‘a hamburger that is just a hamburger flavoured hamburger’
Charlie Baylis, a fondness for the colour green
Broken Sleep Books, 84pp, £9.99, ISBN 9781915760180
reviewed by Erik Kennedy
We all hate meta-poems at this point, right? Or do we?
Poetry about poetry has long been a product of the workshop–industrial complex, and the out-of-touch-ness of so much of it has engendered a backlash from readers, even those readers who themselves emerged from writing programmes. Looking in the mirror is fun until it’s not. Seeing too much of oneself can ultimately be weird and alienating, the way saying a word over and over and over makes it start to sound like gibberish.
It’s a relief, then, that Charlie Baylis’s a fondness for the colour green is largely composed of poems about poems about poetry. This extra remove introduces the uncertainty needed for Baylis to equivocate about meta-poetry, to love it and loathe it, to find it sublime and silly. Baylis isn’t hung up on the goofiness of meta-poetry from a craft perspective, as if writing a poem about poetry is a faux pas, like singing on a bus. His implied critique is more caustic: when there are so many other things one can be preoccupied with in the world, doesn’t an obsession with poetry seem ridiculous? (Baylis edits Anthropocene, a litmag for the climate crisis, so he has a proper perspective on what is genuinely important.) Is it actually more ‘serious’ and worthy than other obsessions? Is it actually different in a way that matters?
In the poems of a fondness for the colour green, literary scenedom is consistently placed alongside celebrity fandom, as if it’s just another kind of parasocial relationship that is produced in our media climate. (Jean Baudrillard’s notion of ‘transaesthetics’, in which art ceases to be a distinct domain of culture and ‘can no longer transcend itself’, is possibly useful here.) Speakers in Baylis’s poems are versatile, acting as both scenesters and superfans. In ‘baby i don’t care’ we hear from someone who
– while in ‘taking coffee with charlie baylis’ the framing device is that ‘juliette binoche typed me this poem topless / she told me of an illusion: a hamburger / that is just a hamburger flavoured hamburger’. This mode is actually impressively creepy — deliberately so — a kind of slapstick version of the libidinous troubadour shtick that no one puts on anymore (but which, you know, underpins much of the history of lyric poetry). Cara Delevingne gets a similar treatment in ‘sandals’ (‘i fell off my bike dreaming of you / cara delevingne / drenched in vanilla & shoegaze . . . i hope to kiss you in the supermarket talk about the euro / till my desire is submerged in whipped cream’). Then in ‘vandals’ Selena Gomez is added alongside Cara. And then in ‘re: vandals’ poetry and celebrity are brought into contact in a scrambled and palimpsestic way:
There is an interchangeability of subjects here that crosses lines of art form, gender, geography, and plausibility. The common factor is a love of the ‘beautiful & strange’.
There are actually many love poems in this book, or at least poems with love moments in them. It is difficult sometimes to know if they are real love poems to imaginary people or imaginary love poems to real people, but they often have both tenderness and sting, like a slipper with a scorpion in it. The third section of the book, ‘so you think you’re in love with jennifer’, contains many lovely lines that are only lightly perfumed with irony:
Or:
But the last poem in the section, ‘hello kitty’, concludes ‘go polish your poetry prize / does it keep you warm at night?’, which somewhat takes the shine off what has come before.
‘i’m still looking for the perfect lover’ has a winning straightforwardness about it —
— but it too contains a complication: the Lower East Side has Orchard Street, of course, but not much in the way of actual orchards, so the apple-picking is likely to be of a visionary rather than a literal nature. (And we won’t even address ‘the Big Apple’.) ‘madonna’ almost mocks the genre of the ‘New York poem’ (‘i wake up dreaming i’ve made it / here in new york i’ve made it everywhere’) — and the seemingly unkillable pursuit of writing such poems that has flourished since the 1960s — but at the same time it is a decent example of it, half lampoon, half homage: ‘the still water below which the poem sinks / is sadness / nothing hurts more than loving somebody who doesn’t love you’.
