Something between the lines

Related to something else, here are some thoughts on Barbara Guest's poem 'Belgravia' the opener to the Carcanet 'Selected Poems' ... no idea if it's available online.


‘Belgravia’ – which we can decompose into: Belle + Grave + Ear (Here) (Hear).

“I am in love with a man”

The disarming frankness of the first line – flirting with an entire genre of confessional poetry BG would (I assume) abhor. How BG then uses it as a formal structuring device & refrain (appropriate doubleness: repetition and not-doing-something). Belgravia is – in another sense – a ‘good address’. A very privileged position from which to speak. Linguistics intersects with the property market.

The string of monosyllables – see my earlier post on Grenier – here working as perhaps a beginning-to-speak testing of language. Or the first fingering of the vowel keyboard. The last line of the poem certainly suggests that one of the concerns of the poem is a movement-toward-speaking.

Aurally, the shape to the first line: “am” echoes “man”. The sounds share. Language offers a togetherness.

Topos: house. I suspect there is a specific ‘place’ in mind – the very phrase starts to undermine itself. BG asserts that there is always a ‘place’ – yet she is never intent on mere description. I’m reminded of Howard Hodgkin’s titles – how a title ‘anchors’ the memory above which the poem (BG)/painting (HH) floats. Parachutes?

The “I” of the poem – notoriously hard to identify. Guest herself? Or she temporarily ‘inhabits’ the “I” (as we all do). I wonder, also, at what date the poem was composed? Guest is born Barbara Pinson. Her first marriage dissolved, she marries Stephen Guest (later Lord Haden-Guest) the name she carries on using. Is this relevant to the poem – an accommodation to a name? The woman (wife) ‘inhabiting’ the name of the husband(s)? And the compromises involved?

Lines 2-4 sound as if they are appropriated lines – and pompous at that. An English gentleman/connoisseur/property speculator. You know, I think she is being funny – or viciously satirical. Subsequently, his preciosity is seen in the preciousness of his possessions: “crystal objects”.

“Crystal objects” hovers between Cornell-like occult symbols and/or just things. And it’s hard to imagine BG – given her modernist leanings – treasuring mantlepiece trinkets.

The syntax, so far, is pretty conventional. “Than ... which are/But more .../Yet unlike.../ Cannot be ...”

The scenario of the woman in the man’s home immediately raises textual ghosts (more guests). Jane Eyre ... Bluebeard ... Beauty and the Beast ... . Already at this early stage, Guest seems to be working off such literary/cultural ‘hauntings’.

“Interiors” – how the word hovers between glossy coffe-table magazine language and psychological space. I’m also interested in the lack of equivalency between “love” (line 1) and “fond” (line 2). Commitment vs. a more condescending ‘leisured’ liking.

Despite the syntactical logic of verse one, semantically it’s off-kilter. Surely she should be the second part of the equation rather than rooms? The woman demeaningly equated with a space in which to arrange one’s own trophies to effect? Woman is property – or, rather, property-less.

Verse two

Chairs – cane – cradle – branches. I can’t help thinking of Citizen Kane (another collector of objets d’art) and Susan Alexander (the second Mrs Kane, wannabe opera singer & whose voice Kane exploited) lost in the absurdly large spaces of Xanadu. Then there’s sugar cane (sweet) and the cane (corporal punishment typical of the male British public school tradition). And “made in Berlin” carries inevitable connotations of fascism and/or partition.

Dominant sense of fragility, that things will break. Delicate objets d’art. And yet the main verb is one of solidity: “rock” – and anticipatory of “block” and “blocks” (verse three). BG certainly seems to conceive of such distant echoings as integral to her poetic structure/technique.

Tone is hard to locate. Is it that of the awestruck visitor/newly-wed taking stock of their surroundings? Or an inventory laced with distaste?

"Rock-a-bye baby, in the tree top
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall
And down will come baby, cradle and all"

Lines 4-6 of verse two clearly rely upon a distant hearing of the well-known nursery rhyme. It’s always struck me as a rather unusual choice of lullaby for a baby – disconcerting, to say the least. Certainly it reinforces the sense of fragilty – now with a real sense of imminent catastrophe. Domesticity, the safety of the nursery, seems seriously under threat.

