Description
Book SynopsisThroughout Rake, Matthew Caley's fifth collection, it can appear as if we are glimpsing into the oblique diary of an immortal time-travelling rake, one who is seeking his 'one true beloved' through an heroic tally of amorous encounters, desperately trying to get beyond appetite - or possibly an entire pack [proper collective noun] of immortal time-travelling rakes. Or maybe someone imagining themselves to be such a rake, having drunk too many espressos. Be that as it may, what results is a series of beautifully skewed, left-field, back-handed love poems. Throughout, the forms used are equally promiscuous - tanka, sonnets, refrains, poems sifted from or alluding to Les Liaisons Dangereuses or Barthes' Lover's Discourse, versions of Baudelaire, Bonnefoy and Corbiere, an 'echo sonnet', sonnet-strings, mono-rhymers, a 'tonnet' - hybrid of sonnet and tanka - and most frequently, tanka used as a run-on stanza-unit. Throughout the boudoirs of La Belle Epoch, 80s Cold War Russia, ancient Egypt and the Wild West to London 1910 or LA in the 90s, but more often than not from these locations to the 24 hour neon of the contemporary city and back again in a micro-second - desire feeds lack [and vice-versa] yet yearns for escape.
Trade Review'Gleeful cultural cannibalism. Hauntingly lovely, immaculately constructed. Apparently is one of those collections which makes you see the world as suddenly more complex, strange and fascinating' - Imogen Robertson, Poetry Book Society Online.; 'Satirically playful, self-parodic, yes, but unable to conceal an emotional intelligence that lends depth and vulnerability to Caley's voice even at moments of humour' - Jane Holland, Poetry Review.; 'The most inventive user of the sonnet form currently writing - Laurie Smith, Magma.
Table of ContentsUs The Confluence of The Elbe and the Upa Skinny-dipper Man-hole My Hypothetical Lovers Foregone Conclusions Bling The Giantess Hither Green Thursday And Bladerunner From The Rental My Mistress Doesn't Like It When I Make Love With My Wife The Kiss Hat Chamber Piece Misery Memoir Written Immediately On Waking Eridanus Her Sleepy Egypt Archaeology Acute Hot Knee No Buffalo Skinners Absolute Gospel The Sleeper Los Angeles Octopussy, 1983 Low Expectation Threshold Quaaludes Dry Land If For You It's Tuesday, For Me It's Thursday Immortality Gursky The Funicular The Boulevardiers Ice Buds Walnuts Cloud-catcher Plane Tree Outside The Ritzy Laundrettes At Night notes for The Plateaux And The Horse In Each Movement Equanimity Arboretum The Young Hegelians The Salamander Afterglow Alacrity The Hammock
