I first saw Penda’s Fen just a couple of weeks ago, as part of a DVD box set of films directed by the great Alan Clarke for the BBC. Clarke had his own DC’s Day here quite recently, but I’ll explain why this specific film demands an even closer look and why it now means a lot to me personally.

Penda’s Fen is kind of an outlier among Clarke’s other work, being visionary and epic as opposed to his usual social realist style, and seeing the present day England through a prism of its ancient pagan past. It’s an England viewed by the central character Stephen Franklin as a place of radical heterogeneity: “No, no! I am nothing pure! My race is mixed. My sex is mixed. I am woman and man, light with darkness, nothing pure! I am mud and flame!” The scene involves an apparition of King Penda, England’s last pagan king before the Church of England stitch-up turned UKIP mess of the present day.

So I did a little online sleuth work and found that the area in Leeds where I was born and raised, with its Penda’s Way and Penda’s Fields, was actually the place where this pagan king died in the Battle of Winwaed back in 655ad. And spookier still he died on my very birthday, the 15th November. I’d like to think those ancient pagans had a few wild parties around where I grew up and the historical context does give this film some extra resonance for me, but it’s still a unique work of art that deserves to be seen more widely:

 

Pendas Fields, Crossgates, Leeds

 

Penda’s Fen is a British television play which was written by David Rudkin and directed by Alan Clarke. It was commissioned by BBC producer David Rose, and first broadcast on 21 March 1974 as part of the corporation’s Play for Today series.

Set in the village of Pinvin, near Pershore in Worcestershire, England, against the backdrop of the Malvern Hills, it is an evocation of conflicting forces within England past and present. These include authority, tradition, hypocrisy, landscape, art, sexuality, and most of all, its mystical, ancient pagan past. All of this comes together in the growing pains of the adolescent Stephen, a vicar’s son, whose encounters include angels, Edward Elgar and King Penda himself. The final scene of the play, where the protagonist has an apparitional experience of King Penda and the “mother and father of England”, is set on the Malvern Hills.

Critics have noted that the play stands apart from Clarke’s other, more realist output. Clarke himself admitted that he did not fully understand what the story was about. Nonetheless it has gone on to acquire the status of minor classic, win awards and has been rebroadcast several times on the BBC.

Following the original broadcast Leonard Buckley, The Times wrote: “Make no mistake. We had a major work of television last night. Rudkin gave us something that had beauty, imagination and depth.”

In 2006, Vertigo magazine described Penda’s Fen as “One of the great visionary works of English film”.

In 2011, Penda’s Fen was chosen by Time Out London magazine as one of the 100 best British films. They described the play as a “multi-layered reading of contemporary society and its personal, social, sexual, psychic and metaphysical fault lines. Fusing Elgar’s ‘Dream of Gerontius’ with a heightened socialism of vibrantly localist empathy, and pagan belief systems with pre-Norman histories and a seriously committed – and prescient – ecological awareness, ‘Penda’s Fen’ is a unique and important statement.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penda’s_Fen

 

 

Penda’s Fen is a breathtakingly complex, bravely ambitious, expertly executed and profoundly subversive Pilgrim’s Progress in reverse. It charts the rebellious journey of a sanctimonious clergyman’s son from doctrinaire adolescence to emotional, political and sexual maturity. At the start of his quest, young Stephen Franklin gazes dreamily across a sun-dappled green and pleasant land and, stirred by Edward Elgar’s emblematic oratorio ‘The Dream of Gerontius’, asks himself how he might best serve his country. By journey’s end, he no longer wishes to follow England’s ‘Aryan national family on its Christian path,” is more relaxed about his homosexuality, and has shaken off parochial, parroted patriotism in favour of more heterodox and nuanced notions of nationhood earthed deep in the pre-Christian pagan past.

As Stephen’s moral compass swivels and the tectonic plates of his universe shift, he comes to see himself, those in his orbit, even the landscape of his boyhood in a different light. His father proves to be more interesting than he’d allowed and other than he’d assumed. He develops affection and respect for the radical writer, Arne, and his wife – a progressive couple he formerly despised. Having initially viewed the Arnes’ childless marriage as an example of divine justice, he comes to hope they can adopt: ‘I hope they give you lot’s of children, a whole tribe, because you’re interesting people and your children will have interesting lives.” The very names of places he thought he knew change before his eyes and take on fresh significance (Pinvin, Pinfin, Penfen, Penda’s Fen). The countryside comes to seem less and less benign. Arne (a surrogate Ruskin as much as Stephen is) suggests that chilling state experiments are afoot beneath the land. And, as Stephen unravels before aligning with his authentic self, as his pubescent infatuations solidify into adult sexual desire, things become increasingly strange and dark, occasionally apocalyptic and violent.

One of the most powerful, haunting and thought-provoking films of its era, indeed of any era. An endlessly fascinating, forensic examination of England, its landscape, its past and its politics; a perceptive, completely convincing, and moving portrayal of the turbulence of adolescence; a philosophically and politically rich meditation on what it is to grow up, and continue to be human. Television could do this once. Alan Clarke, David Rose, David Ruskin. The holy trio. Emblazon their name in shining lights. Please, don’t dilly-dally, watch this magnificent film without delay. Highly recommended.
Jerry Whyte
http://www.cineoutsider.com/reviews/bluray/p/pendas_fen_br.html

 

 

At certain times, the stars and planets seem to be in perfect alignment. Take for instance a particular time in the early 1970s when folk art abounded and films like The Wicker Man were being made.

TV companies at this time ploughed money into new and experimental writing, such as for the Play for Today series. Many of these lovingly crafted screenplays are recognised in hindsight to be lost treasures, such as Good and Bad at Games and Just a Boy’s Game. Most were a slap in the face for any repressive establishment. These exciting times peaked for me in 1974 when the singular talents of director Alan Clarke, producer David Rose and writer David Rudkin collaborated to make Penda’s Fen, the most striking, multi-layered and affecting film I have seen.

