who needs syntax

e.e cummings is a strong candidate for the category of “pretentious poet”. Rarely does his poetry follow the pattern for even the most basic structures of our language; a cummings poem makes reading a vertical as opposed to horizontal process, and even his chosen spelling of his name screams self-important, over-analytical and pretentious. Primarily, his poetry is a pain to read. It is a process of putting words together yourself, deciding which word makes most sense with what the poem is attempting, somewhat tortuously, to talk about. And yet, somehow, brilliantly, cummings makes it work.

cummings was the non-modernist poet writing in the modernist time. Whilst artists of the post-war era were fixated on using poetry as a medium to create and find meaning and structure in a dilapidated world, cummings was stripping all that apart, destroying the most basic and seemingly immoveable force of our existence, language, through warping and twisting its most basic rules and patterns. Words are not supposed to be cut across two lines, separated by paragraphs or interrupted by jarring open-ended brackets. So why create such chaos in an already chaotic world? cummings is, cleverly, proposing an alternative solution to the innate rootlessness of a post-war society. By breaking down the last of the human certainties, he forces people to look towards another human certainty and find a purpose in this – emotion. If we have nothing left to root us and structure us, the only thing we have left to know is what we feel.

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all the flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

and death i think is no parenthesis

For cummings, it is in feeling that we will find life’s meaning; And poetry is the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling” (Wordsworth), the closest, most direct artistic communication of this overarching human capability. cummings’ work is rooted in this reality, the reality of emotion and human susceptibility to it. Pretentious? Or real, positive and innately, painfully human?

2. The Haberdashery

Crouch End is not really an area of North London I frequent very often, but I started working there a week ago, and whilst exploring on my lunch break, stumbled upon a gem of a cafe. This is The Haberdashery. With its Cath Kidston-esque prints,its patterned crockery fit for your grandma’s tea parties, and Victorian fireplace tiles colouring its walls,  it oozes super-cute flower kitsch like nothing you’ve seen before. They serve a great bowl-sized cup of coffee, bake their own organic bread and on the first Friday of each month they hold a bar boot sale; pretty vintage flower dresses to match the pretty vintage teapots- what more could you ask for? However, despite it ticking all the right old-school-quaintness boxes, it would not normally make the list of exciting new places in London that I am trying to compile, just because of its not-so-great location. But my visit there today, changed this judgement as, to accompany my tasty butternut squash soup was an awesome visitor in the shape of the comical and musical genius that is Tim Minchin. Well, if it’s good enough for Tim, it’s certainly good enough for me.

http://www.the-haberdashery.com/Home.html

And…

1. The Blues Kitchen

I can’t believe I have managed to go so many years of nights out in Camden without finding this place. Blues/jazz restaurant and bar, with chequered baby blue wallpaper, little wooden tables and a great American-south feel.  The kind of place where the barmaid whose been making your cocktails all night gets up on stage and belts out “Ain’t No Sunshine” with a voice that will knock the olive out of your martini. Head there on a Wednesday night for 2-for-1 cocktails (making them an amazing £3.50 each). And if you’re into Bourbon, they have quite an impressive selection. Cocktail recommendation: The Gin Julep.

www.theblueskitchen.com

London lovin’

“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford”

So said Samuel Johnson, one of the many writers and artists helplessly absorbed in an ongoing love affair with London town. I, now in London for the a while before I disappear to another capital, would like to test his unbounded love for the thrilling streets of the capital.

Admittedly, I am already a bit of a London elitist myself. After many stays in many European cities, I always return to London thrilled to be back somewhere where the buses are red, the sky is grey and the people are every colour under the sun. But, having spent three years at university outside this multicoloured capital, I, the permanent defender of everything “London”, feel the need to justify my own love affair with the city and rediscover the crooks and crannies that make it what it is. Whatever that identity may be.

So whilst I’m here, I will endeavour to visit places in London that I’ve never been to before and make a record of them in blog form; a short and sweet review of any restaurants, bars, cafes, parks, streets, theatres and the like which I happen to discover whilst back in the capital. So, when I leave it again, this time, I hope, on a more permanent basis to another exciting capital, I will be certain that my love for London can never be usurped.