This is a book about influences. It wears its influences on its sleeve. The sleeve is made of influences. Contemporary poets who are name-checked or alluded to include Chelsey Minnis, Hera Lindsay Bird, Sean Bonney, Sophie Robinson, Aaron Kent, Heather Phillipson, Estefanía Cabello, Luke Kennard, Jasmine Gray, and Poppy Cockburn. Elders and ancestors like Unica Zürn, William Carlos Williams, H. D., Bernadette Mayer, Federico Garcia Lorca, Robert Desnos, and Frank O’Hara are invoked. Neil Astley, publisher of the redoubtable poetry press Bloodaxe Books, gets his own special, poisonous little poem, ‘neal astley [sic] made me scrambled eggs for breakfast’, in which Astley’s inquiry about whether the speaker would like any more egg earns the reply ‘a bottle of water please / i’d rather be seen dead’. This two-fingers-to-the-majors posture may be a joke, but it’s hard to know for certain. Perhaps it’s always already both a joke and not a joke. The inveterate DIY/indie writer also comes within Baylis’s crosshairs in ‘small cities in belgium’ and seems like a faintly risible figure:
The probable reception history of these kinds of ‘peots’ can be summed up with the example of ‘Clive’: ‘three men liked his pamphlet in 1985’.
a fondness for the colour green does what, in therapy, we might call ‘process work’. Incompatibilities are excavated, conflicting viewpoints and estimations weighed in each hand:
Baylis has captured some of the ambivalence and shame that attaches to being this kind of artist in this moment. This book is a love letter posted in an old sock. A sext transmitted via Ceefax. It is romantic and brusque. An in-joke and an exposé. Lyrical criticism and anti-poetry. In ‘the new insincerity’ Baylis writes that ‘there is not much in poetry that remains unsaid / but that you should say it is not your responsibility’. Originality may not seem like a goal worth pursuing for Baylis, but in hashing out these arguments in this medium he’s found some anyway. Whether it’s worth it or not, he’ll have to decide for himself.
Poetry about poetry has long been a product of the workshop–industrial complex, and the out-of-touch-ness of so much of it has engendered a backlash from readers, even those readers who themselves emerged from writing programmes. Looking in the mirror is fun until it’s not. Seeing too much of oneself can ultimately be weird and alienating, the way saying a word over and over and over makes it start to sound like gibberish.
It’s a relief, then, that Charlie Baylis’s a fondness for the colour green is largely composed of poems about poems about poetry. This extra remove introduces the uncertainty needed for Baylis to equivocate about meta-poetry, to love it and loathe it, to find it sublime and silly. Baylis isn’t hung up on the goofiness of meta-poetry from a craft perspective, as if writing a poem about poetry is a faux pas, like singing on a bus. His implied critique is more caustic: when there are so many other things one can be preoccupied with in the world, doesn’t an obsession with poetry seem ridiculous? (Baylis edits Anthropocene, a litmag for the climate crisis, so he has a proper perspective on what is genuinely important.) Is it actually more ‘serious’ and worthy than other obsessions? Is it actually different in a way that matters?
In the poems of a fondness for the colour green, literary scenedom is consistently placed alongside celebrity fandom, as if it’s just another kind of parasocial relationship that is produced in our media climate. (Jean Baudrillard’s notion of ‘transaesthetics’, in which art ceases to be a distinct domain of culture and ‘can no longer transcend itself’, is possibly useful here.) Speakers in Baylis’s poems are versatile, acting as both scenesters and superfans. In ‘baby i don’t care’ we hear from someone who
wasted the best years of my life
making breakfast for chelsey minnis, making lunch
for chelsey minnis
making dinner for chelsey minnis
while she wrote poetry
– while in ‘taking coffee with charlie baylis’ the framing device is that ‘juliette binoche typed me this poem topless / she told me of an illusion: a hamburger / that is just a hamburger flavoured hamburger’. This mode is actually impressively creepy — deliberately so — a kind of slapstick version of the libidinous troubadour shtick that no one puts on anymore (but which, you know, underpins much of the history of lyric poetry). Cara Delevingne gets a similar treatment in ‘sandals’ (‘i fell off my bike dreaming of you / cara delevingne / drenched in vanilla & shoegaze . . . i hope to kiss you in the supermarket talk about the euro / till my desire is submerged in whipped cream’). Then in ‘vandals’ Selena Gomez is added alongside Cara. And then in ‘re: vandals’ poetry and celebrity are brought into contact in a scrambled and palimpsestic way:
in an earlier draft of vandals
which appeared on stone 9th october 1757
i wrote ‘thank you cara delevingne
luke kennard raymond roussel’
but later substituted luke kennard for selena gomez
don’t ask why that is just the way it is
both luke kennard & selena gomez have so much to offer
both luke kennard & selena gomez are beautiful & strange human beings
but in the end it made more or less sense with her name
by way of apology i’m dedicating this poem to luke kennard
There is an interchangeability of subjects here that crosses lines of art form, gender, geography, and plausibility. The common factor is a love of the ‘beautiful & strange’.
