Emporium
By Ian Pindar
()
About this ebook
Step through the door and discover Big Bumperton on his bicycle, Mrs. Beltinska in her bath, Monsieur P. on holiday, a transfixed girl in blue jeans, two lascivious figs, and a god who wanders shopping arcades. Drawing on avant-garde and traditional influences, this collection of poetry maps a surreal hinterland where the dark humor of absurdity lies in wait. At times comic, political, satirical, and erotic, this compilation is stocked with curiosities, jokes, and horrors.
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Emporium - Ian Pindar
IAN PINDAR
Emporium
for Ali
My awful seventies
name, you sd
(mine too) but
no
From alle wimmen my love is lent,
And light on Alisoun
Anonymous
circa 1300
Levedy, al for thine sake
Armed with certain relics, I began to assemble an emporium where nothing in it would be for sale – a shop that would never open.
M
ALCOLM
M
C
L
AREN
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author gratefully acknowledges the following publications in which poems in Emporium first appeared, sometimes in slightly different form: The London Magazine, Magma, New Poetries III (Carcanet Press), Oxford Poetry, PN Review, Poetry Review, Stand and the Times Literary Supplement. Thanks are also due to Michael Schmidt, Judith Willson and all at Carcanet for their support. Invaluable advice was offered by John Crowfoot regarding ‘Birds’, and Dana Pšenicová at the Czech Embassy in London helped me with ‘Mrs Beltinska in the Bath’, which won second prize in the 2009 National Poetry Competition and was shortlisted for the 2010 Forward Prize (Best Single Poem).
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Figure Study
Mrs Beltinska in the Bath
On the French Riviera
Monsters of Philosophy
A Dog One Afternoon
Society of Blood
Anecdote of the Car
Marc Chagall: The Poet Reclining
Parable
Advice for Travellers
Poem
What is the Matter?
Archaeologies
Snow
The King’s Evil
Les Vacances de Monsieur P.
Chain Letter
Of Truth
Suggestions for Further Reading
Two Figs
The Prophecies
Casanova
Cārvāka/Lokāyata
Windows
Gods of the Near Future
After Birth
Big Bumperton on the Sabbath
Ashes
Death of a Senator
Birds
Illustrated Evenings
Parasite
Joan Miró: Man and Woman in Front of a Pile of Excrement
It Takes a Man
Everybody’s Talking about Antonin Artaud
The Wasp and the Orchid
Armageddon
Black Jelly Baby
Kissing
Dust
Loon
Silent Spectres
The Rainy Day Murders
An Accident in Soho
Lost
Insomnia
Time Remaining
Notes
About the Author
Copyright
Emporium
FIGURE STUDY
Naked on a bed, the sex in shadow,
not caring if man or woman.
Something of the caged beast, captive, fallow,
odour of unclean linen.
Darkness beyond everything.
Nothing visible except
limbs turning, seeking rest,
arms and legs bending, unbending
like a puppet examining its joints.
The head moving from side to side
as if struck by invisible fists
from different angles, from inside.
MRS BELTINSKA IN THE BATH
Pavel in profile
his eye at the spyhole
watches Mrs Beltinska in the bath.
Steam from the spyhole
rises and unravels in the dark
cold apartment at his back,
where a TV with the sound down
shows the River Vltava
bursting its banks.
And as Prague’s metro floods
and the Malá Strana floods
and the Waldstein Palace floods
and the National Theatre floods
and the Kampa Modern Art Museum floods,
Mrs Beltinska sinks her treasures in the suds.
The first Czech bible (1488) is drowned
in sewage water, but the warm orange glow
from Mrs Beltinska’s bathroom
coming through the spyhole
gives an odd kind of halo
to Pavel’s head seen from behind.