Poem Of The Month: July 2011

POEMS SUGGESTED BY PHRASES FROM

SCOTT FITZGERALD’S ‘TENDER IS THE NIGHT’

"Peter Pegnall is a latter day Larkin whose Season of Missed Chances, his fourth book of poems, charts his by now characteristic urban settings, invariably London and on closer inspection the environs of Richmond while allowing for No Edward Hoppers in Hounslow, Two in a Bus Shelter in Twickenham or simply Skint in Harrod’s Food Hall. Throughout, Pegnall’s gently irascible and jaded style is now more elegiac but he remains a poet of the bon mot, conversational in the most literary sense and capable here of a devastating sequence of Farewells, the coyly clever Poems Suggested by Phrases from Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘Tender is the Night’ or a ‘prayer’ that closes;

This morning, two doves perched on my washing line.

I kept my silence. There may yet be time."

Joseph Woods, Director of Poetry Ireland.

A Scherzo of Colour

Bougainvillea against a plaster wail,

pink lips parted in desire;

a pool of blood in the doorway.

Lap it all up.

If you prefer black and white,

a touch of evil –

fly a dark kite

hieroglyph of agony.

A Carnival of Affection

They all come to the party –

Little Noddy and Wittgenstein

Winston Churchill and Gary Glitter

And isn’t that Audrey Hepburn

arm in arm with

F. Scott Fitzgerald?

The host went to bed early, alone,

smoked salmon

smeared on the ormolu mirror.

A chord of delight

Plunk.

That’s how his fingers struck the mandolin:

he’d half expected to satisfy

half the female congregation,

section the other half.

“You’re ‘avin a laugh, boy,

you wouldn’t know a tune

from your epiglottis…”

Nevertheless, once in a while,

an accord of delight –

she said, quietly, she might

A Hard Boiled Sparkle in His Eyes

Not how she’d imagined breakfast.

They were mute.

His opened broadsheet

a River Lethe between them.

‘Had you forgotten?’ she didn’t say.

Served her right.

Cooked to a turn in Veuve Cliquot

Reality is not what it was

for the Widow Cliquot:

there is rust in the geranium,

a nervous tic in the Venetian blind.

Best get slewed, trip

the light fantastic,

crunch the meringue,

raise our tulip flutes

and rejoice.

Copyright Text © Peter Pegnall 2009

Copyright Cover Design © Jeremy Nash 2009

All rights reserved

The author has asserted her/his right under Section 77

of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988

to be identified as the author of this work.