Part-inspired (and admired) by Harold Pinter, Rudkin is an unusual character; humane and vulnerable, with an edgy wit and titanic intellect. A consummate dramatist and screenwriter, he is most importantly a storyteller from the Anglo-Irish tradition (I think here of the darkly soporific tones and the relish with which he introduced Penda’s Fen on its 1989 rerun, drawing us into its world). He had appeared to wait in the regional wings behind Brook and Tynan throughout the 1960s, soaking up a different kind of wisdom. Things “came together”, he said, with Penda’s Fen.

Made at the BBC’s Pebble Mill studios, the film is set in the rural midlands, Rudkin’s spiritual homeland, where the last urban outposts of Birmingham meet the ancient hills that Elgar walked and immortalised in music. Among these contrasts and to the strains of the hymn Jerusalem, played on the school assembly organ, we witness a soul in transition, that of an adolescent boy, Stephen Franklin. Voicing his outrage at the ‘unnatural’ content of popular television plays, we meet him as a priggish and idealistic young conservative about to be engulfed by the natural mysteries of the visionary landscapes that surround him.

As we watch he is unravelled on every level as the voices of the ancient land penetrate the staunchness of his defences. His homosexual awakening is punctuated by apparitions of angels, demons and the ancient fathers who walked his hills, including the affirming presences of the ghosts of Elgar and the pagan King Penda. Stephen descends further into a fantasy space where place names regress hypnotically. He witnesses the sick Mother and Father of England, “who would have us children forever”, a TV couple he once admired for upholding family values. In a memorable scene their yellow-clad devotees willingly surrender to mutilation with much wrist chopping and bloodstained oaks. Certain times, the stars and planets seem to be in perfect alignment.

And many of his other suppositions are challenged. His father turns out to be not as religiously conservative as Stephen had imagined but is still a stabilising presence. He provides a historical context with reference to the struggles of Joan of Arc and King Penda in which Stephen can locate his own turbulence. Mr. Arne, the local radical screenwriter and his wife become unexpected friends to Stephen as opposed to people to be feared and ridiculed. Stephen is rejected by his militaristic boys’ school for his lack of national pride and his entire direction changes. He becomes ready to receive his true inheritance.

David Rose has praised the economy of Rudkin’s writing and, indeed, nothing is overstated as Stephen’s values- moral, political, sexual, emotional, spiritual and familial – are decimated, leaving a space in which something new can be created. It is a film of changes; Stephen is nurtured through his journey by the hills and the phenomena sent out by the “primal genie of the earth” to guide him on his way.

This is not general pathetic fallacy, but something much more intricate; the landscape seems alive, active and knowing. It communicates with Stephen, encourages him and he receives his true parenting from it and his ancestors. The film captures the process of change so accurately, with a real understanding of the trials of emotional development.

I first saw it when I was eighteen. To witness at that age (the same age as Stephen) the cathartic turmoil of his adolescence was like being blessed; something about the irrevocable force of change and progress implicit in the film stayed with me. The idea of working for a more genuine and authentic self which has the potential to be at odds with social normality has enabled me to work on the frontline with people who are in transition, who are achieving meaning and progress through the most seemingly senseless of adversities. Penda’s Fen has informed my understanding of this in many and profound ways.
Victoria Childs
https://www.closeupfilmcentre.com/vertigo_magazine/volume-3-issue-1-spring-2006/penda-s-fen/

 

 

‘I am afflicted by images, by things that are seen, pictures of things,” dramatist and screenwriter David Rudkin told an interviewer in 1964. “They are extraordinary, momentary, but they stay with me.” He was talking about his play Afore Night Come (1962), which led Kenneth Tynan to proclaim: “Not since Look Back in Anger has a playwright made a debut more striking than this.” But it’s also true of Penda’s Fen, an unforgettable hybrid of horror story, rites-of‑passage spiritual quest and vision of an alternative England that has been hailed as one of the most original and vauntingly ambitious British films of the last half century.

Originally broadcast in 1974 as part of the BBC’s Play for Today strand, and directed by Alan Clarke, who would later become celebrated for scaldingly in-yer-face social realist films such as Scum (1978) and Made in Britain (1982), it’s set in Worcestershire, at the heart of pastoral England. Stephen Franklin (played by Spencer Banks) is a pastor’s son who talks fondly of supporting the “Aryan national family on its Christian path” and is repelled by the arrival in his village of a socialist writer who defends striking workers and asks pointed questions about government-backed projects in the local countryside.

Soon, however, Stephen’s moral certainty and grip on reality begin to founder. He has dreams of naked classmates, of a demon sitting on his bed. He sees an angel in a stream. He meets Edward Elgar who tells him the secret of Enigma Variations. Cracks appear in a church floor and he learns, not only that his father holds a far less orthodox position on Christianity than he imagined, but that he is adopted. Then, just when things couldn’t get any more mysterious, he starts to come into the orbit of King Penda, the last Pagan king of Britain who died in AD655.

The film is a passionate deconstruction of conservative myths about nationhood. At a critical point, the formerly hidebound Stephen cries out: “No, no! I am nothing pure! My race is mixed. My sex is mixed. I am woman and man, light with darkness, nothing pure! I am mud and flame!” Rather than hewing to a belief in tradition, continuity or stability, Rudkin champions hybridity and what Salman Rushdie would later term cultural “mongrelisation”. A while before it became fashionable for historians to talk about the inseparability of “nation and narration” or “the invention of tradition”, Rudkin was arguing that English Christianity was a violently imposed ideology. The family, heterosexuality, militarised manhood: all these pillars of patriotism take a tumble.

What makes Penda’s Fen particularly prescient is that it locates these hybrid transformations in the English countryside. The 1970s saw a number of artists offering new versions of pastoral – Philip Trevelyan’s The Moon and the Sledgehammer (1971) was a creepy documentary about a family living without electricity in a wood; Richard Mabey’s The Unofficial Countryside (1973) introduced readers to what would later be known as edgelands; Jeremy Sandford’s Tomorrow’s People (1974) portrayed the Dionysian longings of free-festival revellers. Rudkin shows rural England to be a place of struggles and heresies, of antagonisms and anguish. The film even turns to etymology, arguing that “pagan”, which originally meant “belonging to the village”, referred to the politics of local governance as much as it did to theological doctrine.

