ACL 1002 |
Lecture week 7, Lecture 6 by Ian Syson |
Why this lecture? This lecture shifts the focus away from style and form of poems by disembodied authors and introduces the idea of a poet as a living, breathing human being who wrote poems for a reason or reasons. Each semester we concentrate on an individual poet, at the choice of the academic giving the lecture. This semester I chose John Forbes. Why this poet? General reasons Personal reasons Biography from Phillip Mead
He moved to Melbourne in the late 1980s where he died of a heart attack in january 1998 at the age of 47. He was part of a generation of change in Australian intellectual life, during which many shibboleth's of the past were torn down. Yet it would be a mistake to categorise Forbes as a radical. In many ways he was quite conservative and remained faithful to the form if not the content of his Catholic education. Influences Americans America forms such a central part of Forbes' poetry. There are many direct references:
Though, as should be clear, the references are not necessarily laudatory. They are laced with irony and perhaps sarcasm. So while not always admiring America, he loved its poets and he always knew where global cultural power resided. He was of the first generation of literary intellectuals that understand our culture had shifted away from being �English'. And when Forbes looked to America he saw something that influenced him tremendously. For example, American popular music � the Beach Boys, the Ramones, Muddy Waters, Lou Reed � is referenced constantly. Moreover as Mead points out:
The very first poem in the collection alludes to the influence of O'Hara
A typically difficult poem with meandering if not tortured syntax. It nonetheless contains some striking and easily understood images drawn from ordinary life. The unripe oranges seem to symbolise something about Australian life and its ongoing development. But we need to go to an O'Hara poem to get a fuller picture
O'Hara's poems makes the interesting argument that while the genesis of a work of art may seem to leave its origins far behind, yet the trace of the genesis remains. That which inspires the poem is therefore often obscured though not removed from sight. Should we need or want to understand the inspiration we must be prepared to be involved in a careful analysis of the artist's creative and intellectual leaps. And so it is with Forbes' poetry. It will be difficult and we need to hang on for the ride. The best way to understand Forbes' poems is to discuss and argue with other readers � because they will always find ways to be understood that way. The fact that �Orange Sonnet' is the very first poem in the collection raises the possibility that it is a kind of reading instruction or prolegomenon � we should
Perhaps we need to read the collection that follows is an unfolding of one poet's homage to the American poets and their influence. This indeed seems to be the case in
Popular culture One of Forbes' chief characteristics is that he moves effortlessly between high art and popular culture.
Forbes use of simile often takes us to different parts of the culture. The simile doesn't just illustrate a point being made it shifts us culturally. In order to understand the metaphorical import of the simile/metaphor one often has literally to inhabit a different head space.
I once talked with Forbes about this poem, asking him what kind of car he was imagining. I was very disappointed with his answer because of how abstract it made the poem seem. He said �just one of those cars of the early 70s�. Like many poets, Forbes didn't drive and I guess this explains the vagueness. For Forbes' much vaunted appreciation of popular culture, I suspect that the appreciation was sometimes less than thorough or concrete. The connections he made were often �cerebral' and not �practical'. Drugs Drugs were something with which Forbes had a very deep engagement, personally and socially. I think it's also fair to say they killed him in the end. While he died of a Heart attack while drinking whisky, the wreckage of his body was created many years before when as an intravenous drug taker he contracted Hepatits B from sharing a syringe, thereby wrecking his liver. Fellow-poet Laurie Duggan had a theory that Forbes actually died as an undiagnosed diabetic from the copious amounts of codeine cough mixture he would drink. Because he couldn't drive, Forbes had a network of friends who he would ask to take him on the cough-mixture run, to various chemists around Carlton and Collingwood who would sell him only two bottles of cough mixture at a time. Two never being enough, he would need to go to at least one more chemist for further supplies. Forbes would also be short of money. Many the time was he would knock on my door and as soon as I saw him I'd know he wanted money, which he always repaid. Many people would have been humiliated by this situation but I think Forbes always carried himself with what Indyk suggests was an �awkward grace� p101.
Poetry Like so many poets, Forbes loved to write poems about poetry, or other forms of art, or the connection between forms of art.
Summary John Forbes was the poet of a generation that didn't care about poetry -- music, drugs, sex, rebellion, anything but poetry. He was also of a generation, of which many found their way to Europe to escape Australia -- even if only for a short while. It was the first generation that had in sizeable numbers ventured abroad with peaceful intent. Forbes was a poetic inheritor of the kinds of self-loathing and self-doubt that had afflicted Australian literary intellectuals and we can read it in his poems. But he was also someone who thought that we might be able to find something sacred in the ordinary or even the less savoury detail of Australian life and much of his poetry gestures towards this idea. His travels in Europe enabled him to make comparisons between European countries and Australia . He remarks, "if you remove the art, Europe 's/ like the US , more or less a dead loss" . The only conclusion for Forbes is to hang around "with other Australians and hit the piss" The End Towards the end of his life, Forbes' poetry seemed to shift in tone. Still playful, still bitterly funny at times, the poems took on a moral dimension that his work had eschewed previously. He wrote poems that could be followed relatively easily and that had a sense of politics about them. Some have argued that Forbes' American migration in the mind diverted to Britain.
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