Word of the Quarter: Haecceity

This word had been sitting on my desk on a yellow post-it, with mysterious numbers whose purpose I have now forgotten, for the last three months. Somewhere in a folder, among other post-its that I swept off my desk, it still sits half-stuck to another chanced-upon word.

I don't know where I read it, but I recognise it every time it reappears now. We smile faintly at each other in acknowledgement.

No we don't. A word like 'haecceity' is not whimsical. It just - how do I put this? - is. Which is why to even begin a sentence with 'a word like' and then follow it with 'haecceity' seems wrong.

*

There comes a moment while reading a collection, when my attention snags and then I really begin to read the poems. With me, this is never with the first few poems, which pass by the way a Films Division documentary passes.

Reading Roddy Lumsden's new collection, Terrific Melancholy, the first poem that sinks its hooks in is the 22nd one: 'Duology'. This is not the fault of the collection but mine. My attention is scattered and hard to rein in. But once I've been caught, I find more and more lines and poems I want to savour. 'Duology' has the word of the quarter. Two poems on I find my Word of the Day.

*

The Word of the Day is selvage. In my mind, it's always said by my mother, or some lady like my mother, as a word in the middle of a sentence in Tamil. For a long time it sounded like self-edge, which makes complete sense and is total nonsense all at once. It's most frequently heard at the tailor's and comes with a smell of new cloth and starch, of dark corners and bins full of odd-sized, bright tangles of left-over bits.

Nobody says selvage anymore. It's been stiched up by the picos and the falls and has fallen silent.

And is given voice again in Lumsden's'The Sign of O': 'that which dallies/ at the selvage of our apprehension, blinking/ seldom, as the Titan arum lily blooms;'

Or maybe not.

selvageselvageselvage.
*

Duology
by Roddy Lumsden

Le jeu lugubre - not one of Dali's lighter pieces:
autoerotic, omnisexual, a spandulous whorl
of heads and hats and hands. Translated
by bottom feeders as The Lugubrious Game,
by the enlightened as Dismal Sport, the former
sends the arrow close to its quiddity, the latter
pins its haecceity to the canvas.
                                                    The way we dress
is beyond determination, gene-gleaned:
one girl looks a fool in a gown, another glides
into the nightlife in a catsuit; one lad squires
in his homodox jerkin, another skives in a flat cap
he knows is a black fib. History's dayjob
is to usher us closer to its shady marquee.
And so we age: easier to love, harder to desire.

from Terrific Melancholy, Bloodaxe Books, 2011.

*
This must be one instance where looking at the image which triggers an ekphrastic poem has done nothing for me. Maybe I'm done with Dali.

Give him a word, someone, and send him home.

The Return of the Spaniard

If I had moustaches, they would be wilting and drooping. Where are the rains?! Is this any way to greet a returning heroine? This afternoon a few drops of rain rearranged the dust on the leaves. Where's the malhar? where're the kale megha? where are the peacocks dancing for joy? Where's all the exotica that's I have grown used to? ([vegetarian] Haggis. Highland sheep [to look at]. Deep-fried Mars bars.)

*

There is loot. There is nothing but loot, since I left all the warm clothes behind in London in order to make place for other, more important things. If you pressed me, I couldn't tell you why these other things occupied all the space in my baggage (or even what they were), seeing as I'd posted nearly every book I bought. I suppose you could say that I just never learned and kept buying more. I could name some folk who would be happy at my evident lack of control.

*
So the loot. I can't possibly name every book I bought. Among them are the books of friends I met/made, including Kathleen Jamie, Kona Macphee and Rob Mackenzie. Some were given to me and I wouldn't dream of refusing. Others were like a keeda in my head until I had acquired them. A couple were bought based purely on how amazing the poets reading their own work were.

In no particular order:

The Tree House and Findings  Kathleen Jamie

Perfect Blue  Kona Macphee

The Opposite of Cabbage  Rob Mackenzie.

Taller When Prone  Les Murray

Selected Poems, Revised and Expanded Charles Simic

The Heavy Petting Zoo and Changeling  Clare Pollard

Terrific Melancholy  Roddy Lumsden

Poems J.H.Prynne

And that's just the poems. Other stuff includes Creeley's The Gold Diggers, that Perec (which everyone seems to think I must already have), The Periodic Table and assorted other fiction and non-fiction of varying degrees of seriousness.

But wait for the next part.

*

I came back home to find that two friends of mine had sent on a belated birthday gift chosen from a  rather extravagant wishlist I'd sent out before I left. I had assumed - as any sensible person would who doesn't expect to see bookobssession in others - that they would choose one, maybe two books from that list.

They chose five.

Which five, you ask?

Pale Fire

Words in Air

Versed

The Emperor of Icecream and Other Poems

Poems J.H.Prynne.

Yes.

Two copies of Prynne. Anyone who wants to buy one off me may mail me.

*

Speaking of Prynne, I was sitting at the window of a cafe in Cambridge, chatting with a friend, when she said, 'There's Prynne.'

And indeed, there he was, walking past, looking right then left before crossing the road. I felt fangirly in a way that I can't explain. Rather like a film student with a rapt look on her face who in a hushed, reverent voice says, 'There's Svankmajer!' to a general film-going audience that looks on with indulgent bemusement.

*

Anyway. Too lazy, too wilted to italicise and provide links to the books, poets etc. They're windmills and you're welcome to tilt at them if you wish.

How have you all been?