Physical, Poetry and Andrew McMillan
Andrew
McMillan’s Physical was recently nominated for the Forward
Prize for Poetry and won The Guardian First Book Award, in November,
2015. It was a deserved win and one notable for a number of
reasons. Physical placed poetry on The Guardian First Book
Award list for the first time in 16 years. (A shocking reminder of how a
powerful cultural force historically has become side-lined among readers...to
the point that only two poets have ever made the shortlist). The accolade also
acknowledged the talent of a gay writer whose themes are not immediately in
touch with the lives of the many book-groups that took part in the judging
process: a tribute to liberalism and fair-mindedness. (Curious, though, how the
book groups felt the need to recognise the difference and remoteness in
McMillan's gay life yet somehow felt close to a mythically inspired novel about
a fishing expedition in Nigeria! Perhaps, that fact tells us something about
reading habits and genres: when it comes to novels, readers actively seek
fictional worlds beyond their own reality; when it comes to poetry they seek an
endorsement of their own world). And finally, the win recognised a
poetical voice that is Northern and rooted and mercifully free of dreaming
spires and Englishness.
At
the presentation in London, McMillan paid tribute to his editor at Cape, Robin
Robertson, and that seems a sensible place to begin this review of Physical because
so much of how poetry appears these days is down to the work of a poet and how
that work is manipulated by publishing houses into its final form.
The
introductory blurb by Cape promotes McMillan’s poetry as an “almost religious
celebration of the flesh” in “colloquial Yorkshire rhythms with a sinewy
Metaphysical music”. That “almost” is quite revealing, for it notes
that this description isn’t McMillan’s work exactly; in fact, the tone of
worship is about as close to religion as the semen stain that Gunn memorizes
with such precision on “the toe of a boot” in “The Miracle” (The Passages
of Joy, 1982). Each night it is polished and renewed like
"a saint’s blood". It is unfortunate that, in England, when it comes
to male-to-male sexual writing, we are unable to promote naked flesh without
dressing it in spirituality. One of McMillan’s achievements is that he is able
to love the flesh for what it is and write with candour…and wit. The Cape blurb
has led some reviewers to hear the blurb rather than the actual poetry and talk
of “hymns to the male body”, as if McMillan is Michelangelo addressing
Cavalieri. (This is encouraged by the cover’s representative gay, naked male,
which echoes the provocative design that Carcanet produced for Neil
Powell’s True Colours, in 1991. Carcanet dared to go as far as
a bare torso with open trousers and a hanging leather belt. Cape has gone as
far as a crack-shot, de-capitated and de-membered, so as the viewer can add
their own desires to the smooth, marbled, classical body. McMillan's honest
poetry has nothing to do with the body-beautiful. But a beautiful butt sells
better than normality). Seduced by this, Alison
Flood has felt a “heavy scent of sensuality” in McMillan's work.
Probably, only a female reviewer with no unfortunate knowledge of male toilets
could describe a poem about male urinals as possessing a “scent”. The wit of
McMillan is learnt more from the twisting debates of Gunn and his ability to
transform a poem with a surprise conclusion is learnt from St. Thom rather than
directly from Donne and Marvell. As with Gunn, there is a modern Elizabethanism
and like the poet who paid homage to Hermes in Moly, McMillan is
well-aware of the poetical trickster. He uses the flow of words (no
punctuation) to create rich, Mannerist effects. What is most likeable about
McMillan is his love of verbal tricks rather than the usual dull accounts of
tricks picked up in gay bars. The “colloquial Yorkshire rhythms” are heard in
the middle section of Physical, in the re-published pamphlet
“protest of the physical”. And, maybe, they are heard too obviously, for comic
effect:
drunk
man to the drunker woman
where
you from? Barnsley
Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaarnslie
The
northern voice is heard more effectively in the weighting of certain syllables
and words, in a dryness and flatness of tone. The long poem “protest of the
physical” has
been compared to Howl and McMillan to Ginsberg. It isn’t
comparable and he isn’t:
the
men are weeping in the gym
using
the hand dryer to cover
their
sobs their hearts have grown too big
for
their chests…
That
could be Ginsberg’s Howl, but for the conscious irony and
analytical mockery. There is surrealism in "The Men are Weeping in the
Gym" that is closer to Liverpool, Patten and Henri, than Berkeley,
California. Those northern readers who know Route Publishers, in Pontefract,
and have read Howl for Now (2005) will not be fooled by such
empty comparisons. (There is critical life outside the South). McMillan is
McMillan and he possesses his own voice. In truth, “protest for the physical”,
though important to McMillan, as it got him out of a writing-rut and into
ploughing new fields;- isn’t the strongest work in Physical. The
most memorable poems are those such as “Urination” and “Yoga” where there is
direct communication with the reader and you listen to the voice in the words,
on the page, and the shifts of humour and pathos and a sense of what comes out,
not in poetry, but in the gay photography of Wolfgang Tillmans, where every
little thing matters and homeliness and the commonplace exist alongside
existence and uncertainty:
the
toilet is an intimacy
only
shared with parents when you are young
and
once again when they are older
and
with lovers when say on a Sunday
morning
stretching into the bathroom
you
wake to the sound of stream into bowl
and
go to hug the naked body…
I
would rather read that, on a Sabbath, than go to Church! That is poetic
communion. “Strongman” has wonderful humour and pathos and an ability to
present complex ideas in clear images. “Finally” is a plangent lyric with a
moving ending.
The
problem in assessing Physical, is where to place McMillan as a
gay poet, something that current reviews avoid. (Do the reviewers know any gay
poetry outside Gunn and Ginsberg?) And something that Cape's publishing blurb
and public recommendations avoid too. Even Mark Doty alludes to "male
desire" rather than be direct about the nature of the poetry, allowing the
reader to deduce that this must be gay poetry because Doty, as the most
well-known gay (American) poet in the UK, as a Cape poet, is praising it to his
gay Cape readership. All of the biographical,
journalistic pieces written about McMillan dwell on his gay sexuality,
yet this is rubbed away in the volume's shaping. Richard Scott, writing
for Ambit, places McMillan alongside Jee Leong Koh…because he
writes about “cocks”. He also sees McMillan as “Doty-esque”. Indeed, there is
influence from Mark Doty on McMillan: it is heard in the blend of narrative
construction and lyricism. Yet, Doty-esque he isn’t. The diminutive (though
Scott means it as praise) is not just. Like Randall Mann, in Breakfast
with Thom Gunn (2009), McMillan writes with an eye on Gunn, but his
writing is truer to the spirit of Gunn and possesses a greater technical range.
As Gunn learnt from Robert Duncan without copying technique, so McMillan has
learnt from Gunn without becoming Gunn-esque. Gunn is the signpost at the
Yorkshire crossroads. It points in many directions, towards the Pennines and
beyond-- across the Atlantic. When writing, McMillan makes leaps in thought and
syntax that are like climbing a staircase and missing a step. Ground disappears
and re-appears. The love of language and how it can dazzle and deceive (like
the physical body) is reminiscent of Reginald Shepherd, though McMillan does
not push as far into realms of multi-layered perceptions. Shepherd is the true
gay Metaphysical poet (and Duncan). He is careful not to make his poems into
poems about language: they are poems about personal human experience. They are
confessional, yet they are not genre poems about coming out. They are
individual, contradictory poems that arise from the enquiring body that lived
and carried them. Physical is a significant debut by a poet
who can write about sexual identity without the dreary polemics of identity
politics. McMillan is an intriguing poet and a valuable, emerging gay poet.
Comments