In Defence of My Essay on D. H. Lawrence's Dendrophilia

Illustration by Efrat Dahan

behance.net

 

 

I. 

 

An academic journal [1] has rejected the following short essay:

 

 

On D. H. Lawrence's Dendrophilia 

 

In an attempt to move beyond established parameters, this short essay examines the perverse materiality of Lawrence's relationship with the botanical world. It affirms dendrophilia not merely as a form of sexual deviance, but as a formal mechanism through which Lawrence facilitates amorous contact with the otherness of the arboreal environment. 

      Lawrence is often situated within the paradigms of vitalism and panpsychism. But such taxonomies often obfuscate the more radical and disturbing dimensions of his work. For far beyond the therapeutic frameworks of nature-immersion and forest bathing, Lawrence delineates a queer ontology of compulsion and, in this context, the tree transcends its status as a mimetic symbol of life to become a literal and figurative object of desire. As a nonhuman entity, its resinous allure facilitates a form of sexual communion that systematically transgresses heteronormative boundaries. 

      In the pornographic imagination, 'wood' is frequently employed as a crude metonym for male arousal. Lawrence, however, specifically via the figure of Rupert Birkin, reclaims the term's material density. Birkin's forest delirium in chapter VIII of Women in Love serves as a seminal text for Lawrentian dendrophilia, characterized by the categorical rejection of human intimacy in favour of a birch tree's tactile specificity; "its smoothness, its hardness, its vital knots and ridges" (WL 107). 

      This represents a more radical eroticism than the mere instrumentalisation of nature seen, for example, in Fortune and Wells's novel A Melon for Ecstasy (1971). Whereas the protagonist of the latter, Humphrey Mackevoy, requires the artificial modification of the botanical body to simulate human anatomy, Birkin seeks a communion predicated on the tree's alien nature. In other words, Lawrence eschews the anthropomorphic impulse that would reduce the tree to a vaginal substitute; instead, he insists on the tree as an autonomous object-in-itself. Birkin, the amorous male subject, does not seek to master the natural environment, but to be penetrated by its "raw earth-power" (MM 159) and to deposit his seed in the "folds of the delicious fresh growing leaves" (WL 108). This is a sexual communion defined not merely by tenderness, but by a deadly serious longing for ecstatic, inhuman contact and involves violent struggle as much as sensual delight. 

      The specific parameters of Lawrentian dendrophilia are further elucidated through his visceral repudiation of Ben Hecht's Fantazius Mallare (1922). For despite this work's controversial reputation and Wallace Smith's explicit illustrations of a man enjoying coition with a tree, Lawrence dismissed the novel as "crass" and "strained" (IR 215). His critique was not born of moral prudery, but from a fundamental ontological divergence: Lawrence argued that Smith failed because, unlike Beardsley, he lacked a sense of malicious irony; "to be really wicked he'd see that even a tree has its own daimon, and a man might lie with the daimon of a tree" (IR 215). 

      In other words, Lawrence's aversion to Smith's artwork again stemmed from its reductive anthropomorphism. By imposing a distinctly all-too-human female form on the tree, Smith transposed a transgressive encounter into a tedious heteronormative cliché. For Lawrence, the erotic charge of the tree resides exclusively in its non-humanity. To "nestle against its strong trunk" (PFU 86) is to engage with an object that is "fierce and bristling" (MM 158), whose "root-lust" (PFU 86) does not mirror human emotion but rather challenges the human subject to reorganise their life in relation to the tree's own onto-botanical reality. 

      This erotic fascination is grounded in a form of object imperative, wherein Lawrence frames his encounter with an American pine, for example, not as a romanticised union, but as a meeting of two lives that "cross one another, unknowingly" (MM 158). This facilitates a materialist union; "the tree’s life penetrates my life, and my life, the tree's" (MM 158). 

