Once, a few years ago, I was sat outside a London pub having a beer with a friend.

Across the road was a big secondhand bookshop.

After a while I wandered over and had a browse.

In the poetry section I found a collection by William Bronk. I’d never heard of him but the description on the back, and a quick glance inside, was enough to convince me to buy it.

Later, having put the book on my shelf and largely forgotten about it, I read an obituary of Bronk in an English newspaper which described him as a kind of solitary figure prone to wandering around New York seeking inspiration.

At least, that’s what I think I read. At the time I was very into the idea of solitary genius poets.

Anyway, here is one of his poems:

What we are

What we are? We say we want to become
what we are or what we have an intent to be.
We read the possibilities, or try.
We get to some. We think we know how to read.
We recognize a word, here and there,
a syllable: male, it says perhaps,
or female, talent — look what you could do

or love, it says, love is what we mean.
Being at any cost: in the end, the cost
is terrible but so is the lure to us.
We see it move and shine and swallow it.
We say we are and this is what we are
as to say we should be and this is what to be
and this is how. But, oh, it isn’t so.

I’ve shamelessly lifted this from Do Copenhagen but the more people that see this the better.

The guy’s name is Herman Dune. He’s French.

The DJ played this The The track at Loppen the other night and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since.

1234

50 foot spiders

Tokyo Police Club

Aberfeldy

Tokyo Police Club, right, will probably make it pretty big.

1234 are the best Danish band I’ve heard in a while.

Any band which ‘sounds like Charles Bukowski getting into Diana Ross and the Supremes and deciding to write indie powerpop songs instead of poetry’ is OK in my book.

Holly Martins’ futile wait for Anna at the end of The Third Man must rank as one of the most poignant conclusions to a film. Leaning back against a truck, cigarette in hand, he waits, motionless as she approaches.

Striding purposefully along the cedar-lined avenue, Anna draws level with Holly . . . and carries straight on, utterly unmoved.

What might have been, say Holly’s eyes.

 

Recently I have been thinking a lot about Raymond Carver, my favourite poet.

He died in 1988, aged just 50. Having beaten alcoholism, it seems somehow even sadder that he died from lung cancer.

Many of his poems feel like brief moments of illumination, fragmentary epiphanies; or fleeting hints of unfiltered emotions.

They are how it feels when you stop and everything goes quiet, and for a second you know that this is just how it is.

This is one of my favourites:

Happiness

So early it's still almost dark out. 
I'm near the window with coffee, 
and the usual early morning stuff 
that passes for thought. 

When I see the boy and his friend 
walking up the road 
to deliver the newspaper. 

They wear caps and sweaters, 
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder. 
They are so happy 
they aren't saying anything, these boys. 

I think if they could, they would take 
each other's arm. 
It's early in the morning, 
and they are doing this thing together. 

They come on, slowly. 
The sky is taking on light, 
though the moon still hangs pale over the water. 

Such beauty that for a minute 
death and ambition, even love, 
doesn't enter into this. 

Happiness. It comes on 
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really, 
any early morning talk about it.

Some very sad things have happened recently.

I have sunk. Hit the ocean floor, and my hull has rusted. Barnacles, limpets, crustaceans of every kind abound there now.

Fish glide through abandoned rooms – silver glimmers in the murk.

These too cool for school Canadian chaps are coming to Loppen on Feb 22.

I’ll be there, probably wearing a cardigan and sporting a beard.

Tokyo Police Club.

The UK is failing its children apparently.

The usual suspects, Denmark included, make up the top five.