, an engine,

A pair of horses. The interest lies

Not in the difficulty of the doing,

But the difficulty for the doer. I accept this

As my vocation: to do what I cannot do.

The stone and I are

Close. I know its every wart, its ribby ridges,

Its snags, its lips. And the stone knows me,

Cheek, chin and shoulders, elbow, groin, shin, toe,

Muscle, bone, cartilage and muddied skinprint,

My surfaces, my angles and my levers.

The hill I know by heart too,

Have studied incline, foothold, grain,

With watchmaker's patience.

Concentration is mutual. The hill

Is hostile to the stone and me.

The stone resents me and the hill.

But I am the mover. I cannot afford

To spend energy on emotion. I push

The stone up the hill. At the top

It falls, and I pursue it,

To heave it up again. Time not spent

On doing this is squandered time.

The gods must have had a reason

For setting me this task. I have forgotten it,

And I do not care. (the emphases are mine)

Trying to do what she cannot do, Fanthorpe stifles the feeling, hides it, is ashamed of emotion. Her lines are sharp and telegraphic. The mood is heavy and burdens the reader’s soul. The landscape does not matter, the background is a dark screen. The word goes straight to its meaning. A firm poetry with steep ideas.