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Home>>Poetry>>Poetry Collections>>Fan Mail>>To Tom Stoppard

To Tom Stoppard: a letter from London

Picture
To catch your eye in Paris, Tom,
I choose a show-off stanza from
    Some Thirties play
Forgotten now like Rin Tin Tin
Was it The Dog Beneath the Skin?
    Well, anyway

Its tone survives. The metres move
Through time like paintings in the Louvre
     (Say loov, not loover):
Coherent in their verbal jazz,
They’re confident of tenure as 
    J. Edgar Hoover.

Pink fairies of the sixth-form Left,
Those Ruined Boys at least were deft
     At the actual writing.
Though history scorns all they thought, 
The nifty artefacts they wrought
     Still sound exciting.

Distinguishing the higher fliers
Remorselessly from plodding triers
     Who haven’t got it,
Such phonic zip bespeaks a knack
Of which no labour hides the lack:
    A child could spot it.

And boy, you’ve got the stuff in bales – 
A Lubitsch-touch that never fails.
    The other guys
Compared to you write lines that float
With all the grace of what gets wrote
    By Ernest Wise.

The Stoppard dramaturgic moxie
Unnerves the priests of orthodoxy:
    We still hear thicks
Who broadcast the opinion freely
Your plays are only sketches really – 
    Just bags of tricks.

If dramas do not hammer themes
Like pub bores telling you their dreams
    The dense don’t twig.
They want the things they know already
Reiterated loud and steady – 
    Drilled through the wig.

From all frivolity aloof,
Those positivist killjoys goof
    Two ways at once:
They sell skill short, and then ignore
The way your works are so much more
    Than clever stunts.

So frictionless a jeu d’esprit,
Like Wittgenstein’s philosophy,
    Appears to leave
Things as they are, but at the last
The future flowing to the past
    Without reprieve

Endorses everything you’ve done.
As Einstein puts it, The Old One
    Does not play dice,
And though your gift might smack of luck
Laws guide it, like the hockey puck
    Across the ice.

Deterministic you are not,
However, even by a jot.
    Your sense of form
Derives its casual power to thrill
From operating at the still
    Heart of the storm.

For how could someone lack concern
Who cared that gentle Guildenstern
    And Rosencrantz
(Or else the same names be rearranged
Should those two men be interchanged)
    Were sent by chance

To meet a death at Hamlet’s whim
Less grand than lay in store for him,
    But still a death:
A more appalling death, in fact
Than any king’s in the Fifth Act – 
    Even Macbeth?

In south-east Asia as I type
The carbuncle is growing ripe
    Around Saigon.
The citadels are soon reduced.
The chickens have come home to roost.
    The heat is on,

And we shall see a sickness cured
Which virulently has endured
    These thirty years:
The torturers ran out of jails,
The coffin-makers out of nails,
    Mother of tears,

While all the Furies and the Fates
Unleashed by the United States
    In Freedom’s name
Gave evidence that moral error
Returns in tumult and in terror
    The way it came.

But now the conquerors bring peace.
When everyone is in the police
    There’s no unrest.
Except for those who disappear
The People grin from ear to ear – 
    Not like the West.

Rejecting both kinds of belief
(Believing only on the grief
    Their clash must bring)
We find to use the words we feel
Adhere most closely to the real
    Means everything.

I like the kind of jokes you tell
And what’s more you like mine as well – 
    Clear proof of nous.
I like your stylish way of life.
I’ve thought of kidnapping your wife.
    I like your house.

Success appeals to my sweet tooth:
But finally it’s to the truth
    That you defer – 
And that’s the thing I like the best.
My love to Miri. Get some rest.
    A tout à l’heure.