Stephen, the film’s unsteady centre, is told: “Be secret. Child be strange, dark, true, impure, and dissonant. Cherish our flame.” For Rob Young, author of Electric Eden (2010), Penda’s Fen is part psychogeography, part toolkit for imaginative unshackling: “The pattern under the plough, the occult history of Albion – the British Dreamtime – lies waiting to be discovered by anyone with the right mental equipment.”

The film is acute in its portrait of adolescence at a time of scepticism, idealism, susceptibility. Priggish and a touch self-righteous, Stephen is not someone with whom it’s immediately easy to empathise. He is not as lovable as Billy Casper in Ken Loach’s Kes (1969). Nor is he a hero or a role model. He doesn’t have the charisma of Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson’s If… (1968). But, like Mick, he finds himself in flight from the corridors of English power, its citadels of prestige and establishment group-think – its imperial masculinity.

Even though its effects are primitive by today’s standards, Rudkin’s drama, appearing a year after Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now and Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man, is often hailed as a watermark of British horror. But its real peers are eldritch TV thrillers such as Jonathan Miller’s adaptation of an MR James story Whistle and I’ll Come to You (1968), Alan Garner’s The Owl Service (1969-1970) and Nigel Kneale’s The Stone Tape (1972). For Jim Jupp, one half of the Ghost Box record label whose sonic and visual aesthetic owes a debt to Penda’s Fen, “What made these films so powerful to me as teenager was that you didn’t know anything about them. They weren’t repeated. There was no internet to help you crack them. They kept their mystery.”

Another mystery, from a modern-day standpoint, is how Rudkin’s script was even commissioned: deeply layered, rich in sexual and mythological motifs, trusting the audience to have the patience and intelligence to engage with its handling of complex theological, historical and political ideas, it also migrates beyond the social-realist templates of the majority of screen and stage productions in the early 1970s – the West Country has never looked so Aztec – and uses a subtly minimalist sound design shaped by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop’s Paddy Kingsland.

Penda’s Fen’s admirers include TV historian Michael Wood, comic-book writer Grant Morrison, and Sight and Sound editor Nick James. For various copyright reasons it has never been issued on video or DVD. Nonetheless, divining the ways in which archaeology can be a necessary agitation, landscape an imaginative resource, Rudkin’s work is as vital now – and as incandescent a rejoinder to the pious bucolics of cultural nationalists – as it was in 1974.
Sukhdev Sandhu
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/nov/14/pendas-fen-heresy-horror-pastoral-horror

 

 

Penda’s Fen is a dense, difficult work, drawing on themes of theology, psychogeography, national identity and classical music. It’s if anything too dense, a film which no doubt needs unpicking over more than one viewing. That’s quite an ask for a television production for which the original contracts specified one showing with the possibility of one repeat within two years (which it received, on 13 February 1975). For the great majority of the population, there was no means of recording a television programme, and plot points were in danger of being missed if the phone rang or you dozed off, with no means of replaying. Penda’s Fen was repeated again in 1990, which was the first time I saw it.

One risk the play takes from the outset is that Stephen is an all but insufferable prig. But over the next 89 minutes, the pillars of his worldview have been undermined: church, school, the army (Stephen is a cadet), the sanctity of marriage and heterosexuality. He wonders if his neighbour, Arne (Ian Hogg), is “unnatural” – homosexual – and suggests it’s for the best that Arne and his wife (Jennie Hesselwood) have not been able to produce children. But he soon wonders if he is homosexual himself.

Early on, we see him in debate praising a Christian couple for obtaining an injunction aganst the showing of a documentary about Jesus. Take note of the couple’s triumphal gesture, as it recurs in a dream sequence where Stephen sees a group of smiling children lining up so that a man can chop their hands off with an axe – a clear linking with evangelical religion with older faiths involving child sacrifice. Rudkin suggests that as newer religions supplant older ones, the older gods are cast in the role of the Devil…and it may have been that Joan of Arc (and death by burning also features here) worshipped an older god than the one in whose name she became a Christian saint. Penda’s Fen harks back to an earlier, visionary tradition where people regularly saw angels and devils, and that’s exactly what happens to Stephen. We see the angel before Stephen does, implying that it is real and not simply a product of his imagination. Contemporary life, it’s suggested, has narrowed its perspective, and we have a barrier preventing us from seeing angels. And if we have such a barrier above, so we have one below: we don’t see devils either. For Stephen, those barriers have become porous.

At the beginning of the film, Stephen is writing an essay on Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius, a vision of death, the afterlife and a meeting with God. As Ken Russell did in his own film on Elgar, Rudkin and Clarke frequently lets Elgar play out on the soundtrack, a departure from Clarke’s usual practice of not having any non-diegetic music in his work. Another unusual technique is mismatching the soundtrack and visuals at certain points. Partway through the film, Stephen meets Elgar (Graham Leaman) who gives Stephen (and us) a key to what is going on: he left a piece of music as a puzzle, to work in counterpoint with an unspecified well-known piece of music to produce something new. Arne and his wife’s “chemical compound” does not work as they are infertile. Jesus, Stephen’s father says, is where “legislator and demon fuse” and he compares him to Karl Marx, another visionary whose message is distorted by those who followed him, and both are “crucified” over and over. Light and darkness. Two of the ancient elements: mud (earth) and flame (fire). Man and woman. Finally, Stephen has a vision of King Penda, the last pagan king of England, whose tribe intermarried with the Welsh, and after whom the village is named. (Penda’s Fen – Pendefen – Pinfin – Pinvin.)

Heady stuff, and if ultimately this is a writer’s film rather than a director’s one, in Clarke’s hands it has a realism which prevents the whimsy that could have infested a story like this. It’s certainly a play of ideas, and so the characters tend to be mouthpieces for those ideas rather than nuanced people, the play is still as well acted within those limitations as you would expect from Clarke. It’s certainly an outlier in his work, but a compelling and highly original one that, it was widely suspected, was only made in the first place due to its Birmingham base. In London, it might have met with more interference. No doubt most people watching on that Thursday night in 1974 hadn’t seen anything like it, and it’s hard to imagine it being made at all nowadays.
Gary Couzens
http://television.thedigitalfix.com/content/id/2961/pendas-fen.html

 

 

Come back to the village: A Penda’s Fen pilgrimage:
http://pinvin.com/pendas-pilgrimage/

To watch the film itself, you have two options. The only embeddable YouTube clip has it showing in a corner of the screen against a backdrop of falling snow:

 

 

Alternatively, the film is available fullscreen by simply clicking on this link:
http://openloadmovies.net/movies/pendas-fen-1974/

Thanks, and I hope you enjoy it.