There are actually many love poems in this book, or at least poems with love moments in them. It is difficult sometimes to know if they are real love poems to imaginary people or imaginary love poems to real people, but they often have both tenderness and sting, like a slipper with a scorpion in it. The third section of the book, ‘so you think you’re in love with jennifer’, contains many lovely lines that are only lightly perfumed with irony:
i used to long for you jenny when you were a mushroom
spooring in psychedelic space
i used to long for you jenny when you were a holy poet
now you are a hat stand
& when i told you i love you
i did not mean i love you
Or:
god i miss you jenny x
your pillow case soft with self consciousness
alphabet light illuminating motes of dust on your window
But the last poem in the section, ‘hello kitty’, concludes ‘go polish your poetry prize / does it keep you warm at night?’, which somewhat takes the shine off what has come before.
‘i’m still looking for the perfect lover’ has a winning straightforwardness about it —
you may never become the painter you dreamt of becoming
but somewhere a lonely boy is picking apples
beneath the beautiful lights of the lower east side
— but it too contains a complication: the Lower East Side has Orchard Street, of course, but not much in the way of actual orchards, so the apple-picking is likely to be of a visionary rather than a literal nature. (And we won’t even address ‘the Big Apple’.) ‘madonna’ almost mocks the genre of the ‘New York poem’ (‘i wake up dreaming i’ve made it / here in new york i’ve made it everywhere’) — and the seemingly unkillable pursuit of writing such poems that has flourished since the 1960s — but at the same time it is a decent example of it, half lampoon, half homage: ‘the still water below which the poem sinks / is sadness / nothing hurts more than loving somebody who doesn’t love you’.
This is a book about influences. It wears its influences on its sleeve. The sleeve is made of influences. Contemporary poets who are name-checked or alluded to include Chelsey Minnis, Hera Lindsay Bird, Sean Bonney, Sophie Robinson, Aaron Kent, Heather Phillipson, Estefanía Cabello, Luke Kennard, Jasmine Gray, and Poppy Cockburn. Elders and ancestors like Unica Zürn, William Carlos Williams, H. D., Bernadette Mayer, Federico Garcia Lorca, Robert Desnos, and Frank O’Hara are invoked. Neil Astley, publisher of the redoubtable poetry press Bloodaxe Books, gets his own special, poisonous little poem, ‘neal astley [sic] made me scrambled eggs for breakfast’, in which Astley’s inquiry about whether the speaker would like any more egg earns the reply ‘a bottle of water please / i’d rather be seen dead’. This two-fingers-to-the-majors posture may be a joke, but it’s hard to know for certain. Perhaps it’s always already both a joke and not a joke. The inveterate DIY/indie writer also comes within Baylis’s crosshairs in ‘small cities in belgium’ and seems like a faintly risible figure:
excuse me, do you know who i am?
a spectacle rolls into my bowl of cornflakes
milk splashes the cover famous peots of the 1980s
the typo was my idea.
fuck it.
The probable reception history of these kinds of ‘peots’ can be summed up with the example of ‘Clive’: ‘three men liked his pamphlet in 1985’.
a fondness for the colour green does what, in therapy, we might call ‘process work’. Incompatibilities are excavated, conflicting viewpoints and estimations weighed in each hand:
ouch, ouch, you got me, or to say:
your poetry is so pretty i want to lick your ear
celebrate by pissing in leather trousers from a great height
onto your wedding cake
*
that is to say: this has all been terribly dull
my friends are a bunch of cunts
jesus doesn’t want you for a sunbeam
& i’m not that kind of girl
Baylis has captured some of the ambivalence and shame that attaches to being this kind of artist in this moment. This book is a love letter posted in an old sock. A sext transmitted via Ceefax. It is romantic and brusque. An in-joke and an exposé. Lyrical criticism and anti-poetry. In ‘the new insincerity’ Baylis writes that ‘there is not much in poetry that remains unsaid / but that you should say it is not your responsibility’. Originality may not seem like a goal worth pursuing for Baylis, but in hashing out these arguments in this medium he’s found some anyway. Whether it’s worth it or not, he’ll have to decide for himself.