Rebecca Perry, Beauty/Beauty

Bloodaxe, 2015
£9.95

tl;dr: If at times endearingly antiquated in its sentiments, Beauty/Beauty is also doggedly the work of a millennial. Perry’s insistence on facing down and subverting familiar poetic subjects suggests a sensibility unlikely to rest on its laurels.

Like the artist John Stezaker, whose ‘Mask XXXV’ features on Beauty/Beauty’s cover, Rebecca Perry’s first collection is in close proximity to Surrealism. Akin to Stezaker’s “preoccupation with … the revelatory potential of the obsolete object and image” Perry’s sensibility seems consciously Victorian in its choice of subject matter. ‘A Little Dog Angel,’ ‘Love Apart,’ and ‘Forever Friends’ are not titles that occur in this book. Yet that species of sincerity—the kind of poetry enshrined on the servers of familyfriendpoems.com, most written, most read, and for the most part completely ignored by ‘proper’ poets—is the kind Perry can’t resist playing chicken with.

That Elizabeth Bishop was dismissed as cute, her choice of subject matter, and her miniaturist technique thought of as unworthy of the generation that spawned a gerrymandering giant like Lowell, seems pertinent to recall.

Poems like the tongue-in-cheek ‘The Pet Cemetery’ succeed in-so-far as they are brave enough to face down and subvert the familiar. Rather than mawkish, ‘The Pet Cemetery,’ in approaching the long list of Perry’s deceased fauna (she should have opted for the Siberian hamsters) with the same collage technique used elsewhere in the book, manages to short-circuit conventional assumptions of the poetic. 

Fattie, my joy.

Ponto. See you on the other side.

We had twelve years together, Chips,

I will never forget.

My adorable Scum.

I.M.U., my relentless Casper.

My most magnificent Baron,

where have you gone?

(‘The Pet Cemetery,’ pg. 43)

The major criticism I can see being levelled at such plucky endeavours is that they can be seen as slight. Certainly, when the tour de force ‘Dear Stegosaurus’—Perry calls it “a love letter”—ends with the line “your mouth holds more wonder than a sky full of stars,” (even if the preceding line is exceedingly beautiful) you wonder if it hasn’t simply been an exercise in frivolity.

In what is perhaps an unintentional tribute to Stezaker “the dark spaces of subjectivity [in these poems] seem somehow blasted through, exposed and emptied out.”

That Elizabeth Bishop was dismissed as cute, her choice of subject matter, and her miniaturist technique thought of as unworthy of the generation that spawned a gerrymandering giant like Lowell, seems pertinent to recall. That Bishop herself fretted she had “wasted half [her] talent through timidity” and feared that her poems were “precious,” is hopefully not something Perry has to worry about. 

The poems that play with space on the page (surely a fulfilment of the Glynn Maxwell prophecy) possess an assurance rarely found in the British tradition. (The spaced out among American poets, in the mainstream at least, include Gillian Conoley, Juan Delgado, and Helen Vitoria.) ‘On serendipity,’  ‘Over/wintering,’ and especially ‘Ergonomics’ hold the same quotidian-become-beautiful charm as Cummings and are equally difficult to resist.

I have a soft bread roll on my desk               which two or three times

I’ve squeezed              very gently                   when no one is looking

butter           sprinkle of salt                            pea soup               dream

the price of gold is falling        I can’t see a window but the reflection

on the floor suggests          intermittent sun

(‘Ergonomics,’ pg. 34)

In what is perhaps an unintentional tribute to Stezaker “the dark spaces of subjectivity [in these poems] seem somehow blasted through, exposed and emptied out.” The artist’s reflection on his use of sea cave postcards seems remarkably relevant. 

If at times endearingly antiquated in its sentiments, Beauty/Beauty is also doggedly the work of a millennial. It isn’t just the online IQ tests, Tetris blocks, and flashing trainers either, but that poems like ‘Wasp’ and ‘Poor Sasquatch,’ attest to an affection for the inanimate to the tune of Gary Snyder’s Mac: “Because plastic is a sad, strong material that is charming to rodents.” 

The book contains five collage-like poems. They’re tumblr poems, Pinterest poems, poems that know the cut and paste, the drag and drop of this century. Some of the sources for them are familiar, such as Pitman’s Short-hand Instructor, The Year You Were Born, 1986, or the unmistakable copy of junk mail. (The poems ‘Junk Mail’ and ‘The Year I Was Born’ are not linked to any specific text in the notes.)

Perry’s sensibility seems consciously Victorian in its choice of subject matter. 

Others are more rarified, parts of a long poem by the avant-garde poet Anne Carson—for instance—are drafted in to make ‘A Most Satisfactory Dreamlife,’ and the literary detritus of Tennessee Williams shores up the familiarly titled ‘A prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages.’ (The quote is the subtitle of the little-know play ‘Stairs to the Roof,’ where it appears as ‘A Prayer for the Wild at Heart that are Kept in Cages.’)

Though I admit to being wary of the make-weight guff that comes out of workshops, the Williams mash-up contains beautiful lines, as does its Carson inspired relation.