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. This is really nice: Last week or thereabouts, as you will remember, I did an Alan Clarke Day. Today, _Black_Acrylic aka artist Ben Robinson does a zoom-in and concentration on one of the films that was briefly presented in the larger post. Which is kind of beautifully meta in that sense, not to mention the fact that you get a great post that is fascinating on its lonesome. Please dig in, thank you, and, as always with guest-posts, do reward _B_A’s work and generosity with a word or many more. Big up and huge thanks from me, Ben! ** Dóra Grőber, Hi! Yeah, my friends who’ve had artist parents always both express their feelings of luck for that and caution me not get too daydreamy about how perfect that situation is. But it’s very cool that all of you in your family are artists. My parents weren’t, like I said, but my grandmother, my uncle, and my great grandmother were all painters. My siblings aren’t artists, but my nephew is a writer. I feel lucky for that much. Setting up the bank account is in motion, and hopefully I can get that done by the first of the year. The location photos were great. We’ve found the world where our film will be shot! It’s a kind of bleak but beautiful newish neighborhood/ housing development on the outskirts of Cherbourg that has most of what we’ll need: blocks of towering brutalist-ish social housing buildings, small houses, parks, playgrounds, strange mall, etc. all right next to each other so we won’t have to fake the neighborhood we’ll need by having shoot pieces of it all over the place. We still need to find a few locations like a small amusement park, a small river, a field, and a mine, but we’re getting there. So, yes, everything is going really well. The rehearsals went very well yesterday. Good progress. One last long rehearsal today and then there’s a break for a few months. I hope you a very great day yourself? Was it? ** Jamie, Hi! Thank you, sir. About the poetry post. Yes, I got your emails. I will write to him very soon, as soon as I’m not eaten up by the dance rehearsing. Everything went excellently out in Nanterre. A lot of concentrating on helping the dancers develop their individual characters and figure out how to move/dance while staying in character to a degree that the viewer can read them as individuals with narrative agendas and emotional trajectories and so on. The progress was very good. It is fun work, and the dancers are such awesome, dedicated people, so they’re a true pleasure to collaborate with. No, I didn’t see that Zadie Smith piece. I’ll go find it. Thanks for alerting me. Make Xmas cards? Like by hand? Future collectibles! I’m back at he dance rehearsals again today. And you? And Thursday? How did you and it get along? Love, me. ** David Ehrenstein, Ha, it’s true. ** Steevee, Ha, I suppose I could figure out a way to compose a BDSM loving detective if I had absolutely had to, ha ha. Well, your doc is probably right, although I did immediately think, ‘Doctors always want to take the credit for any positive effect in their patients’. Well, I’m not sure how hard it is for someone in France who has a ‘9-5 job’ and an easily proveable income, but for an artist like me who makes money randomly and unevenly, it’s definitely harder here. Like I think I mentioned before, I need to set up a French bank account, and it needs to contain an amount of money covering at least a year’s worth of rent in advance before I can even begin the process of renting anything. ** Tomk, Hi, T. Promising, if only. No, there is a charm to have one’s culinary possibilities bracketed by what fits inside a machine. Well, what I really wanted was one of these awful, usually kind of stale sugar-coated cold waffles that are generally a staple of French vending machines. But they were sold out! So I bought, ate, and could ultimately accept a Bueno bar, if you know Bueno bars. I think today I will try this horrible looking kind of roll thing that has some kind of horrible looking jelly inside it and is called Petit (something). Nice, man. xx ** Omar, Hi. Yes, here’s the deal. MAC VAL is rather disorganized, to put it mildly. At the moment, the plan is that there will be no advance tickets sold, and it will be a first-come-first-served situation. Gisele does not like that arrangement one little bit, so she’s trying to get them to offer advance reservations. We will see. In any case, I can get you in. Whatever the arrangement is, I can put you on ‘the list’ and guarantee you a seat. Basically, write to me at my address — denniscooper72@outlook.com — sometime between after Xmas and whenever in January, and I’ll put your name on the company’s reservation or guest list or whatever it ends up being, if that makes sense and is okay? ** Larry Delinger, Thanks a lot, Larry. I’m very happy that the poems gave you pleasure. ** H, Hi. Thank you about the poem post. I’m getting the buche today. I actually put it off too long, and now a number of the best candidates are already sold out, so now I have to choose among the remainders and reserve asap. Eek. Xmas themed experimental films! I would love to have a peek at your list when you’re finished compiling. ** Misanthrope, Thank you, sir. Staying in the city would be nice. I didn’t realize you weren’t staying in the heart. That sounds like a lot busy work. Yeah, I understand. I generally can squeeze humor out of everything, and the blacker the humor the better, but I just can’t with him. It’s biologcal or something. ** Mark Gluth, Hi, Mark! Oh, I fear my high five just ended up being a strange looking, indistinguishable one. Maybe if I tried to construct that new-form high five as the substructure for a novel, I could do it, but in the real world, I just went dork. I most assuredly will keep my half of that promise, I promise. ** Jeff J, Thanks, Jeff. I think, if I had to guess, no, on the Berrigan question. Yes, so we have aligned about ‘Evolution’. Lucille (the director) is a good friend of Gisele’s, and I know her through Gisele. (Gisele helped choreograph that static orgy scene on the beach in ‘Evolution’.) Lucille’s also the partner of Gaspar Noe, and I know her through Gaspar. I think she honestly is trying to do what you would think she’s trying to do: construct a compelling utter cinematic mystery involving but not overly disclosing childhood-centric fantasies and emotions intersected with adulthood-centric fear and repressed erotic perversion. I just think that she ends up giving too much weight to her film’s atmospherics at the expense of whatever meaning the atmospherics are resulting from. Or something. I think she’s very talented, and I think she’ll get closer. I’m well on my end, busy like you are, and I’m glad you’re striking a good balance. ** Right. Forage in ‘Penda’s Fen’ today, and talk to _B_A, and to me too if you want, and thank you again. See you tomorrow.

