Erratum p,23, l.3, w.5 for 'hr' read 'her'

There are few things more depressing than finding a printing error in a freshly produced edition of books the proofs for which you had previously checked.  Thoroughly.  He said in the middle of a pandemic.  OK, I will admit that there are, in fact, lots of things worse than finding a printing error in your latest book.  But it does still hurt.

     The printing history of my latest book, The eloquence of broken things, has been a little bumpy.  I sent off a ‘perfect’ pdf of the book (with, as it turns out the bloody printing error) and the batch that I got back was woefully inadequate.  In a truly bizarre way I discovered two or three different sequences of errors in the printing.  The key to the version was to look at the logo on the title page: if the top part of it was missing you had what we might call, ‘Error sequence A’; if the bottom part was missing, it was ‘Error sequence B’.  That, sort of made sense, depending on how the pages were positioned when being printed out.  But I soon discovered that there was a third variant, which made no sense at all.

     Anyway, the printer and I regarded the first tranche of books as a sort of ‘proof’ printing and the second attempt was perfect – except for the bloody miss-print – and that was entirely my fault.

     The mistake occurs in the second poem in the collection and it is in a sonnet as well, so it is all the more glaring as the poem is so short.  In my own defence, the poem was a reprint from an earlier collection and, as I couldn’t find the original copy, I typed it out again and so the mistake crept in.  I cannot pretend that I didn’t read the ‘new’ version a few times and, attentive reader as I am, I still failed to spot the missing ‘e’ in ‘hr’ or ‘her’ as it should have been.  By the time I noticed the mistake it was too late and the erratum slip would have to be deployed.

     It was at that point that I determined to make the best of a bad job and write a poem about the mistake to be included as a signed (well, initialled) insert for each of the new books.

     My starting point is the Turkish rug, whose intricate pattern has an intentional ‘mistake’ so that man’s attempt at perfection does not mock god.  I have always found this concept interesting and once heard I decided that it was far too useful an idea to exploit in all sorts of circumstances to be dependent on the absolute truth of it all.  I suppose that there are inferior sorts of rugs that actually try to be ‘perfect’ but I am talking about the highest quality and most painstakingly worked examples of the rug makers’ craft.  So there. 

     In the poem I take the concept of built-in imperfection a step further and turn the conceit in on itself.

     This is a poem that has to be read, it cannot be recited as two of the points that I make will not be at all clear, and I end with a twist that gives me scope to accommodate any further mistakes that I may have missed!

Erratum
p.14, l.2, w.6
for hr read her

Within a Turkish rug’s
expensive symmetry
is woven an intentional false note –
because perfection’s the preserve of god,
and not of stumbling, imperfect Man.

But, isn’t there an arrogance
in saying, “Yes, of course there’s that –
but all the rest . . . !” As if
parading of a self-made fault
limits additional faux pas?

It’s Baldrick’s bullet.[1]
Logic? False!

Yet it’s a way of life we all adopt
because we live inelegant reality
not textbook-sharp, black-outlined clarity.

Mistakes and errors? That’s who we are!
Come with the territory.
Flaws are the marbling of life.
We have to say.
Because it’s inescapable.
  

I’d read and read again
the poem that contains the fault,
and yet not seen the missing ‘e’
until the final print was done
and it was then too late to change.

The sticking-plaster-sized
erratum slip is grudgingly applied
accepting and bewailing
my falling short.

But, what are vowels in the scheme of things?
Thngs tht cn b thghtlssly gnrd –
and still the consonantal frame
allows a certain fluency.

If there had only been a gap
the reader could have,
would have, filled it in
without a thought.

But these are cavils
trying hard to justify
imperfect sight.

I should regard the ‘humbling by slip’
as something more akin to public sacrifice:
(expiation, celebration,
for inexact humanity)

than hoping that,
in spite of all the odds,
the misprint, all alone,
is by itslf.

[1] 1 Private S. Baldrick, Captain Blackadder’s idiot batman is caught inscribing his name on a bullet when in the trenches in 1917, his explanation is, “I thought if I owned the bullet with my name on it, I’d never get hit by it.” Blackadder Goes Forth Series 4, Episode 1. First broadcast 28th September 1989, 9.30 pm on BBC1, written by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton.

---

This poem is a product of my notebook, where I jotted down the phrase “fairy tale of memory’ and then thought about the way in which we remember events, and just how far what we remember is real.  That last is one of my favourite words, mainly because it is such a tricky concept.  We are all story tellers, and I am aware that even that innocuous phrase ‘story tellers’ is capable of being taken in a number of ways to include a plain statement of the facts and also a completely fantastic rewriting of reality, in short a lie.  So the simple act of story telling can be either truth or untruth and is usually both.

     We are natural editors, no, instinctive editors because we can (and must) do it consciously and unconsciously.  Since it is impossible to give all the facts of an experience (time, place, direction, temperature, air pressure, light intensity and on and on and on for ‘real’ truth) we must edit, and each edit makes the retelling more of an approximation rather than the truth.  And we have faulty memories and I am sure that we smooth out inartistic incongruities (or the normal bumpiness of life) to make our narratives more pleasing.

     We have a category of ‘Fantasy’ in literature, but we do not assume that our narratives of truthfulness are part of that genre, but they are, they must be.

