by Clive James
The female panda is on heat 405
The flame reflected in the welder’s mask 59
The forms of nature cufflinked through your life 129
The garden was in bloom, my egoist 454
The gesture towards Finnegans Wake was deliberate. 35
The gods have eyes the colour of the sky. 20
The gradual but inexorable magic 221
The heroes ride out through the Sunlight Gate 488
The history and geography of feeling less than wonderful are 517
The ichthyologist Constantine Rafinesque-Schmaltz 49
The idea is to set the mind adrift 350
The leaves of Tower Bridge are rigged to open 125
The lemur that bit a piece out of my daughter 374
The light as it grows dark holds all the verve 383
The lilac peak of Etna dribbles pink, 307
The ne plus ultra of our lying down, 391
The objects on display might seem to lack 229
The perfect moon was huge above the sea 507
The Public Morals Unit of Hamas 270
The reason I am leaning over 155
The ring hangs on a string inside your shirt 465
The Russian poets dreamed, but dreamed too soon, 138
The seas of the moon are white on white towards evening 5
The Sioux, believing ponies should be pintos, 239
The sky is silent. All the planes must keep 332
The stars in their magnificent array 423
The sun seems in control, the tide is out: 426
The unbridled phallus of the philosopher 44
The way his broken spirit almost healed 151
The way my arms around you touch the centre of my being 455
The way the bamboo leans out of the frame, 282
The wild White Nun, rarest and loveliest 309
They were all dying for her, 352
Things worn out by the lapse of ages tend 131
This afternoon the ice-cream man 446
This is the way that winter says goodbye to spring 525
This kind of ocean fails to reach the coast 499
This one we didn’t know we didn’t know: 231
Tired out from getting up and getting dressed 428
To catch your eye in Paris, Tom, 178
To Gore Vidal at – how should I commence? 190
To stay, as Mr Larkin stays, back late 165
Today in Castlereagh Street I 140
Too frail to fly, I may not see again 399
Too many of my friends are dead, and others wrecked 303
Touch has a memory 470
Triangular Macquarie Place, up from the Quay, 55
Two of her little pictures grace my walls: 421
Two winter plum trees grow beside my door. 430
Under the jacarandas 223
Van Wyck Brooks tells us Whitman in old age 363
Was it twenty years ago I met that couple 314
We never built our grand house on the edge 371
“Were you not more than just a pretty face 325
what time el Rouble & la Dollar spin 157
When Kaganovich, brother-in-law of Stalin, 90
When Mrs Taflan Gruffydd-Lewis left Dai’s flat 164
When the King of Rock and Roll sang in the desert 467
When we were kids we fought in the mock battle 242
When you see what can’t be helped go by 489
Where do bus vandals get their diamond pens 235
Where he sought symbols, we, for him, must seek 365
Wherever her main residence is now, 419
While you paint me, I marvel at your skin. 296
Windows is shutting down, and grammar are 207
You are my alcohol and nicotine, 285
You can’t persuade the carnival to stay. 302
You never travelled much but now you have, 68
You see this rose? This rose is not just you, 321
You simply mustn’t blame yourself – the days were perfect 472
You’ve got to help me, doc, I see things in the night 462
You’ve seen the way they get around 456
Young ladies beautiful as novelists 249
Your death, near now, is of an easy sort. 436
Your manifest perfections never cease 464
Acknowledgements
In past collections I was always careful to list the publications in which my poems first appeared, and to thank their editors. But here at the end of a long life the full list would go on for pages, and the names of the editors would look like a mechanically historicist notation, especially since some of them are by now deceased. Almost in that condition myself, I feel justified in providing a mere sketch. Some names, however, were crucial in those times when I was either only just emerging as a poet, or else threatening to destroy my incipient literary reputation in the gaudy fire of celebrity accruing to regular appearances on television. No matter how well-known I got in all the wrong ways, the London editors Karl Miller, Ian Hamilton and John Gross still printed my poems, as did Claire Tomalin and Anthony Thwaite, nowadays the only survivors of that brilliant crew. Young writers of today sometimes look back in envy on the bustling cockpit of the London Literary World in the 1960s and 1970s, but unless they realize the decisive importance of the editors they miss the real story. The editors could write; which meant that the poets could not bluff them, and had to graft hard for prominence. In the back of the limousine to the studio, I was very aware that I might not look as if I were starving for my art.
In more recent times, after I retired from the small screen at the turn of the millennium, my personal picture clarified; and after I fell ill ten years later I necessarily looked almost as serious as a writer can get. In cold fact I went on writing because there were still some subjects waiting for their proper expression, so really I was beginning again. To help make that latter-day ambition seem worthwhile, the judgment of editors continued to play a part. Though the structure of literary journalism went on dissolving towards a condition of universal click-bait, there were still, at key points, highly qualified people on the lookout for work that might last; and I would particularly like to acknowledge the scrupulous attentions of Alan Jenkins at the TLS, Paul Muldoon at the New Yorker, Christian Wiman at Poetry (Chicago), Daniel Johnson at Standpoint, Tom Gatti at the New Statesman and Hugo Williams at the Spectator. In Australia, Les Murray at Quadrant has continued with his kind willingness to bring some of my work home: our country’s supreme poet would be an historically important editor and anthologist even if he had never written a poem of his own. Peter Rose at the Australian Book Review and Peter Craven at Best Australian Poems have also been generous with their hospitality. Sometimes a single editor, by taking a single initiative, can alter the geography of a poet’s ambition: during her time at the New Yorker, Tina Brown published my poem ‘What Happened to Auden’, and suddenly I saw the possibility of ranging across the Atlantic. In later years, and also in New York, Robert Weil has been a great encouragement by offering me access to his publishing labels at Norton and Liveright. The poems that have come to me in the recent period of my ill health have benefited greatly from close reading by Stephen Edgar, David Free, Tom Stoppard and two members of my immediate family, Prue Shaw and Claerwen James. Finally and as always, I should bless my luck in having attracted the curatorial advice and courage of Don Paterson at Picador: courage because for the editor of a lifetime collection to suggest to the poet that some of his poems might be better left out is to court tears and petulance. But if it is not done, the volume dies of its own dimensions; and after all those years as a professional entertainer I would not like to lose the virtues of keeping things brief.
ALSO BY CLIVE JAMES
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Unreliable Memoirs Falling Towards England
May Week Was In June North Face of Soho
The Blaze of Obscurity
FICTION
Brilliant Creatures The Remake
VERSE
Other Passports: Poems 1958–1985
The Book of My Enemy: Collected Verse 1958–2003
Opal Sunset: Selected Poems 1958–2008
Angels Over Elsinore: Collected Verse 2003–2008
Nefertiti in the Flak Tower Sentenced to Life
Gate of Lilacs
TRANSLATION
The Divine Comedy
CRITICISM
The Metropolitan Critic (new edition, 1994)
Visions Before Midnight The Crystal Bucket
First Reactions (US) From the Land of Shadows
Glued to the Box Snakecharmers in Texas
The Dreaming Swimmer Fame in the 20th Century
On Television Even As We Speak Reliable Essays
As of This Writing (US) The Meaning of Recognition
Cultural Amnesia The Revolt of the Pendulum
A Point of View Poetry Notebook
TRAVEL
Flying Visits
Copyright © 2016 by Clive James
First American Edition 2016
All rights reserved
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