odourofdevonviolet.com
The Scent That Captures That "1930s Moment"!
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XXXVI
Tarquin’s in Pharmaceuticals, not chemically-speaking,
But its commercial arm, penning advertising copy,
It’s the only way to get his poetry to pay! Not to say,
Into print –he’s earning himself an extravagant living
All to afford himself time to wine and dine with a suitably
Pre-eminent metropolitan imprint with some antiquity
Behind it; somewhere historied and several octaves above
The proverbial saddle-stitched fringes, in terms of established
Credentials, kudos and legacy… Faber & Faber, say –
Used to be bankers you know –hence T.S. Eliot’s perfect
Fit at their editorial end, being both banker and poet;
This was long before the days of W.H. Auden & Co., long
Before his portfolio was mothballed in their clothbound flaps…
But I digress… As my daughter, Hortence, is ever prone
To pick me up on of a parenthesis –she’s the one in
The austalgia game, by the way, nosterity retail they call it;
Owns a chain of Thirties Retro Boutiques… But anyway…
There’s very little difference between verse and advertising
At the end of the day: both have predispositions towards
Metaphor, sense-impression, rhythm, rhyme, litotes, and
Hyperbole to sell their products– poetry’s ever knowingly
Undersold, but poetic copy is never knowingly old, always
New, always about Now, the Moment, the latest thing,
The next big thing, the buzz, the zeitgeist, the tuliped turd
On the pavement, the finger on the pulse –it’s all about
Re-branding, again and again, habitually, ad infinitum,
As long as you re-brand things they always seem new,
Even if they’re paper-thin replicas of the same old tat!...
XXXVII
…But poets today are an opportunistic bunch, they’ve cottoned-
On to advertising, they’ve turned it into poetry by stripping
Down their words to the barest minimum, sharp, staccato
Pull-quotes and punchy phrases, pared-down tercets that
Advertise themselves as supplemental consumer products, pop-
Up poems, perfumed ephemera that powder the browsing nose,
Frequently pedestrian, violet-scented, conservatively toned,
Impersonally expressed, supremely apolitical, elliptically
Polemical, whorishly hermeneutical, sometimes suggestive,
Sometimes self-parodying, ever impressing impressions,
Post-modern, post-mortem, postpartum, fruity, ekphrastic,
Postprandial, epicurean, pabulum, O pabulum, not soul-
Nourishment, more gourmet for thought, aphorism and canapé,
Comestible, consumerable, Empsonian profiteroles
Filled with processed cream, violet cream, and almost
Always indistinguishable from prose… But it’s the ultimate
Capitalist scam, is it not, and should be applauded for its’
Outcapitalising capitalism, not materially, but in terms
Of sheer audacity –to think, the most undervalued of artistic
Mediums today, the most impecunious and unlikeliest
To ever be floated on the Stock Exchange, has become its’
Own Market, produced by and for its own shareholders;
Its Capitalistic practitioners, parasitic, cannabilistic and
Solipsistic tics to a Woman and Man! Poetry should be
Applauded for its mendacious conceit: to sculpt a product
Of the spiel itself! For capitalist poetry is absolute, does
What it says on the tin every time, fruit in syrup, fruit in syrup;
It’s its own self-contained commodity! Ingenious! Poetry,
Alone, is both advert AND product! But more than that: it is
Also its own consumer; a self-consumer: poetry eats itself!