#23 - Disconnected Intermissions, or: if Kubrick wrote a sonnet, it would be a Chant Royale set to Strauss

Fay Roberts’s penultimate sonnet this year is inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s epic, surreal sci-fi classic, the USAmerican movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), written by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, and starring Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, and Douglas Rain.

In pain, this late, I don’t know if I’ll last;
I tried to read the book when I was wee.
(my television’s not exactly vast)
it’s not the way he wanted us to see…

This fearful symmetry, this awful drone;
intelligence is warfare, death on hand?
And what’s a stylus but a sharpened bit of bone
rotating, waiting for the right to land?

The choir shrills their harsh, triumphant skirls,
the people decorations, afterthoughts
(the future’s white, and all the servants girls)
a way to highlight scale, the plot for naught…

As splendid isolation is the way
this final human touch calls it a day.

Image from Wikipedia

If you have access to Prime Video, you can watch the 2:29 long, English language movie here. Content warnings include: violence, flashing lights, murder. Let us know what you thought if you’ve seen it! Maybe don’t watch it knackered and in lots of pain, though, unless you enjoy obsessing over tapirs in a sleep-deprived state… And conception metaphors…

#22 - Spirited Away (2001)

This poem was inspired by Spirited Away (2001) which was one of my favourite films when I was in school. It’s a Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by the legendary Hayao Miyazaki. A big part of the story revolves around the main character losing her name. Names and naming are a really common theme in stories and folklore, so that was what I focused on for my sonnet. 

#22 – Nameless

an answerless non-riddle

My name is in the swaying of the elms,

the humming birds, all gathering at dusk.

A solitary sound, a darkened realm;

my name’s the pecan, shielded by the husk.

A moniker, inscribed upon my chest,

my name’s the word the finches know by heart.

My name is lightning, my name is suppressed,

a flicker, flaming brightly through the dark. 

A lost lament, my name is happenstance,

a floating orchid, swirling in the swell,

my name resides in roses, when they dance;

my name’s the chemical that splits the cell.

If you can name me, I’ll be yours to keep.

My name is in the earth. It’s buried deep. 

LM 

Image via IMDB

#21 - Shepherd's Pie For Ewe

 #44 Killer of Sheep (1978)

I am the shepherd – probably the best

you’ve ever seen. Popular with sheep –

the sheep, they love me. Last guy, he just messed

up everything. I fixed it: one clean sweep.

 

You seen the markets? Wool is up a bunch –

we’re looking at a boom that never ends!

Triumphal mutton will be served at lunch

and also lamb (for just my closest friends).

 

Another savvy deal: dinners, meet diners!

see, this is doing business in the pro’s!

Ignore my bogus critics and maligners:

I am the greatest – everybody knows

the deaths so wrongly charged to my account

were just the black sheep – clearly they don’t count.

AWB

for the video of the poem, visit Andy's Patreon

#20 - Long Division

(Russell J Turner)

This year we are using films from the Sight and Sound 2022 list as prompts

Fifth up from me is Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Fear Eats the Soul (1974 - #52), heavily informed by my own experience of love across an age divide

For you are so much younger yet possessed
with wisdom way beyond my scatterbrain ‒
we meet in bars, we shelter from the rain,
cocooned from animosity and jest.
We build a monument to stand the test
of time and love, to sing an old refrain
which slowly fades into a frosty pain ‒
we feather and then flee our little nest

But this is not some different land or age
or circumstance, we do not face the fear
and ignorance that others must abide ‒
conclusion comes from what I cannot cage,
the darkness that in time may disappear
beneath the waters of some tranquil tide

RJT

#19 - 22⅘% of 8½

Fay Roberts’s fifth sonnet this year is inspired by Federico Fellini’s metatextual bit of sophistry, the Italian movie, 8½ (1963), written by Federico Fellini, Tullio Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano, and Brunello Rondi, and starring Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimée, and Claudia Cardinale. The first 31:30 made a strong impression…

Of all the tropes that I despise in art
it’s this one that can bore me in a trice:
that every single character, each part’s
despicable, with no redeeming slice

of virtue, humour, sweet humility,
affection for their friends, or even half
an ounce of kindness, unless they’re to be
discarded, punished, nameless, fatted calf.

And worse! Fellini knows he’s got a dud!
He makes the writer tell us to our face!
He hopes to smear his audience with crud,
to make us all complicit in this waste.

I’ve failed my challenge: watch each doled-out reel.
But I won’t play the voyeur for this heel.

The precise moment where I tapped out

If you have access to the BFI (which I won’t shortly because my free trial runs out), you can watch the 2:18 long, multilingual (but mostly Italian) movie here. Content warnings include: misogyny, xenophobia, toxic relationships, suffocation. Let us know what you thought if you’ve seen it! But please don’t try to tell me I’m a philistine for tapping out. That won’t go well.

#18 - Close Up (1990)

This poem was inspired by Close Up (1990), an Iranian film written, directed and edited by Abbas Kiarostami. The film recounts the true story of a man who pretends to be a famous Iranian film director. Does he do this to defraud people out of their money? Or to escape his own life? Or just because he loves cinema so much? You’ll have to watch the film to find out. Close Up includes real footage from the man’s trial, as well as reconstructed scenes, featuring all the people who were involved. Con artists are very fashionable at the moment, and I’ve also just finished reading House of Leaves, so the poem gets a bit labyrinth-y, a bit minotaur-y here and there too.  

#14 – Walking backwards into air 

A man can be accused of minor flaws:

of indiscretion when his temper flares,

of walking backwards, slow, into the air,

of leaving all his guts upon the floor.

On sultry nights, a cold frustration flares: 

I cannot stand myself a moment more!

I am the maze; I am the minotaur.

Identities ephemeral as air.

One person ends, another one begins,

with prospects now as wide and blue as sky,

an echo of the pure and the profane. 

And, when that life’s coherence starts to thin,

an alter-ego lands, a subtle lie,

and suddenly the world is new again!

LM 

Image via Wikipedia

#17 - Necessary Coups

#50 - les Quatre Cent Coups (1959)

 

The art evolves, but slowly – glacial pace.

Divergence rattles, comfort is narcotic;

as careful rehashed bankers win the race,

and torpid lies the culture – dull, sclerotic.

 

I understand, I get it – writing sonnets

is hardly avant-garde – my aging mind

just bimbles out in verse whatever’s on it:

new innovations might leave me behind.

 

I still say evolution needs a shove –

no gentle nudge, but something firm and drastic;

not intervention’s calm, supportive love,

but revolutionary, iconoclastic.

So man the barricades, and raise the flag –

a boy, alone, freeze-frame: la nouvelle vague.

AWB

for the video of this poem and more, visit Andy's Patreon