Pipped at the post ...

Synchronicity or what? No sooner do I start sharpening my keyboard in anticipation of an entry on Raworth & Comedy, than I see this link on Ron Silliman’s Blog : http://davidcaddy.blogspot.com/2008/03/letter-11.html . David Caddy is hitting all the right targets so I don’t need to launch a long post. Tonight I’ll aim for brevity and postpone the Hancock-Raworth post until later. By way of thoughts on Caddy's post:

1. The number of Goon Shows which were based upon pastiche, parody and blatant appropriation. Clearly, Milligan used – and assumed – references, allusions, quotations from a shared pool of films, texts and songs. Furthermore, the power of radio at that period to hold an audience. Transferring to British poetry of the 50s and 60s what – who – would be the equivalents?

2. I love the ‘aural space’ of The Goon Shows. As radio shows they succeed to the extent that you do not see. Language and sound create a world operating on parallel logics. A sequence such as this from The Great String Robberies:

Scot No.1:
You see that piece of string on the table?

Seagoon:
Yes. What's that space in the middle?

Scot No.1:
That's the piece that's missing.

Seagoon:
So! So that's what a piece of missing string looks like, eh? Where's it gone? Ah! [laughs] But wait... can't you see, you, you poor Scottish fool!

Scot No.1:
[Gnashing teeth sounds]

Seagoon:
It's all, it's all a practical joke!

Scot No.1:
[Gnashing teeth sounds]

Seagoon:
Someone's cut that string in the center, pulled the two pieces in opposite directions, giving the impression that a piece had been removed from the middle.

Scot No.1:
Hairy gringlers, he's right! Och, it's true! If you put these two pieces together, the gap disappears!

Scot No.2:
Aye, but did you notice when you did that, the two outside ends got shorter?

Seagoon:
Gad... Gad, Chisolm's right! Now I see what happened. What cunning! [laughs] The criminal's cut a piece off each end, then cut across the middle pulled them apart, making the string look the original length.

Scot No.1:
Oh dear, this makes it a baffling case.

Scot No.2:
Aye.

Seagoon:
Ah yes. Instead of one piece we're looking for two separate ends... It's a good job I can count! [laughs] We must start investigations at once!

Dizzying!

3. Tape. What Milligan seems to have grasped – more than any of the BBC comedy writers of the time – was the extraordinary possibilities of recording. It just so happens this month’s Wire magazine runs a review of William Burroughs’ ‘Real English Tea Made Here’ CD. I quote:

“By treating the tape recorder as “an externalized section of the human nervous sytem”, Burroughs was definitely in sync with prevailing attitudes. From the 1950s through to the 1960s and beyond, there was a tendency to treat magnetic tape as an analogue for human consciousness as it existed in time …” (Ken Hollings, p54)

What David Caddy observes about Raworth’s freeing of the constraints of a coherent self find their sonic equivalent in the voice (supposedly the index of presence) made ribbon speeded up, reversed, fast-forwarded, rewound, cut and spliced – the basic material of The Goon Shows. Sound/time becomes plastic, malleable, sculptural. I‘m thinking of Raworth’s early volume `The Relation Ship’ where the space of the page becomes a means to examine time and experience. I’m also thinking of 60s rock experimentation: George Martin with the Beatles and – more radically - Zappa with the Mothers of Invention on albums such as ‘Freak Out’ and ‘Lumpy Gravy’. In addition to the radio, which records was Raworth listening to I wonder? ("pause/ between the dropping/ of the record & the music" - 'The Others', The Relation Ship).

4. ‘Logbook’. So many of the poems in Raworth’s ‘Big Green Day’ seem to incorporate what David Caddy locates in terms of “Imperial illusions” – ‘North Africa Breakdown’ and ‘Who Is Hannibal’s Descendant Leading His Elephants Against The Tanks?’ to mention just two titles. However, the work which prompted me to first think of Goon Show echoes is ‘Logbook’ (1970). Listen to this:

“At night in the forest we slept, listening to the creak of our future oars. “Let us”, said one of the natives whose language we could speak, but imperfectly, “build from these trees a thing we call a ‘ship’ – from the wood remaining I will show you how to make ‘paper’ – on this ‘paper’ (once we set sail) I shall show you how to ‘write’ (with a charred twig from the same tree) – and if your grandmother is with you, here’s how we suck eggs.” From the shore we watched the ‘ship’ approach us. We set sail in a small craft to meet the strangers, pausing only to write pages 106, 291, 298, 301, 345, 356, 399, 444 & 453 of the logbook, charring … “

as if read by Neddy Seagoon, imagining next the discovery of Grytpype Thynne and Moriarity as stowaways with Bluebottle approaching in a paper ship made out of an old copy of the Daily Mail.

5. “We never analysed it. I suppose it was an oral cartoon.I read once there were shades of Kafka, Ionesco and Dylan Thomas in it. Really it was just three blokes having a laugh, coupled with Spike’s inventive genius.” (Harry Secombe interviewed 1972).

“Basically I make things I like to look at, and I write things I like to read. There’s not much room outside that.” (Raworth interviewed by Ben Watson 2001).

Having made such identifications I immediately want to correct any impression of having ‘explained away’ Raworth’s poetry. One of the great charms of his work – for me, at least – is the way the poems remain defiantly on the page resisting translation into another discourse.

“too far. look back. you’ve missed the point”

(‘Love Poem’, from The Big Green Day - and the inability of my Blog formatting to cope with the original spacing of this line proves the point)

6. Um ... so much for "brevity".