 

 

 

Redeemed Area
by John Ashbery

Do you know where you live? Probably.

Abner is getting too old to drive but won’t admit it.

The other day he got in his car to go buy some cough drops

of a kind they don’t make anymore. And the drugstore

has been incorporated into a mall about seven miles away

with only about half the stores rented. There are three

other malls within a four-mile area. All the houses

are owned by the same guy, who’s been renting

them out to college students for years, so they are virtually uninhabitable.

A smell of vitriol and socks pervades the area

like an open sewer in a souk. Anyway the cough drops

(a new brand) tasted pretty good-like catnip

or an orange slice that has lain on a girl’s behind.

That’s the electrician calling now

nobody else would call before 7 A.M. Now we’ll have some

electricity in the place. I’ll start by plugging in

the Christmas tree lights. They were what made the whole thing

go up in sparks the last time. Next, the light

by the dictionary stand, so I can look some words up.

Then probably the toaster. A nice slice

of toast would really hit the spot now. I’m afraid it’s all over

between us, though. Make nice, like you really cared,

I’ll change my chemise, and we can dance around the room

like demented dogs, eager for a handout or they don’t

know what. Gradually, everything will return to normal, I

promise you that. There’ll be things for you to write about

in your diary, a fur coat for me, a lavish shoe tree for that other.

Make that two slices. I can see you only through a vegetal murk

not unlike coral, if it were semi-liquid, or a transparent milkshake.

I have adjusted the lamp;

morning’s at seven,

the tarnish has fallen from the metallic embroidery, the walls have fallen,

the country’s pulse is racing. Parents are weeping,

the schools have closed.

All the fuss has put me in a good mood,

O great sun.

 

Ranting
by Megan Green

ranting, pathetic insecurities, overwhelm the Christmas tree, and you promise
me a utopia, a sort of subsequential America,
where we’ll fuck & eat & play the craps, Las
Vegas is the only place it’ll happen, &
yet the nameless, intrude like a swarm of fucking locusts
feasting upon the Satin drape of my finest
face, I believe your chest most of all, that’s where
the dragon begins, & the sigh
spills from my eyes. Dead petals favour the corners. Gathering
like they have plans.

 

Making the Best of the Holidays
by James Tate

Justine called on Christmas day to say she
was thinking of killing herself. I said, “We’re
in the middle of opening presents, Justine. Could
you possibly call back later, that is, if you’re
still alive.” She was furious with me and called
me all sorts of names which I refuse to dignify
by repeating them. I hung up on her and returned
to the joyful task of opening presents. Everyone
seemed delighted with what they got, and that
definitely included me. I placed a few more logs
on the fire, and then the phone rang again. This
time it was Hugh and he had just taken all of his
pills and washed them down with a quart of gin.
“Sleep it off, Hugh,” I said, “I can barely under-
stand you, you’re slurring so badly. Call me
tomorrow, Hugh, and Merry Christmas.” The roast
in the oven smelled delicious. The kids were playing
with their new toys. Loni was giving me a big
Christmas kiss when the phone rang again. It was
Debbie. “I hate you,” she said. “You’re the most
disgusting human being on the planet.” “You’re
absolutely right,” I said, “and I’ve always been
aware of this. Nonetheless, Merry Christmas, Debbie.”
Halfway through dinner the phone rang again, but
this time Loni answered it. When she came back
to the table she looked pale. “Who was it?” I
asked. “It was my mother,” she said. “And what
did she say?” I asked. “She said she wasn’t my
mother,” she said.

 

Sonnet 8
by Edwin Denby

Three old sheepherders so filthy in their ways
Whores wouldn’t touch them with a ten foot pole
Saw once the Christmas star which in a blaze
Pierced like delight into the secret soul.

They later also stood with their same faces
Around a baby male and there were shown
The heart caressing with millennial graces
A beauty which in love is all its own.

These three were the first according to the story
But unbaptized they never will reach heaven
In an eternal hell tortured and gory
They can recall the joy that they were given,

This savage torture by the law of love
Of Christmas shepherds I like thinking of.

 

 

I’ll Be Me and You Be Goethe
by Heather Christie

I want it to be winter and I want to change
the color of this room This room should be
a blue room and it should be freezing
but ventilated and I in my medium snowsuit
irresistible I know because everything I do
I do to get more beautiful so you will want
to love me in the cold and indoor morning

 

What I’d Like For Christmas, 1970
by Ted Berrigan

Black brothers to get happy
The Puerto Ricans to say hello
The old folks to take it easy &
as it comes
The United States to get straight
Power to butt out
Money to fuck off
Business with honor
Religion
& Art
Love
A home
A typewriter
A GUN.

 

Advent
by Rae Armantrout

In front of the craft shop,
a small nativity,
mother, baby, sheep
made of white
and blue balloons.

*

Sky
god
girl.

Pick out the one
that doesn’t belong.

*

Some thing

close to nothing
flat
from which,

fatherless,
everything has come.

 

Look at My Head, It’s a Pumpkin with a Candle in It
by Keegan Crawford

What is on your bed right now?
I laid there for fifteen minutes with my face down into the pillow.
I imagined how I looked from another person’s point of view
and I looked dead, in a humorous way.
What is your favorite holiday?
The tree was fake and everyone was acting like the tree.
If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?
The drop was five stories, so I didn’t look down. I just looked forward.
Have you ever been camping?
I don’t know why people are scared of wolves. ‘Blood thirsty killing machine’ is a false phrase. They are not robots and they drink water.
What was the last thing you ate?
I am not a blood thirsty killing machine. I just wanted to clarify that.
Do you have any regrets?
Flowers die 100% percent of the time. I still like flowers, though.

