"30.11.12" by Ken Bolton [Introduced by Thomas Moody]

Since the 1970s, Ken Bolton has summoned the spirit of the New York School in his life and poetry: erudite, conversational, playful, modern (as he writes in “Horizon”: “I never wanted to be postcolonial / or colonial just modern which is / the joke on me—but who wants to be a category?”) to fashion one of the most distinctive styles in Australian poetry.

Born in Sydney in 1949, Bolton moved to Adelaide (the capital city of South Australia) in 1982, where he has become a central figure in the city’s cultural scene through his association with the iconic Experimental Art Foundation, his art and literary criticism and his poetry, in which the city often acts as the guiding motif. (Bolton is also a publisher of note, founding the magazine Otis Rush and operating the press Little Esther Books.)

 

In “30.11.12” the speaker, sitting in an Adelaide cafe, takes the dreaded question all writers ask themselves when they face a blank page, “What am I going to write here?” as an entry point into the poem, answering the call with typical understatement and insouciance,  “Something, I hope.” 

We then discover the significance of the poem’s title: the date is an event, a return to the page after a year's absence, exacerbating the anxiety of the question just posed, an anxiety which is just as quickly diffused by the speaker's casual self-deprication:

A year
or so since I last launched out

in my usual spot

and stopped, because I didn’t
want the usual– which
after all this time with
nothing else happening
I miss.

 

So what is “the usual” Ken Bolton poem? 

1. Often his best poems are loquacious, sweeping and inclusive, but never “long” (take “Kirkman Guide to the Bars of Europe, their music, their service, views etcetera” or “August 6th”). 
2. They are frequently, as Bolton describes Elvin Bishop’s guitar in “poem, the terrific days of summer”: “ex- / pansive, & rolling, / with a fabulous 'well-being' type of swagger” in the way they space themselves over the page (his use of single word lines can be especially powerful). 
3. They are O’Hara-like in their celebration of interests: musicians, painters, poets, friends. John Forbes is a frequent guest. So is Pam Brown and John Jenkins. Laurie Duggan, John Tranter, Gig Ryan, Lou Reed, Manet, James Schuyler, Tony Towle and Paul Violi ("So much of what / I write is an open letter to someone" from "Home Town").
4. They wander through observation and thought, and the profound enjoyment of taking time to truly appreciate one’s surroundings, such as in “30.11.12”, when the speaker, rather than taking umbrage with the distractions the cafe presents, uses them as platforms to propel the poem forward, as when he notices the lady at the register: ” I think she is enjoying / the air conditioning, the / sudden sense of choice. Her relief – / at the prospect of rest.”

 

30.11.12

 

What am I going to write here?
Something, I hope. A year
or so since I last launched out

in my usual spot

and stopped, because I didn’t
want the usual– which
after all this time with
nothing else happening
I miss.  I hear
a high-pitched scattered voice,
look up,
& see an image that makes me think
‘I wonder how X
is going?’ – someone
I haven’t seen for a while –
a blonde woman sways
distractedly, near the till,
asking a question. But not
of me. I think she is enjoying
the air conditioning, the
sudden sense of choice. Her relief –
at the prospect of rest.
My walk here
blocked for a moment
by a girl – ex-
pensive shopping bags in
one hand mobile phone to ear
in the other – so that I thought briefly
How can anyone bear
to appear so girly?Realising
by reflex, that How can anyone bear
to walk out like him(say)?
is a question
some woman might ask
with regard to me –
dressed, after all,
‘like a styleless yak’,
to quote Paul Keating
(not a woman, tho women
liked him. I liked him). 
Maybe she has something
great in that bag,
the girl,
that on another day
I will applaud,
registering a kind of intelligence
I don’t have or
rarely access. Lunch hour –
& Temposeems filled, nearly,
with women, mostly older than me.
A free concert, maybe, in the offing.
The Adelaide String Quartet
resides out back.
Soon I will hear a bell tinkling,
announcing the doors’ having opened.
I look about briefly –
too blind, in this light,
to read the paper – too blind
with these eyes, is more the case:
an eye operation in
10 days time.
 ____After which –
all will be revealed, maybe. 
I hope I am not plunged-in-darkness –
never to see that girl again,
for example, in her
short summer frock
of dove grey, telephone
to her ear, moving dreamily,
an image, now, I love –
or the delightfully styleless yak
I see amble past … 

& whom I join, my lunch
(half) hour up – (gone?)  ((done?))

II

‘X’ was someone smarter than me
– in most respects
that count – thin,
drank a little too much,
coped, made a difference, as they say.

 

 

Comments

[John Levy]

Thank you for this excellent piece on Ken Bolton. His poetry is distinctive not only in Australian poetry but also in poetry anywhere. All of his books are worth reading and one of his most recent books, FANTASTIC DAY: New Poems (Puncher & Wattmann), is a great place to start if someone wants to buy their first Bolton book. There are few poets who are so fun and inspiring to read.