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    What Must Happen
    What Must Happen
    What Must Happen
    Ebook97 pages35 minutes

    What Must Happen

    By Jeffrey Wainwright

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    About this ebook

    What Must Happen has concerns which might be grouped under three headings. First there are personal, mainly elegiac poems that recall parents, relations and friends. The second grouping, including the title poem, has poems on wider historical subjects some of which relate to the personal through Wainwright's recollections of his upbringing and the history of the Potteries. This group also includes a series of contemporary characterisations of some of the Roman gods. Thirdly the collection includes some extensive sequences best described as 'variations' in that they reiterate and vary particular words, phrases, images and most importantly rhythms. One, 'An Empty Street' takes off from a painting, 'Via San Leonardo' by the 20th century Italian painter Ottone Rosai. The poems mostly use a free verse line although there is frequent use of stanza groupings and symmetrical structures across the poems as a whole. Whilst the personal and the historical poems often make use of considerable research, the composition of the 'variations' has been looser and more intuitive.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIndependent Publishers Group
    Release dateJan 1, 2017
    ISBN9781784101978
    What Must Happen
    Author

    Jeffrey Wainwright

    Jeffrey Wainwright was born in Stoke-on-Trent, educated locally and at Leeds University where he benefited from the poetry scene sustained by Jon Silkin, Ken Smith, Geoffrey Hill and others. He taught for many years at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has also translated drama (from French) and his critical prose includes Poetry the Basics and Acceptable Words: Essays on the Poetry of Geoffrey Hill. This is his ninth volume of poetry, all published by Carcanet. He lives with his wife in Manchester and for parts of the year in Umbria and New South Wales.

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      Book preview

      What Must Happen - Jeffrey Wainwright

      HAPPEN

      What Must Happen

      ‘Funny – to be a Century –

      And see the People – going by – ’

      EMILY DICKINSON

      1.

      Now all the Sciences of History are at the door,

      The World’s Reason and his suite,

      Long-stirruped, rearing, riding,

      Storming the earth and stunning the air.

      Look at His Highness there in white and gold,

      And this other in his oh-so-modest blue;

      Look how their men are drawn to breast the rise –

      Accoutred and alive, how historical they are!

      The ensign posts away, along the line, along the day,

      And at its end happens upon His Majesty,

      Sniffling upon a log, and tip-toes on his way.

      Two Emperors can be caught with just one bean.

      2.

      Now all the Sciences of History are at the door

      With caps in hand and aprons spread

      Crossing themselves and speaking French.

      Small fires seize picture frames and chairs.

      In bibliothèque, café, platz and upper room

      Prophets and thinkers sniff the visionary smoke,

      Number their theses and dress to kill.

      Their aeropainting will re-touch the dawn,

      Their willing corporals stun and storm,

      Their strapped-up martyrs charge and call:

      ‘Fools, did we think we should live forever?

      Look how historical the future is!’

      3.

      Now all the Sciences of History are at the door

      And, after a little stun and storm, shock and awe,

      Are smiling, shirt-sleeved, making nice: ‘May we come in,

      May we sit down? Look at our invisible hands –

      The latest manicure! – how may they work for you?

      We aim to make the world to count

      In perfect synchrony, to teach the world to chant:

      There is no past, all things are new, we act: we are.

      So just sign where it says: In none we trust,

      And here again, In none we trust,

      And just once more In none we trust.

      How historical you were, and now how free!’

      4.

      Now all the Sciences of History are at the door

      Or tent-flap, fly-screen, wire-entanglement

      And peer in. Still on their jotters there’s little spilt

      Or spattered, and still they will reiterate:

      ‘Time must be History, and History an Idea

      Patient of its uncoiling

      To an End. Otherwise we fall through,

      Like light through glass, nothing now and nothing then.’

      Boys on their cots think they hear water

      And the clink of tin: in their dreams of whiskers

      They will soon be shaved. Wounds get stuck with cat

      Or blanket-hair. What must happen, what need not?

      Crockery

      Antiquarium

      He chomps their squirming comrades one in either hand,

      but Ulysses gets the Cyclops drunk, lops and sharpens

      a mighty pine, has four men lift it and in lock-step drive it

      . . . but this is a story you know well enough,

      like Ulysses clinging to the ram’s belly-fleece,

      his toes cinched on the creature’s balls and seeming to wink

      as he

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