Reviews of The Book of My Enemy

The Age
Independent
Telegraph, Alan Marshall
Telegraph, John Gross
Copyright © 2019
​Built & managed  By Dawn Mancer
  • Home
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    • Profiles >
      • The Texture of Reality
  • Books
    • The Fire Of Joy
    • Unreliable Memoirs
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    • May Week Was In June
    • North Face of Soho
    • The Blaze of Obscurity
    • Latest Readings
    • Cultural Amnesia
    • Play All
    • A Point Of View
    • Flying Visits
  • Essays
    • Visions Before Midnight
    • The Crystal Bucket
    • Glued To The Box
    • The Metropolitan Critic
    • At the Pillars of Hercules
    • As of This Writing
    • The Meaning of Recognition >
      • Introduction
      • Polanski and the Pianist
      • Fantasy in the West Wing
      • Pushkin's Deadly Gift
      • Great Sopranos of Our Time
      • A Memory Called Malouf
      • Bing Crosby's Hidden Art
      • Larkin Treads the Boards
      • The Iron Capital of Bruno Schulz
      • Criticism a la Frank Kermode
      • Fast Talking Dames
      • Rough Guides to Shakespeare
      • General Election Sequence 2001
      • Primo Levi and the Painted Veil
      • A Big Boutique of Australian Essays
      • Cyrano on the Scaffold
      • A Nightclub in Bali
      • Aldous Huxley Then and Now
      • A Man Called Peter Porter
      • Philip Roth's Alternative America
      • The Miraculous Vineyard of Australian Poetry
      • Save Us From Celebrity
    • The Revolt of the Pendulum >
      • The Question of Karl Kraus
      • John Bayley's Daily Bread
      • Kingsley and the Women
      • Canetti Man of Mystery
      • Camille Paglia Burns for Poetry
      • The Guidebook Detectives
      • Zuckerman Uncorked
      • The Flight from the Destroyer
      • Saying Famous Things
      • Insult to the Language
      • The Perfectly Bad Sentence
      • Happiness Writes White
      • All Stalkers Kill
      • Best Eaten Cold
      • White Shorts of Leni Reifenstahl
      • Made in Britain, More or Less
      • Movie Criticism in America
      • Show Me the Horror
      • The Measure of A.D. Hope
      • Robert Hughes Remembers
      • Modern Australian Painting
      • On Diamond Jim McClelland
      • The Voice of John Anderson
      • Niki Lauda Wins Going Slowly
      • Damon Hill's Bravest Day
      • Jonathan James-Moore
      • Ian Adam
      • Pat Kavanagh
      • Starting with Sludge
    • Guest Writers >
      • Zoe Williams
      • Russell Davies
      • Bryan Appleyard
      • Marina Hyde
      • Bruce Beresford
      • Michael Frayn
  • Poetry
    • Poetry Collections >
      • Fin de Fiesta
      • Injury Time
      • Sentenced to Life >
        • Japanese Maple
        • Sentenced to Life
        • Procedure for Disposal
        • Leçons des ténèbres
        • Driftwood Houses
        • Event Horizon
        • Neuland
        • Echo Point
        • Change of Domicile
        • Holding Court
        • Too Much Light
        • Nature Programme
        • My Latest Fever
        • Nina Kogan's Geometrical Heaven
        • The Emperor's Last Words
        • Winter Plums
      • Nefertiti in the Flak Tower >
        • Whitman and the Moth
        • The Falcon Growing Old
      • Angels over Elsinore
      • The Book of My Enemy >
        • Recent Verse
        • Verse Letters
      • Opal Sunset
      • Other Passports >
        • Recent Verse >
          • The Book of My Enemy has been Remaindered
        • Parodies etc.
        • Earlier Verse
        • Verse Diaries
      • Fan Mail >
        • To Russell Davies: a letter from Cardiff
        • To Martin Amis: a letter from Indianapolis
        • To Pete Atkin: a letter from Paris
        • To Prue Shaw: a letter from Cambridge
        • To Tom Stoppard: a letter from London
        • To Peter Porter: a letter to Sydney
    • Epic Poems >
      • The River in the Sky
      • Gate of Lilacs
      • The Divine Comedy >
        • Hell - Cantos 1-3
        • Purgatory - Cantos 1-3
        • Heaven - Cantos 1-3
      • Poem of the Year
    • Books About Poetry >
      • Somewhere Becoming Rain
      • Poetry Notebook >
        • Listening for the Flavour
        • Five Favourite Poetry Books
        • Velvet Shackles
        • Meeting MacNiece
        • The Donaghy Negotiation
    • Poetry Readings
    • Articles on Poetry
    • Back from The Web
    • Guest Poets >
      • Daniel Brown
      • Liane Strauss
      • Les Murray
      • Peter Porter
      • Alan Jenkins
      • Stephen Edgar
      • John Stammers
      • Simon Barraclough
      • Isobel Dixon
      • Christian Wiman
      • Olivia Cole
      • Judith Beveridge
      • Peter Goldsworthy
      • Kapka Kassabova
  • Lyrics
    • My life in lyrics
    • Selected Song Lyrics >
      • Dancing Master
      • Faded Mansion
      • Have You got a Biro I can Borrow?
      • I Have to Learn to Live Alone Again
      • Hill of Little Shoes
      • History & Geography
      • I See the Joker
      • Laughing Boy
      • My Brother's Keeper
      • National Steel
      • Nothing Left to Say
      • Sessionman's Blues
      • Song for Rita
      • Stranger in Town
      • Sunlight Gate
      • The Egoist
      • The Eye of the Universe
      • The Ice Cream Man
      • Femme Fatale
      • The Master of the Revels
      • Thirty-year Man
      • Winter Spring
  • Video
    • Talking in the Library >
      • Series One
      • Series Two
      • Series Three
      • Series Four
      • Series Five
    • Postcards
    • CJ on YouTube
  • Radio
    • A Point Of View
    • Book Talk