{"id":470,"date":"2011-12-17T12:29:35","date_gmt":"2011-12-17T12:29:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=470"},"modified":"2020-12-09T14:38:54","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T14:38:54","slug":"william-bedford-reviews-andrew-mcmillans-the-moon-is-a-supporting-player","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/william-bedford-reviews-andrew-mcmillans-the-moon-is-a-supporting-player\/","title":{"rendered":"William Bedford reviews Andrew McMillan's 'The Moon is a Supporting Player'"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Andrew McMillan, <\/span>The Moon is a Supporting Player<\/span><\/a> (Sand Chapbooks, Red Squirrel Press, 2011) pp.38, \u00a34.00p.<\/span>


Helen Ivory\u2019s cover design \u2013 which I take to be a homage to Magritte \u2013 is a perfect introduction to Andrew McMillan\u2019s new pamphlet, <\/span>The Moon is a Supporting Player<\/span>. The techniques of surrealism offer a way of grasping the fragmentary world the poems explore: American beat poetry and Jonsonian Masques, a hint of a South Yorkshire accent and a fleeting screenplay narrative, everything structured around a series of ideas for Radio 4 Afternoon Plays. <\/span>

Having said all of that, it may seem surprising to hear Auden and Larkin lurking in the wings of McMillan\u2019s imagination. Larkin\u2019s \u2018Friday Night in the Royal Station Hotel\u2019 provides the title for \u2018now night comes on\u2019, though ironically the tone here is much closer to the Auden of \u2018Lullaby\u2019 and \u2018Dear, though the night is gone\u2019 with their disturbing lovers\u2019 scenarios and questions: \u201cI guess you\u2019ll remember the waiter\/who was <\/span>beautiful<\/span>\u201d but \u201cas for why I came?\/or why I thought you\u2019d asked me?\/I blame the sea\u201d. <\/span>
The Larkin note is in the opening stanza of another poem, \u2018early September\u2019, which has something of his familiar sadness, until the final metaphor takes us to another kind of imagination altogether:<\/span>


the day blows out the last<\/span>
of summer\u2019s unimportant failures<\/span>
a bird drops from the sky<\/span>
looking like the shadow of a tiny parachutist<\/span>


This is followed in the second and longer stanza of the poem by an incident on a bus journey in which a man asks \u201cif anyone can split a twenty\u201d and a girl\u2019s caustic \u201c<\/span>we\u2019re all skint<\/span>\u201d sends \u201claughter rippling down the bus\u201d to make a kind of political point Larkin wouldn\u2019t appreciate. The two stanzas together create a tension without resolving it, without providing narrative clarity, and that is the technique throughout <\/span>The Moon is a Supporting Player. <\/span>

Fragments do of course add up to a vision: the whole point of collage in painting. But if there is anything structuring these poems, it is perhaps the interludes titled \u2018BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play idea\u2019, five of them but randomly numbered 1, 3, 7, 11 and 29. Each drama is self-contained, and refuses interpretation. \u2018idea 3\u2019 may illustrate the technique. A patient is talking to a psychiatrist, telling an open-ended story which leaves the reader with a series of questions: \u201cbut why was there a button missing from the man\u2019s coat?   and where did the exhausted metaphor of the train sleep that night?   and what does the conductor smell like first thing on a morning?\u201d <\/span>

The most fascinating of these radio scenarios is \u2018idea 11\u2019, a kind of Jonsonian Masque where visual effects are repeatedly given in \u2018stage\u2019 directions, themselves a contradiction of the logic of the radio form. I must say I love the method, the elusive quality of the imagery, in this poem especially. And McMillan himself tells us what he is up to, in \u2018idea 1\u2019:<\/span>

the point<\/span>
        perhaps there isn\u2019t one    except<\/span>
to say that maybe miracles are possible<\/span>
just not forever<\/span>


For me, the finest image in the collection, typical of McMillan\u2019s gift and setting the themes and the music singing together, comes from \u2018bird sightings\u2019: \u201c<\/span>I love you with the trailing leg of a gull heading north<\/span>.\u201d There is enough richness in that single line to keep you thinking for a long time. <\/span>

The collection ends with a sequence which takes its title from Ginsberg\u2019s <\/span>Howl<\/span>, \u2018in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea journey on the highway across America\u2019. In this Beat travelogue we encounter Arthur Miller, Ferlinghetti, California, Nebraska, Utah, Chicago, the El Train, Virginian song, Salt Lake station and the Mississippi River, Detroit as \u201ca toothless piano\u201d and New York City. We encounter an America, where:<\/span>

mists roll in        light as Amish song<\/span>
cars        fireflies        circle east<\/span>
in the sealed jar of night<\/span>


and the poet has earned the beauty of his own rather Larkinesque aphorism: \u201cthere is so much we won\u2019t outlast\u201d. <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

…reviewed by William Bedford<\/a><\/span><\/font>
<\/div>\n
<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andrew McMillan, The Moon is a Supporting Player (Sand Chapbooks, Red Squirrel Press, 2011) pp.38, \u00a34.00p.Helen Ivory\u2019s cover design \u2013 which I take to be a homage to Magritte \u2013 is a perfect introduction to Andrew McMillan\u2019s new pamphlet, The Moon is a Supporting Player. The techniques of surrealism offer a way of grasping the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23758,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions\/23758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}