#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

#16 - all vessels break and then remake themselves

(Russell J Turner)

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

Fourth up from me is Kenji Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu (1953 - #92), through its theme of the treatment of women in warfare, and the metaphor of pottery

From clay they come, by hand or history,
each fashioned for a purpose or by fate ‒
a jug, a bowl, three women annotate
old monuments of joy and misery.
By brothel, drunken spear and jealousy,
two bend under the stratagems of hate.
The third arises from a charred estate ‒
a phoenix of desire, of loyalty

Yet those who walk in darkness walk in light,
each in their own way casting off the past ‒
one reconciles the future with the fight,
one sings beyond the grave, content at last.
Through warfare, rape and death, through love and spells,
all vessels break and then remake themselves

RJT

#15 - Les Témoins

Fay Roberts’s fourth sonnet this year is inspired by Agnès Varda’s nouvelle vague observational tragedy (can you tell I’ve no idea how cinema language works?), French movie, Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), written by Agnès Varda, and starring Corinne Marchand, Antoine Bourseiller, Dorothée Blanck, and Dominique Davray

She turns the cards out one by one to see
the only colour in this tense affair.
But please don’t make a fuss, ma belle chérie –
you’ll mar this mask they need of savoir faire.

We flirt with luck, and check the numbers twice;
I don’t have time to list out all the signs
the auteur uses in this room’s device.
Ça ne fait rien – this angel’s not resigned.

What hope she has is sculpted in the curve
of friendship; stares define what she’ll become.
Grotesqueries abound at every swerve,
but c’est la vie – hold fast and chew your gum.

Mais si tu n’est pas fort, la chance prévaut,
car sinon l’avenir arrive… trop tôt.

Still sourced via The Criterion Collection

If you have access to the BFI, you can watch the 1:30 long, French language movie here. Content warnings include: medical concerns, cancer, period-typical misogyny, grotesque street theatre, racism. Let us know what you thought if you’ve seen it!

#14 - Chungking Express (1994)

This poem was inspired by Chungking Express (1994), a Hong Kong comedy-drama written and directed by Wong Kar-wai. It’s an anthology film, featuring two interlocking stories about love, proximity and non-traditional expressions of intimacy. The perfect film to write about on Valentine’s Day! 

#14 – In the bar that you loved, I always almost see you 

your floral perfume lingers like a kiss

your menthol cigarettes reduced to smoke

we’re always never meeting here like this 

you are a conjuring produced from hope

proximity is such a fickle friend

uniting us in space but not in time

I write my name on napkins to pretend

that I am yours and that you might be mine

but we were destined to be passing ships

though once I thought I saw you by the door

I caught a fading smile around your lips

a smile I’d seen a thousand times before

an apparition bathed in pink neon

your perfume lingers longer now you’ve gone

LM 

Image via Wikipedia