POETRY IN REVIEW: CLIVE JAMES

1 7 1 R P O E T R Y I N R E V I E W A B I G A I L D E U T S C H Clive James, despite his international renown as essayist, memoirist , radio show host, television personality, and personality in general , at first had a hard time gaining attention for his poetry – except, he writes, ‘‘as a kind of court jester who was occasionally allowed to perch in a window niche and sing a lament over the ruins of the night’s revelry.’’ James is indeed a mourner and merrymaker in one, and musical at that: ‘‘In poetry I try not to write anything that can’t be said,’’ he has written elsewhere, ‘‘and it is a short step from saying to singing.’’ Like any singer worth his salt, James performs in a variety of styles, moods, and registers, and Nefertiti in the Flak Tower showcases them all: flowing free verse as well as fine-tuned formal stanzas; tones silly and serious; topics classical and contemporary; and always an instantaneous accessibility that – in the best poems – yields more and more to the attentive reader. A student of Philip Larkin, James has long cultivated a deceptively casual tone: ‘‘To write in his own voice is every poet’s object, and my voice, I have since realized, was the prosaic one I speak with.’’ N e f e r t i t i i n t h e F l a k To w e r, by Clive James (Liveright, 96 pp., $24.95) 1 7 2 D E U T S C H Y One might propose a link between this style and James’s television and radio careers (among other engagements, James hosted TV shows called Saturday Night Clive, Saturday Night Clive on Sunday, and Sunday Night Clive; apparently the schedule was subject to change). Reading James’s poems, you sometimes feel he is speaking directly to you, that you actually know him. And so it felt oddly significant when a stranger interrupted me as I sat with James’s latest volume in a New York City café: ‘‘Clive James?’’ he said in an Australian accent. ‘‘I know ’im!’’ This Janus-faced volume often catches James, who is in his seventies and has been su√ering from health problems, looking forward and backward at once, commemorating his youth even as he contemplates his death. But self-elegy is nothing new for James: ‘‘Go Back to the Opal Sunset,’’ which dates from the 1980s, is one of his most tuneful and subtly doleful poems. It describes the Sydney of his early years, and the repetitions within it form a system of reminders, a conduit backward in time while one moves forward through the poem. It’s as di≈cult to quote just two stanzas as it is to stop playing a scale after only two notes: Go back to the opal sunset, where the wine Costs peanuts, and the avocado mousse Is thick and strong as cream from a jade cow. Before the passion fruit shrinks on the vine Go back to where the heat turns your limbs loose. You’ve worked your heart out and need no excuse. Knock out your too-tall tent pegs and go now. It’s England, April, and it’s pissing down. So realise your assets and go back To the opal sunset. Even autumn there Will swathe you in a raw-silk dressing gown. And through the midnight harbour lacquered black The city light strikes like a heart attack While eucalyptus soothes the injured air. As the poem proceeds, the phrase ‘‘go back’’ drifts down the stanzas, first appearing in line 1, then in line 2, and so on, continually delayed, like James’s unmet goal to move home to Aus- P O E T R Y I N R E V I E W 1 7 3 R tralia. And the poem hints that time is running out: in Australia, it’s always sunset, and soon the passion fruit will shrink on the vine – an allusion, perhaps, not just to Australian produce but also to James’s aging body. ‘‘Realize your assets,’’ the...