      Lawrence's prose adopts an increasingly somatic register when describing this interaction - one which Rupert Birkin describes as a "marriage" (WL 108). In 'Pan in America', he speaks of "shivers of energy" crossing his "living plasm" (MM 158), suggesting a biological and erotic osmosis where the man becomes "a degree more like unto the tree" (MM 159). The "piney sweetness is rousing and defiant" and the "noise of the needles is keen with aeons of sharpness" (MM 158). This is not the language of pastoral bliss; it is the language of a "primitive savageness" (MM 159) that Lawrence seems to find particularly stimulating. To borrow Graham Harman's concept of the withdrawn but irresistible object, the tree's "resinous erectness" (MM 159) acts as a black sun, radiating a gravitational force that holds birds, beasts and dendrophiles in its orbit. 

      Lawrence, then, moves beyond botanical observation or even a chaste form of tree worship, activating "doors of receptivity" that allow the "relentlessness of roots" (MM 159) to fundamentally restructure the internal architecture of human being. His dendrophilia ultimately points toward a perverse and pantheistic sensuality that complicates the traditional boundaries of religious and erotic experience. Lawrence's desire to venerate arboreal being is inseparable from his (Birkinesque) desire to nakedly rub against young fir-trees that "beat his loins with their clusters of soft-sharp needles" (WL 107), etc. 

      By situating this engagement beyond the historical paradigms of domestic or recreational intimacy, Lawrence effectively posits a third category of desire: the pursuit of bliss via the non-human. Rejecting, as mentioned earlier, the mimetic reductions of the artificial vagina, Lawrence reconfigures the tree as a site of profound paraphilic contact. This vision moves sex beyond the procreative or banally pleasurable, allowing readers to conceive of his phallic philosophy as a passionate ontological encounter with responsive vegetation. [2]

 

 

For me, this decision taken by the editor on the advice of two anonymous reviewers [3], is disappointing to say the least; as is the accusation that my text lacks nuance, misunderstands Lawrence's language, and fails to see that his dendrophilia is actually just a repressed expression of same-sex desire.  

 

Of course, rejection is all part of the game and, ultimately, every writer has to accept this. However, I'd like to offer a modest (but robust) defence of the essay and attempt to explain some of its finer theoretical points; not by way of launching a formal appeal or seeking the support of someone to intervene on my behalf, but more as a piece of rhetorical pushback (hopefully not too soured with grape juice).  

 

 

II. 

 

Essentially, the thousand-word text was an attempt to make an original and provocative contribution that veers away from the cosy and conventional literary traditions of Lawrence scholarship - such as vitalism or pastoralism - and engages with the visceral, transgressive character of his prose. The essay also aimed to subvert the green readings that would place Lawrence's work within a network of environmental moralism; by boldly reframing Lawrence's relationship to trees as paraphilic, we move the conversation from eco-mysticism to perverse materialism.  

 

And by making a clear distinction between the instrumentalisation of nature and Lawrence's object-eroticism, suggesting that the tree's otherness is the source of Birkin's desire, the essay aligns Lawrence with recent developments in European philosophy, thereby disrupting the tired heteronormative/homoerotic binary that dominates Lawrence studies. It suggests a queer ontology where the human/non-human boundary is the primary site of sexual tension. 

 

Further, the work - if I do say so myself - displays a certain degree of linguistic and critical wit, uniquely connecting well-known Lawrentian texts, like Women in Love, with more obscure cultural references - such as Fantazius Mallare and A Melon for Ecstasy - as well as Graham Harman's philosophy, thus providing a rigorous intellectual framework for what might otherwise be dismissed as an eccentric reading. 

 

 

III. 

 

Ultimately, of course, the reviewers' rejection stems from a fundamental clash between my object-oriented reading of Lawrence's perverse materialism and their traditional humanist framework. It's not that they fail to understand the work; rather, they understand it all too well - and do not like it. And so they fall back on a gatekeeping strategy that reinforces established biographical and linguistic nuances over radical theoretical interventions. 

 

It was said that I had conflated the terms dendrophilia and paraphilia and that this was problematic. Actually, however, the problem is that the reviewers prefer to define dendrophilia via a standard etymological lens; i.e., simply as a love of trees rooted in Lawrence's documented life and his arboreal writings. 

 

But I'm using the term in a wider, more critical and clinical sense to suggest a non-symbolic sexual communion and highlight the libidinal character of Birkin's desire. It's not that I'm being careless or clumsy with language, it's a deliberate theoretical move. Whether it works or not, is, of course, open to debate. 