“A sunny place for shady people”

Travelling along the Cote d’Azur, it does not take long to understand why F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel of American New World decadence was set on the French Riviera of the 1920’s. The strip of French coast-line, with its average of 300 days of sunshine a year, is still as beautiful and glittering as the lavish world of Dick and Nicole Diver, the wealthy, glamorous but fatally tragic duo of Tender is the Night. The Divers’ world is one which oozes money and decadence, a world which slots perfectly into the the sun-drenched towns along the alluringly blue Mediterranean coast line. It is hard to envisage the tragedy of the novel, with its morass of broken families and identities, taking place in the charming winding streets of each pastel-coloured “vieille ville". And yet, ironically, it is the persistent sunshine which brings out the darker edge in this scenic setting. It is the sun which makes the coast glitter in a way which suggests a restless impermanence, a shroud of volatile and intangible light. Perhaps this feeling is induced by mere paranoia on my part, an impact of the tragic outcome of the novel still firmly imprinted in my mind. Or perhaps, it is the feeling of money in the air, the awareness that this is a slightly rootless world constructed on paper, ink and rays of sun, without anything hugely substantial holding it to the ground. In places such as Beaulieu, Ville Franche and Antibes, the big coastal houses and the littering of private yachts certainly endorse this notion. In Saint Jean Cap-Ferrat, the Rothschild Villa with its intricately designed numerous gardens and 18th century style house, stands again as a reminder of the sheer overflow of money that existed here in the early twentieth century.

Nowhere, however, is this hedonistic excess more obvious than in Monaco, a place of tall, grey concrete, and big, big bucks. The private yachts are stacked high and mighty in its port, almost on top of each other, creating a mountain of luxury which greets you as you enter the tax-free city state. Lamborghini’s and Ferrari’s drive past on the roads which annually stage the Formula One Grand Prix. This is the 21st century equivalent of the Diver world, hovering above the ground idealistically and aimlessly, totally divorced from reality. Like the £35,000 bottle of champagne on the bar menu, it is total insanity. And yet, almost a century after the money, sex and tragedy of Fitzgerald’s world, it persists, the sun still beautifully shining on.

Photos all my own

Coffee?

I am far from a coffee expert. I couldn’t tell you the difference between a Brazilian medium roast coffee bean or one hand-picked by Kenyan elephants and roasted on an open fire. That’s too much poncey detail for me. No, when I say I love coffee, I am referring to the Going-For-Coffee coffee experience. The process of calling someone up and popping that all-important, timeless question, the question which has brought more bored, lonely people together than match.com ever will: “Do you want to go for coffee?”  The most used phrase in my vocabulary. GFC (Going-F0r-Coffee) is a very specific experience, however. When I say GFC, I don’t mean, grabbing a quick skinnysoytripleshotcafelatte and scalding your tongue/mouth/face/trachea taking desperate sips whilst running for the bus. And I certainly don’t mean having coffee at home, even if it is from your new coffee machine which arrived yesterday and even makes capuccinos dahling. GFC has three specific criteria which make it the proper GFC experience. And this is what I do best:

1. The GFC experience must be long. Certainly over an hour, three hours being the ultimum length. The angrier the cafe waiter gets with you for sitting there for so long having only purchased one drink, the better.

2.  GFC is not for catching up with long lost friends who you haven’t seen in a decade. That’s a different type of coffee experience. My GFC is for the friends that are always there, that you see almost every day, that you technically should have nothing left to talk about with anymore but whose mutual love for GFC means you are still there day in, day out, Going-For-Coffee

3. GFC with said friend(s) must always happen at the same coffee place. Perhaps there’s a shortlist of 2 or 3 which you choose from with that specific GFC partner, but no more. Preferably stick to the same place, then only one set of staff will hate you for your prolonged, cheap visits and and flavour your coffee with their saliva.

GFC is stress-free, no-pressure socialising with the added perk of caffeine, and minus the expense/calories of going out for dinner. In times of need, GFC always pulls through as a source of comfort and tranquility and, of course, procrastination. It may, granted, be best for students, the lazy, bored or unemployed, but it is still an artform. It is a much-needed antidote to the too-often used phrase: “ A coffee to go, please”.

Faces

 

Table for two?

Ios Island, The Cyclades, Greece