 

 

Season’s Greetings
by Ron Padgett

The holidays are said
to give one a chance
to get in touch with others
but what held back that chance
the rest of the year?
What it means is
that the holidays are a time
when we should behave
like other people, as if
in junior high school,
jury duty, or the Army,
whereas what Philip Whalen
wanted was to take a holiday
from holidays, and then
he wavered, beautifully.

 

Kage’s First Xmas
by Ben Mirov

I am thinking of him and her having sex. I am thinking of them having really great sex, probably in front of a mirror. I am alone in the house. The TV is on, but everyone is asleep. I am about to turn twenty-one. When I turn twenty-one I am going to put on snowshoes. I am going to put on snowshoes and walk as far as I can into the snow. Once I am out in the snow I am going to sit down. I will probably sit in the snow for a long time. I’ll bring a sandwich and some juice. When I return to the house it will be Xmas morning. I will take off my snowshoes and I will tell my family my new name. I will say, On advent of my twenty-first birthday I have taken a new name. Henceforth I shall be called Kage. Kage with a K and not a C. From now on I will only answer to the name Kage. Thank you very much, and then I will walk out of the room. Then I will probably take a shower because I will be cold from sitting in the snow. I will walk into the bathroom and take off all my clothes and look at my body in the mirror. I will probably flex a little. Kage likes his new body. Then I will take a long shower. I will wash every part of my body, including my asshole and my ears and toes. Every part of my body will be clean. Then I will get out of the shower and go have Xmas. I will open my presents and say, Kage does not want this. Kage has no use for a Playstation. Kage does wear sweaters.

 

untitled
by Megan Boyle

everything i touch is going to be a fossil some day my dad still hasn’t taken down his christmas decorations

i walked to his refrigerator and immediately unwrapped and ate a square of american cheese

if i drop a toothpick i’m pretty sure it will remain where it fell for three days

not sure what happens after that.

 

Xmas Poem: Bolinas
by Robert Creeley

All around
the snow
don’t fall.

Come Christmas
we’ll get high
and go find it.

 

Love Poem
by Louise Glück

There is always something to be made of pain.
Your mother knits.
She turns out scarves in every shade of red.
They were for Christmas, and they kept you warm
while she married over and over, taking you
along. How could it work,
when all those years she stored her widowed heart
as though the dead come back.
No wonder you are the way you are,
afraid of blood, your women
like one brick wall after another.

 

 

All the Lovers
by Kevin Killian

Outside the Disney Concert Hall,
Kylie has summoned a clutch of cold models in white underwear,

They clamber on white boxes pitching for the sky

Somehow she appears in a dream sequence,

Boys and girls kiss and poke and struggle for love

In California, where the major candidates for governor and senator
live the lavish lives of Roman emperors,

Carly Fiorina, like Nero, bought a violin
for everyone on her Christmas list, from Cremona,

her wood golden and thin as hair,

81 per cent of voters don’t care how wealthy a
candidate is

You have to be rich to flourish

What came first, the wifebeater or the social system
that allowed ever and ever more flourish

In the face of a liverish social despair
all the lovers who have gone before

they don’t compare to you

 

i am a big dumbass bear on christmas morning
by partrik

holy shit a house

im gonna look inside the fucking window

who the fuck is this dumbass family in this house

if i wanted to i could bust in there and eat every one of these fuckers

look at this little fucker opening a present

oh look its a fire truck big deal ass monkey

when are these shit hats gonna fucking notice the bear at their window

hey bitch you forgot to look in your stocking

there you go

lol bubba wubba and chocolate give her a fucking toothbrush mom and dad

when are they gonna see me and chase me away

damn thats a lot of wrapping paper

lol that kitten is playing in it what a retard

oh shit they see me

“im not gonna hurt you or eat you”

but it sounds like “roar roar roar” to them cause im a big dumbass fucking bear

dad thats a big ass gun

dont shoot me think of all the fun times

like when watched your lovely family open presents on christmas

oh shit he took a warning shot im gonna run away

there is no presents under any of the trees of the woods of the world for me

why arent i hibernating

 

in a string of christmas lights that is blinking all year long
by Diana Salier

for christmas i get a new magic set and a big plastic stealth bomber that opens up and holds fifty little metal stealth bombers. i wear footie pajamas that zip all the way to my neck. the big plastic stealth bomber has a runway to practice takeoffs and landings. i sit on the carpet in my onesie and make the grey and green stealth bombers crash into each other so that all the pilots inside will die. i can’t finish card tricks or make the red balls disappear so i wear my black felt magician’s hat and walk around pulling rabbits out of things. i drive to my first girlfriend’s house. we drink wine and leave the bottles in the door of her parents’ car. on the way back to my house i text her all i want for christmas is you. at home a string of christmas lights blinks erratically. i fall asleep clearing the rubble off the runway.

 

December
by James Schuyler

The giant Norway spruce from Podunk, its lower branches bound,
this morning was reared into place at Rockefeller Center.
I thought I saw a cold blue dusty light sough in its boughs
the way other years the wind thrashing at the giant ornaments
recalled other years and Christmas trees more homey.
Each December! I always think I hate “the over-commercialized event”
and then bells ring, or tiny light bulbs wink above the entrance
to Bonwit Teller or Katherine going on five wants to look at all
the empty sample gift-wrapped boxes up Fifth Avenue in swank shops
and how can I help falling in love? A calm secret exultation
of the spirit that tastes like Sealtest eggnog, made from milk solids,
Vanillin, artificial rum flavoring; a milky impulse to kiss and be friends
It’s like what George and I were talking about, the East West
Coast divide: Californians need to do a thing to enjoy it.
A smile in the street may be loads! you don’t have to undress everybody.
“You didn’t visit the Alps?”
“No, but I saw from the train they were black
and streaked with snow.”
Having and giving but also catching glimpses
hints that are revelations: to have been so happy is a promise
and if it isn’t kept that doesn’t matter. It may snow
falling softly on lashes of eyes you love and a cold cheek
grow warm next to your own in hushed dark familial December.