 

Moving on, we arrive at the (predictably reductive) idea that Birkin's dendro-floraphilia is actually a repressed (and/or displaced) form of same-sex desire; that when he rubs against the trees he is actually thinking of Gerald and that the tree is thus merely a human substitute, rather than an autonomous object-in-itself with its own allure. 

 

To be clear: I'm not overlooking or denying Birkin's attraction to Gerald (or, indeed, Ursula), I'm simply not interested in these all-too-human desires and relations. I'm more concerned with taking Lawrence's demonology and dendrophilia seriously. Clearly, however, these are things my critics prefer to leave vague: the latter is the love whose name they dare not speak. 

  

IV.

 

How, then, might we summarise this conflict of opinion? 

 

Clearly, the editorial board of the journal in question tends to favour research grounded in archival evidence and historical context. My essay probably seemed too speculative for a forum that still prioritises Lawrence's intent and his complex relationship with human sexuality over modern queer or object-oriented readings (indeed, it was probably foolish and mistaken on my part to submit it in the first place).  

 

Sadly, the rejection of the essay reflects an all-too-common tension in academic peer review between radical theoretical intervention and traditional scholarly maintenance. I wouldn't say the editorial board is cowardly or even particularly conservative, it's more a case that they are operating in a very different world with different rules to the "unexplored realm of dangerous knowledge" [4], that Nietzsche speaks of and in which Lawrence challenged us to do our thinking.  

 

Thus, whilst they wish to preserve the historical and biographical authenticity of Lawrence's work and safeguard his reputation as an author; I want to corrupt and destroy everything (not least of all journals that operate as academic echo chambers). 

 

  

Notes 

 

[1] Out of professional courtesy, the title of this journal has been omitted. 

 

[2] The following books by D. H. Lawrence were referenced in the text (as IR, MM, PFU, and WL):

 

-- Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005).

-- Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays, ed. Virginia Crosswhite Hyde (Cambridge University Press, 2009). 

-- Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious / Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge University Press, 2004). 

-- Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, John Worthen and Lindeth Vasey (Cambridge University Press, 1987).

 

[3] Again, out of professional courtesy - and because this is not a personal issue - the name of the editor has been omitted. 

 

[4] Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1990), I. 23, p. 53. 

 

Another Perfect Shoe

viviennewestwood.com 

 

 

I. 

 

Long-time readers, hardcore torpedophiles, and shoe-lovers everywhere may recall a post from December 2012 in which I described the Levitate by Prada; an insanely beautiful shoe combining the old school formality of the brogue with the urban cool of the Nike Air sneaker, topped off with a golf fringe as an almost ludicrous addition just for the hell of it: click here.   

 

I said at the time it was the perfect item of men's footwear and I still think that now (and there isn't a day goes by when I do not mourne the loss of these shoes). 

 

Perfection, however, is not a unique quality; it's a standard that can be met (albeit rarely) by multiple designs. And so, here's another example of what I believe to a perfect shoe: the Hammerhead, designed by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood for their Pirate collection (A/W 1981-82).  

 

 

II. 

 

The Pirate collection was McLaren and Westwood’s first official catwalk show together and it informed the post-punk aesthetic of their King's Road store now renamed and reimagined as Worlds End. The black bondage pants that defined Seditionaries were replaced with romantic brightly coloured outfits, plundered from history and from around the world. 

 

And brothel creepers and biker boots were replaced with hammerhead shoes ...

   

The shoe pictured above, features a python-effect embossed upper, set on a formal leather sole and low heel. Named for its elongated square-toe silhouette, the piece is accented with sporty red and black racing stripes along the sides and features a lace-up design, as well as a contrasting red heel tab with an embossed cutlass motif.  

 

Whilst comfort isn't everything - isn't even a primary consideration when it comes to the beauty and the politics of a shoe - it has to be said the Hammerhead, made with wonderfully soft leather, is extremely comfortable to wear. It's real magic, however, is that it makes one feel heroic and at odds with the everyday world in its more sensible forms of footwear. 

