Decadence

This is a collection of 51 poems, all written in 2021. There are three sequences: Part 1-All eyes fight Titan of city lives-was first printed as a 24-page chapbook, just a couple of proofs for me and ten signed and numbered copies for friends. The sequence was written all in one go. The January/February 2021 issue of the Museums Journal, dropped through the letter box one day and soon afterwards I started working methodically backwards through it drafting one poem from each significant block of text using the reverse decimation technique to select the seed words. By the 18 February it was done.
Part 2-Beluga neutral & other delirious poems-was compiled in March 2021 as a 36-page chapbook for the same purpose as All eyes ... but never printed. I have composed and formatted some poems in a particular way since September 2020. They use a centre-tab 40 millimetres and a right-tab 80 millimetres from the left-hand margin and text elements are positioned to work as a 'score' for reading aloud: generally higher pitch / emphasis on the left, rhythmic and melodic elaboration / secondary emphasis centred, and lower pitch / ritardando / cadence on the right. All eyes ... is written in this format and I decided that the poems written before I started it should also be grouped together even though they exploited a diverse range of source material.
Part 3-Delirious poems of the third trimester 2021-as the title indicates, comprises poems all written in July, August and September 2021. The poems are chronological and perhaps the evolution of the decadence-delirium connection in my mind is apparent. Without this nudge, perhaps ending the volume here looks arbitrary, but then the length of a pregnancy does once one drops arrogant anthropocentrism and the length of a year does if one imagines the perspective of an intergalactic microbe. ... I am already thinking that this decadence needs a cruder name, but Nietzsche got there first (what a surprise!): Corruption ist nur ein Schimpfwort für die Herbstzeiten eines Volkes. [Corruption is just a dirty word for the autumn of a people.] Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Bk. 1, §23.
Yeh, let's talk dirty, completely without restraint and perfectly out of self-serving lust and greed. No need: one can feel the thought more than adequately; the word stays (as a theatrical prop perhaps, but is that not how this works anyway?).
These are not comfortable verses. The musicality is insistently robust and akin to free-improvisation. The layout of text is organized to prompt vocal performance. Sense is not given. Imagery is layered, juxtaposed, a catalogue of evocative collisions. The delirium is a hard-won effect with philosophical roots in phenomenology, speculative realism, Dada and Surrealism. The poems are puzzles that may infuriate as easily as delight, but they can be resolved: sense is there to be made.