 

 

That night with the green sky
by Tao Lin

It was snowing and you were kind of beautiful
We were in the city and every time I looked up
Someone was leaning out a window, staring at me

I could tell you liked me a lot or maybe even loved me
But you kept walking at this strange speed
You kept going in angles and it was confusing me

I think maybe you were thinking that you’d make me disappear
By walking at strange speeds and in a strange, curvy way
But how would that cause me to vanish from the planet Earth?

And that hurts
Why did you want me gone?
That hurts
Why?
Why?
I don’t know
Some things can’t be explained, I guess
The sky, for example, was green that night

 

“Shhh”
by Eileen Myles

I don’t think
I can’t afford the time to not sit right down &
write a poem about the heavy lidded
white rose I hold in my hand
I think of snow
a winter night in Boston, drunken waitress
stumble on a bus that careens through
Somerville the end of the line
where I was born, an old man
shaking me. He could’ve been my dad
You need a ride? Wait, he said.
This flower is so heavy in my hand.
He drove me home in his old blue
Dodge, a thermos next to me
cigarette packs on the dash
so quiet like Boston is quiet
Boston in the snow. It’s New York
plates are clattering on St. Mark’s
Place. Should I call you?
Can I go home now
& work with this undelivered
message in my fingertips
It’s Summer.
I love you.
I’m surrounded by snow.

 

Music
by Frank O’Hara

If I rest for a moment near The Equestrian
pausing for a liver sausage sandwich in the Mayflower Shoppe,
that angel seems to be leading the horse into Bergdorf’s
and I am naked as a table cloth, my nerves humming.
Close to the fear of war and the stars which have disappeared.
I have in my hands only 35¢, it’s so meaningless to eat!
and gusts of water spray over the basins of leaves
like the hammers of a glass pianoforte. If I seem to you
to have lavender lips under the leaves of the world,
I must tighten my belt.
It’s like a locomotive on the march, the season
of distress and clarity
and my door is open to the evenings of midwinter’s
lightly falling snow over the newspapers.
Clasp me in your handkerchief like a tear, trumpet
of early afternoon! in the foggy autumn.
As they’re putting, up the Christmas trees on Park Avenue
I shall see my daydreams walking by with dogs in blankets,
put to some use before all those coloured lights come on!
But no more fountains and no more rain,
and the stores stay open terribly late.

 

on sunday we took the train to the city and we each went home for one night and i saw my parents and my bedroom and my cat and you saw your ex boyfriend and his parents and his bedroom and his dog and when i called you i heard you ask me to go back to sleep and i said is everything okay and you told me to please go back to sleep
by Spencer Madsen

not sure if you
ever told me how
you felt about
christmas lights

i said i’d wrap them around our room
and put popcorn in your mouth

a few weeks ago i
walked onto a street
and sat prepared

lets
sleep like two hands
caught
in each other’s fingers

lets be demonstrative
of that image
in an earnest way
lets forget i wrote it down
or else it won’t feel genuine

yesterday i googled:
homemade fleshlight

 

 

Is This a Poem For the Year 2219?
by Mike Young

Yes, this is a poem for the year 2219
about the fact my bathroom is above
my neighbors’ bedroom, and I sing
Roy Orbison songs at immaculate volumes
during my routines, which is partly my love
of song and partly my obsession with the idea
of audience. Dear 2219, a bathroom is a private
chlorinated water repository filled with hair gel
and other methods of impression insurance,
like sleeping pills. Neighbors are people who
lock the downstairs door just because some
random bro started fingerpainting their door-
bell Sunday night. Oops, he said. You’re not my
parents. Neighbors leave notes asking you to park
considerately and curbside boxes of giveaway bins
to judge them by. In bedrooms, 2219, what you do is
sniff a cowboy shirt you’ve plucked off the floor to see
if it’s okay to wear for teaching the kids I guess you call
First Moroccan Restauranteer in Space and Single Season
Small Needle Home Run Record Holder. You leave the mandarin
peels on your bed after having awesome sex with your girlfriend
but throw them away when she leaves for work. In 2219, you may
instead want to rub the peels all over your chest. If so, history
repeats itself. Golly. Singing is a method of generating inside
you a logging road, dawn-ish, swards of sugar beets, after driving
all night, knowing it’s about to rain but it’s not raining yet, thanks
sky! Singing may also be catalogued as Christmas underwater
and hiking slowly along the railroad ties with the best candy bar
but no home. For the sub-category of song known as Roy Orbison,
ditch your footnotes, 2219! 1936-1988, popular for soaring R&B;
and indoor sunglasses: that’s not Roy Orbison! Roy Orbison is a
naked knee so lovely you’d cry if you weren’t afraid of the knee
getting wet. Other things you need to know, 2219: I am afraid of
everything. We would rake the stars into piles to say what’s after
us. Happiness without certain phone calls is impossible. Your father
will die. Last Christmas, I ran into my friend Reggie at the cineplex.
His kid was cute. Me and my other friend were making fun of the movie
Reggie wanted to see. Reggie and I cussed together for the first time I can
remember, but I think we’re made of different smoke. 2219, I might be
above you or something. But I’m probably just below you. I take so many
multivitamins. Sometimes I try to make sure the best songs in my iTunes
have the most plays, but I don’t know why. Carolyn’s a better singer than
I am, and Dorothy told me that when I sing Bridge Over Troubled Water
it sounds like I’m falling apart. Is that a good thing? Wouldn’t it be more
considerate to just spend my time recycling cartons of apple cider for
you, 2219? Instead I carry a pillowcase full of laundry to the laundromat
and try to memorize my life enough to remember my life. I walk streets
named after people too dead to meet and try to sing loud enough to get
stuck in strangers’ heads. Carolyn and I go down on each other to hear the
other make their sounds. One time I saw my downstairs neighbor in a
line, and she smiled, waved at me. I couldn’t remember who she was.
She left her place to come talk. Then I remembered. 2219, they just
found water on the moon. Your love will only count before it’s gone.

