Simon Jarvis, 'The Unconditional'

(Barque Press, 2005)

“This must be among the most peculiar books ever published" says John Wilkinson; and yes, he is right. A poem whose metricality, like Swinburne's, pushes to the edge of utmost banality and only when looking down that abyss turns its tricks; a narrative of sorts, flashes, a satirical poem concerned with Jarvis' critical preoccupations (Adorno; Wordsworth's Philosophic Song; Prosody as Cognition; etc) only insofar as they are his the stuff of his life/thoughts- ie. not in as direct a way even as Ben Watson/Out to Lunch's 'Shitkicks and Doughballs' is a 'novelisation' of 'Art Class and Cleavage'. It is funny and makes connections in its argument no sane man would attempt in prose (well OK, Jarvis and probably Prynne). Its audacity and sonic patterning makes gasp, frequently.

And it is funny: "=x. was ready to feel all that./ There or anywhere else./ But he was nowhere near the area." And: "Wer sagt Kultur sagt auch Verwaltung mate:/ if you don't like it why not prove it please/by living in a 2 by 2-4 box/ marked Soviet Sentiments of Comrade Jarvis,/eh?" Did I mention, a satirical poem? A satirical poem questioning the idea that all satire can be is scurrilous, in intent/effect. A constant argument. Watch the brackets. Open or closed? The sum total text of closing page 240: ")))))". The unconditional's door is always half-way, in and out of reach.

Is that size 9. 5 Garamond typeset deliberately so small in the page: (1) so that you can make 'research' notes in the margins, as Jow Lindsay suggests on his blog; (2) so that your eyes strain and mistake 'sings' for 'signs' with ever-increasing frequency? The jokes on you - 'to the auditor'.

But to be serious: Jarvis wants to write the Wordsworthian epic of the human, but as socially constructed, so it is the epic of person(s) and society as much as it is of Jarvis. Killing that false distinction: that one could write an epic poetry of a self in complete isolation or as self-absorbed ‘confessional’ (the reader as priest and judge – I think Jarvis would prefer to think that the POET should be the teacher). (Re?)discovering the possibilities of a radical poetry radically metrical and full of satire’s sneer yet so tensed to self as to question every instance of its own so purposeful skill. If one’s heart is still warmed by ‘pure sound’ (on whose falsity Jarvis is so good on in ‘Prosody as Cognition’), then this poem’s music will touch the ear in such a way as to provoke that reaction: “the own rote load doles out” and suchlike roll mellifluous indeed. But of course that glittering skill is not Jarvis’ aim, most certainly not to lull with it.

And so he pulls lines out that make one rethink the previous two pages, and then the next two; whose transformative power travels further than that, ensure the whole text as an ordered flux, regimented quicksand. And these lines themselves, in splendid isolation function just as well, making one rethink a whole image anew and thus a whole set of concepts (and further images) associated with that image (Jarvis would pull me up for my imprecise use of the word ‘image’ and ‘imagery’ as not related to a specifically visual meaning, though of course his visual sense is extremely sharp). Here’s a line on 9/11: “castrate Manhattan in a double smash.” That phallic wounding. Does the smash deliberately echo the “lucky smash” the opening and closing sections (which repeat nearly exactly), which itself would seem to be ‘main character’ =x.’s car crash in Hertfordshire?

That brings us to this: there’s a story, of a sort, too – a narrative. The ‘main character’, =x., (whose name, so a note at the book's back instructs, is to be rendered, as far as possible, by a gulp without swallowing) argues/interacts under a veneer of social politeness with Jobless and Qunxmuxkul and Agramant. As Jarvis, self-criticizing, puts it: “All the characters are male./ Most characters have no character at all.” (One might also note that =x. is extraordinarily accident prone and not well posed to cope with the physical manoeuvres he is required to make, tripping up stairs and through a glass window within the first few pages, crashing his car in Hertfordshire, and falling asleep in the sun, left behind on a university tour).

Other things to look out for are: the body, wounds; constitution of the self; eating, vomiting; digressions; use of brackets (the Miltonic epic simile taken to extremes, it seems, though the poem does not feel very Miltonic except in scope (and that in a very different way too). Colours: grey as well (in fact more) than the more usual Jarvis purple. An example of the breadth of Jarvis’ thought: the section where he talks about the concept of ‘language games’ in terms of the classic Brazilian football team (‘Socrates’ of course enables him to make a useful pun). It is so (seeimingly) absurd as to be completely true. And some of the best writing on music by a poet, or by anyone, that I’ve read: on Cortot (The wrong note: A. Cortot as medium...Precisely in his getup Cortot well knew/just how to strike the very wrong note/ so prestidgitatorily false..."), Messiaen (“looking at baby Jesus twenty times"), Furtwangler ("Rrrumbles-on"). ‘The Unconditional’ is truly a work of criticism, philosophy, and poetry. It cannot be restricted in its ambition. Is this the poet’s dream?

"He stands or run; he mounts, recedes; he sits./He crawls; he clambers; gapes; ingests; he grips./He breathes or coughs; he sings or vomits; spits./He stares or blinks; he leaps and bounds; or trips."