     The every day examples of the fantastic are fairy tales.  They are told to children and they feed the imagination, but they are presented as other.  The great fairy stories have lasted because, in spite of their fantastic and unreal basis, they seem to say something to the reader or listener; they comment in an unreal way on the realities of life.  Perhaps the early acquaintanceship with the fantastic is preparation for the fantasy that is an essential part of our reality: the making of everything into a coherent narrative.

     The poem opens with a rhymed section using elements of fairy stories in a jumbled recollection of essential elements of a variety of stories from the bland to the deeply disturbing.  So many fairy stories are vicious and bloody and it is only the aura of magic and unreality that make them acceptable to young minds – though given the every day horror that young eyes can access at the touch of a computer key (in spite of parental limits) fairy stories can actually seem quite mild!

     The jumbled nature of the first verses and their jolly rhyme is how I see our memories: we fit bits together to make something that works for us, while, at the same time asserting that what we remember is some sort of absolute truth – because it is part of our remembered personal experience.  It’s true.  Even a cursory study of evidence, be it forensic, historical, archaeological, judicial, personal or whatever indicates that reality based on ‘evidence’ is fluid pretend we ne’er so absolute!

     This poem has been a difficult one to write.  It started with something that I responded to quickly and felt that there was a poem waiting to be written and then descended into a welter of note making and a lack of direction – or rather too many directions.  I have started and re-started this poem and its eventual (draft) form is much shorter than I expected it to be.  It does encapsulate what I was thinking, but I suspect that this is one poem than will go through a number of drafts more before I am satisfied.

I remember

Ogres, princes, golden tresses,

hearts of ice and poisoned fruit,

genies’ lamps and just three guesses,

living dead and talking lute.

Moving statues, mystic jewels,

feet on swords, flesh torn by thorns,

truthful mirrors, magic duels,

golden circlets, rune carved horns.

Time is fluid, place elastic.

Who can tell just where you are?

Logic now is the fantastic,

in a land that is so far – far – far . . .

The page is turned, the volume’s shut.

And so the story’s at an end

A hand rests gently on the book,

then fingers press against the spine

to slide it firmly into place

among the other items shelved

within the library of Self,

where every time the book’s withdrawn,

the text and illustrations change,

while comforting, calm voices ask,

“and are you sitting comfortably?

Then we’ll begin.”

This is how it’s always been:

every time your tale’s retold,

lodged inside the Fairy Tale

that is ‘authentic’ memory.   

I am not sure if it is an affect of age, but I find myself thinking of what I cannot know of what I have experienced.  Those everyday realities that passed you by because you never realised that you ought to have considered them.  So many things about the people you care about are just like the oxygen you breathe, it is so ordinary you take it for granted.  Right up until it is taken away.
     When John Donne said, in one of his sermons, that he was diminished by each Man's death, he was absolutely right.  I am now at an age where my parents' generation is largely gone.  Not only their memories and the details of those memories are gone, but their memories about me too are gone with them.  I have written about this before in the poem, 'What dog was Rodney?' and it continues to fascinate me - and disturb me, because what is gone is gone.
     It was while I was thinking about the opening question in this poem that the form and the subject matter began to form itself.  The central incident was one where I was actually more concerned about the reaction of my mother to my dog Penny's injury than the reaction of the dog.  Who I have to admit, made the most of her 'baddy' with the sort of resigned fortitude that only yellow Labrador bitches can pull off with real style.  Penny also complicated the whole concept of memory by herself being fairly indiscriminate in which paw she offered for sympathy at a later date!
     The last stanza expresses something I do believe, or at least something which needs consideration.  I seem to make a distinction between 'maker' and 'scribe' and I write of 'just a narrative' which suggests a whole area of debate about 'writing' and some sort of truth which I rather pointedly do not develop.
     I really like the ending!

Lost

What is the nearest thing in your

Life Time that you can never know?

Those unrecorded facts for which

there is no witness left alive to testify?

Did grandfather Powell ever wear cologne?

What was grandmother Rees’s favourite book?

The metal post was on the right

of that long path that led up to the field.

No more than a few inches high.  I think

that it was used by Gramp to mark out space with

rough green twine for flowers or for veg and,

hardy perennial, was left from year to year

to help re-draw the ordered battle lines

between the cultivated and the weeds

that filled my grandfather’s non-working years.

Released from city life,

the dog bounded to unaccustomed green,

and in her flight, an edge of that small post

swept through her foot.

Her bundled, limping run back to us all,

within the echo of her almost human scream,

punched pain to nausea.

The garish red along the yellow of her fur

from flesh gash-gape drenching a paw so delicate

it could have been a charm; and so much blood

from what turned out to be a cut so small;

but deep enough, that when the fur grew back,

it didn’t coat the gristle that was left.

And then for all her life,

enquiries for her ‘baddy paw’

would cause a lean (to left or right?)

and she would proffer (left or right?)

and flinch it back from soft

attempted human touch

to play the game

of her remembered pain.

Now she’s contained within a history

that I re-write as maker and as scribe.

But in the interest of truth

I cannot bring myself to plump

for ‘right’ or ‘left’ – because my choice

would make her just a narrative,

and not my dog.

I must admit that I am surprised at how long this poem turned out to be.  I thought, when I started that this was going to be another of my sonnet-like efforts but, as you can see, it turned into something longer.  Whether it is more substantial I leave for the consideration of the reader.