Late Clive James
The British TV host and literary critic Clive James is undergoing a late efflorescence as a poet, one brought on, perhaps, by fresh appreciation of his talents. A previous generation of critics, he writes in an introduction to his new book, "Opal Sunset: Selected Poems, 1958-2008," "often found me guilty of sounding as if I were having too much fun." But when his "Collected Poems" appeared in 2003, "now here were this new bunch suggesting that I just might be -- with due allowance for the poisonously long half-life of television celebrity -- some kind of poet after all."
Laurels may have bred productivity. His new book is essentially two books, he notes: The first comprises works written during his first 45 years as a working poet; the second features the products of the last five years.
James's most famous poem, "The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered," which begins "The book of my enemy has been remaindered / and I am pleased," remains perhaps the last word in literary schadenfreude." (It's a cousin of Gore Vidal's remark that every time a friend succeeds, a little piece of him dies.) Appropriately, it leads off this collection.
There are many moments of joy and amusement in the second half of the book -- indeed, in all of it -- but one poem, "Windows Is Shutting Down," leapt out at me for the way it reframes a sentence to which I'd, oddly, never given a second thought, though millions of people read it every day. It ties the famous Microsoft sign-off to the general deterioration of literary standards. (Or might it be commentary on the pointlessness and pedantry of such complaints?) It begins:
Windows is shutting down, and grammar are
On their last leg. So what am we to do?
A letter of complaint go just so far,*
Proving the only one in step are you.
Better, perhaps, to simply let it goes.
A sentence have to be screwed pretty bad
Before they gets to where you doesnt knows
The meaning what it must of meant to had.
And the final line:
Those are the break. Windows is shutting down.
*However, such a letter might get you a mention in Jan Freeman's column.