 

Christmas Eve
by Bill Berkson

for Vincent Warren

Behind the black water tower

under the grey
of the sky that feeds it
smoke speeds to where a pigeon
spreads its wings

This is no great feat
Cold pushes out its lust
We walk we drink we cast
our giggling insults

Would you please
leave the $2.50 you owe me
I would rather not talk about it
just now           Money bores me I would like
to visit someone who will stay
in bed all day           A forest is rising
imperceptibly in my head
not a civilized park

I think it would be nice this “new
moral odor” no it would not mean
“everything marching to its tomb”
The water tower
watches over us           Is there someone
you would like to invite           no one.

 

from I Remember
by Joe Brainard

I remember Christmas tree lights reflected on the ceiling.

I remember Christmas cards arriving from people my parents forgot to send cards to.

I remember mistletoe.

I remember Christmas carols. And car lots.

I remember Aunt Cleora who lived in Hollywood. Every year for Christmas she sent my brother and me a joint present of one book.

 

A Severe Lack of Holiday Spirit
by Amy Gerstler

I dread the icy white concussion
of winter. Each snowfall demands
panic, like a kidnapper’s hand
clapped over my chapped mouth.
Ice noms everywhere, a plague
of glass. Christmas ornaments’
sickly tinkle makes my molars ache.
One pities the anemic sun
come January. Trees go skeletal.
Children born in the chilly months
are apt to stammer. People hit
the sauce in a big way all winter.
Amidst blizzards they wrestle
unsuccessfully with the dark comedy
of their lives, laughter trapped
in their frigid gizzards. Meanwhile,
the mercury just plummets,
like a migrating duck blasted
out of the sky by some hunter
in a cap with fur earflaps.

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Omar, Hi. Huh, I just did a quick search, and I couldn’t find a way to RSVP or buy tickets either. I’m actually rehearsing with Gisele this morning, and I will ask her about that as soon as I see her. The performance is definitely happening as scheduled. Perhaps it’s just not on sale yet, which is odd, but not impossible. I’ll find out. If you want to just say hi in the comments today, I can respond with whatever information I get. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Oh, well, then I want to watch (rewatch? I can’t remember) ‘Reaction of the Audience’ too. Maybe it’s online, I’ll check. Thanks! ** Dóra Grőber, Hi! Me too. We’ll see, or our intermediary will see. I sure don’t miss the days when I couldn’t do anything without my parents’ approval. What a racket. Yes, I really do think your mom’s ceramics are very special. And I think it’s so cool that you have an artist as a mom. That’s always a dream of those of us whose parents’ aren’t or weren’t, I guess. Things got hectic yesterday, so I’m seeing the location photos today ‘cos Zac and I are both going to attend the long day dance rehearsals. Two birds with one occasion. I just worked on stuff solo and fitfully yesterday and did the grunt work needed to start setting up my French bank account so I can rent my new apartment. Nothing very exciting, but it was okay. Nothing nearly as enticing as decorating Christmas cookies. How’s your today? Mine will be spent in Nanterre, on the outskirts of Paris, which is where the dance rehearsals are happening. ** Alistair, Hi, A! Thanks a lot about the ‘LCTG’ stuff. Yeah, I’m really happy with how it has gone for the film. It’s more alive now a year-plus after it premiered than it even was before. I hope you like it, obviously. I don’t know offhand if Soukaz and Guibert knew one another, I mean, it seems likely. I’ll see if there’s a way to find out. I know someone who knows Soukaz a little, so maybe he’ll know. You must be heading way off to Australia any moment now, no? Safest of flights if you catch one before I get to talk with you next. ** _Black_Acrylic, Thanks for the tip, Ben. I’ll check there. ‘Secret Santa’, I’ve heard of that ritual. The name is cool, kind of sexy or something. Result! ** Steevee, Hi. Congrats on the slimming down. Yeah, a vegan diet, even a modified one, can really remove weight almost in magic way. I haven’t gone vegan in quite a while, but I used to once every year or two, and I would get so skinny that people worried I was dying. Thanks about the me + mystery idea. I’ve definitely studied that form and other genre forms, but I’m not so good at sticking to the requirements. And I think because Robbe-Grillet so nailed and reinvented the detective novel in his work, I’ve always felt like avant-garde meets detective/mystery genre has been done. Not that that’s true, of course. It’s a different sort of thing, but in ‘God Jr’ I’m working carefully and disruptively with the conventions of the adventure video game genre. ** Mark Gluth, Hi, Mark! I’m going to try to invent a kind of high-five offshoot that I can give Zac when I see him this morning that will contain all the particularity that a high five was invented to transmit but without the … I don’t know, hm, corny or masculinity-acquiesing or something quality that makes people like you and me hesitate to perform it. If it works, I’ll draw a diagram or something. I’m curious now about how my ‘HB’ experiment went too. It must in the Fales collection. I think, yes, I was working with a detective trajectory within the systems of ‘Frisk’. I do remember studying the form, yeah. Interesting. Really good to to talk with you, man. ** Jamie, Ha ha, pretty good, pretty good. I’m not going to try any name twisting this AM because I’m doing this with less coffee than I need to be fully awake due to my needing to catch an RER train to the outskirts of Paris at this ungodly hour. Yes, thank you so much, about the guy you know. If you send me his email, I’ll write to him straight away and see what happens. Thanks, man. The acting teachers feels like she’ll be able to persuade the boy’s dad. I don’t know her well, so I don’t know if her confidence is reliable or not, but we sure hope so. No, the film work we needed to do got delayed to today since we’ll both be at the dance rhearsals from moments from now until night, and there is a ton of downtime during the rehearsals. Three course lunch! Stylin’! My lunch yesterday consisted of two flour tortillas rolled up and then dipped, one by one, into a jar of unheated spaghetti sauce. Hence the work ‘stylin’ and its accompanying exclamation mark. I tried to stay away from the Surrender Dorothy thing, I guess to leave the post as unmoored as I could or something? I’m not sure. Today is: watching dancers dance, giving suggestions as to how they can both dance and enunciate their assigned characters at the same time, refining their characters when that isn’t working well, and talking with Zac about film stuff. And eating candy bars and so on from machines since there’s no other food where I’m going. Sound fun? I hope your day offered fun on  a very silver platter. Love, me. ** Right. Please enjoy some festive poetry today to help get you in the Xmas spirit without having to compromise your intelligence and taste. Or something. See you tomorrow.