Verse three

From Kane to Gatsby – another collector and owner of a luxurious mansion. I’m reminded of Klipspringer exercising while Gatsby and Daisy stroll through the sumptuous rooms.

Inside:outside/private:public/indoors:city – the pliability of space in Guest’s poem(s). If this is Belgravia (London) then there’s an interesting fusion of English geography and American vocabulary – “blocks”. Obstruction, oppression, thwarted desires. And so little sense of togetherness – “the one who walks”.

Definite sense of death – “marble” and “entomb”. Exercise and thought only lead to dead ends/deadened. The “one” is a prisoner, housebound, a woman ‘shut up’.

Verse four

Undecided readings – a) he knows himself better than he knows her (me)? b) he knows himself better than she knows him due to her relative youth, (in)experience, etc. Again, syntax is slippery.

She is his reflector – “glasses” could be spectacles, drinking vessels or mirrors. Whichever, she is passive, subsidiary, marginal. The ‘rim’. The rhyme? Echo to this Narcissus?

‘He’ is now identified with “European/Capitals” and their reflection upon their past. It seems possible to connect maleness with colonialism and architecture (tops of columns) and self-regarding. The dominant ‘story’ requires confirmation of itself. Notice he “alone” is “nervous with history”. Why? Guilt? What the past contains? Hers? His? Let’s throw in another book – Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ and Kurtz (“all of Europe went into his making” – I quote from memory). “Filigreed” fuses elaboration, decoration and the beaux arts with greed, male possessiveness and guilt (gilt?).

By now the repetition of “I am” sounds less convincing and more of an attempt at self-persuasion. Yes, she is forthright and honest (more than 'he' seems to be) but always defining herself in terms of her feelings towards him.

Verse five

“Open house” oscillates between the colloquialism for welcome-to-all and an architecture which denies privacy and interiority. Nowhere to hide! Similarly “locks” (interiority, shutting in) and "balconies" (exteriority, looking out).

“The brokenhearted bears who tumble in the leaves”

This line seems to be a favourite – do a Google search and you’ll find people who cite it as a key moment in her poetry. I’ll confess to being utterly baffled by it: it seems simply incongruous.

The best I can do – on this re-reading – is see it as a ‘focus’ for strands of image & allusion working through the poem.

“the brokenhearted” – the speaker herself? And the culmination of impending breaks noted before.

“bears” – an embedded reference to another fairystory – 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears'? Fairystory being a counter narrative to ‘official’ history. Goldilocks as the female trespasser/squatter, porridge-taster, bed-tester, and – at least in my kids’ edition – little bear’s chair-breaker. And she has been prepared for by “filigreed” and “locks”. (“Bears” can also be read as the verbs ‘bear’/’bare’– as in carries the burden or exposes.)

“tumble in the leaves” – we’re back to rock-a-by baby when the tree branch finally cracks (nasty anticipations of genealogical trees, too – think Ophelia’s death/suicide in ‘Hamlet’) and the cradle comes crashing down. (Might there even be a deliberate mis-hearing of John Clare's poem 'Recollections after a Ramble' - "Backs of leaves the burthen bear"? The consolations for the brokenhearted lie in adulterating the leafy pages of literature?)

If this is how BG’s poem is working – then it’s exciting. The line working in multi-dimensions. The conventional trajectory of the line simultaneous to the ‘vertical’ axis. It’s as if everything focuses here – a point of real energy.

Verse six

Out in the garden (with or without the bears - off to a picnic in the woods?). Trespass now seems to have replaced damage to property as the anticipated crime (“thus has escaped all intruders”). There is an implied theatricality – “entrances” and “audience” – yet the show or performance is not made explicit.

“Who only among the invited hastens my speech”

The last line – unsurprisingly – remains poised between alternative readings. a) only he does this? b) he only does it when others are present? And if her speech is hastened – he inspires her, gives energy and fluency? Or he hurries her – impatient for her words to end?

No need to draw a conclusion. I’m already thinking of equally ambiguous, self-contradictory lines such as:

“Parachutes, my love, could carry us higher”.