RON BUTLIN, HISTORIES OF DESIRE, BLOODAXE, £6.95

For too much of the time, Ron Butlin is a poet caught between cliché and profundity; his clichés seem profound and his profundities clichéd:

All histories are histories of desire, they tell me
how my life begins and ends: a stretch of water,
a stone a child sends skimming
to the other side.

(A clinching image which would not be out of place in a TV-advertisment for pensions.) Yet there is another, far more likeable and impressive side to Butlin - the grotesque. ‘Don Juan at Forty’ is an example of this:

Another tie? Let’s try this Paisley-patterned swirl
of calloused colours, curves and broken nerves -
and knot it tight. Here’s the mirror. Right: full-frontal/
profile. Tighter. The birthday-boy deserves
the birthday-best. That’s your reflection pressed against the glass -
press back to steady it. Such moments pass.

The stanza ends with wonderful pot-bellied poise:

It’s time to mingle
picking out which women might be single.

Butlin's best poems tend to be written in loose, almost doggerelish rhymed verse; his most poignant moments are those which avoid straining too hard to be poetic. Histories of Desire opens with a number of landscape poems and concludes with a series in memory of the poet's mother. Yet it is a short, domestic poem, 'Today', that best demonstrates Butlin’s ability to build a mood, then clinch it:

Today I’m practising piano, a Chopin waltz.
A neighbour’s dog starts barking so
I hammer even harder, con fuoco,
on the keys. Lunchtime drunks join in;
an out-of-tempo siren passes clawing
at each phrase. Meanwhile, two floors below,
ghetto-blasters measure out the bass.
Today the dead are thrust into their rightful place.



6.8.1996

(DA-DO-RON-RON)