  

Note: for an interesting (and nicely illustrated) take on the Hammerhead shoe in 713 Magazine - a digital publication and creative platform devoted to contemporary fashion, art, and culture - click here.  

 

 

This post is for Fiona Stuart and everyone at Rellik.  

 

 

Reflections on a Magpie Among the Daffodils

Magpie Among the Daffodils 

(SA/2026)

 

 

The presence of a solitary magpie amidst a cluster of daffodils reminds one of the often stark contrast between symbols, systems of classification, and the more chaotic reality of nature. 

 

On one hand, we have the daffodil: a genus formally identified by Linnaeus in 1753 and subsequently burdened with the weight of Romantic poetry. 

 

Whilst Wordsworth and Keats ideally framed the flower as a source of eternal joy, its appeal for me lies more in its lack of cultivated pretension and the fact that the humble daffodil is biologically resilient, nodding in defiant affirmation regardless of its proximity to litter and traffic [1]. 

 

The magpie, meanwhile, is a bird forever trapped in the ornithomantic binaries of folklore. However, to view a lone magpie through the lens of the traditional nursery rhyme is to participate in the superstitious belief that grief and happiness are somehow separate states. 

 

As any Nietzschean will remind you, such oppositions are untenable. Joy and sorrow are forever tied and to demand the mirth of the second bird while rejecting the misery of the first is a failure to recognise that life, much like a magpie's plumage, is defined by its iridescent complexity and contradictions and is never simply black and white [2].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See the post 'Continuous as the Stars That Shine ...' (16 Mar 2023): click here. 

 

[2] See the post 'One for Sorrow ...' (18 Oct 2023): click here. 

 

 

On the Art and Sexual Politics of Petrophilia: In Anticipation of SJ Fuerst's New Exhibition

SJ Fuerst: Agate (2026) part of the exhibition  

Madonnas on the Rocks at Il Kamra ta' Fuq 

(20 Mar - 5 April 2026) 

 

'Just as every woman is born of a single rib, so too 

are all rocks and stones descended from one enormous ancestor ...'

 

 

I. 

 

The Virgin of the Rocks is the title of not one but two oil paintings by Leonardo of the same subject and identical in composition except for several details, some having symbolic weight and some simply relating to technical aspects of light and colour.   

 

The slightly larger version, which is generally considered the earlier of the two (c. 1483-86), hangs in the Louvre [click here]; the other recently restored version, dated between 1495 and 1508, hangs in the National Gallery, London [click here].  

 

Both were originally painted on wooden panels, but the Louvre version has been transferred to canvas. And both depict the Virgin Mary and child Jesus with the infant John the Baptist and an angel, Uriel, in a rocky setting (a non-biblical event, but a popular theme within medieval Christianity).

 

Both works are examples of the Renaissance painting technique known as sfumato, used to soften the transition between colours, and perfected by Leonardo. If you like your images to be smoked like your fish, then this is the technique for you - although it is in much greater evidence in the Louvre painting than the London work, which is sharper, less subtle, and I think slightly more sinister.     

 

Still, all this is essentially just artistic context allowing me to write in anticipation of a new solo exhibition by one of my favourite contemporary artists - the American figurative painter SJ Fuerst - opening on the 20th of this month, at Il Kamra ta' Fuq gallery (Malta) [1]: Madonnas on the Rocks ...      

 

 

II.   

 

Obviously, I cannot yet comment on the works, although the image released above by the artist on her Instagram page [click here], undoubtedly gives a good indication of what to expect; namely, images of beautiful women painted directly onto slices of stone, constituting a stunning and highly imaginative art of petrology.  

 

The work shown is titled Agate and one assumes that it is, therefore, painted on this common (but cryptocrystalline) variety of quartz, known both for its translucency and hardness. 

 

Perhaps less well known, is the fact that the stone was named by the Ancient Greek philosopher and naturalist Theophrastus [2], who discovered it and also famously wrote a book on all kinds of rocks and stones, in which he classified them based on their behaviour when heated and not just more obvious common properties. 

 

Theophrastus also considered the practical uses of various stones; such as the minerals necessary for the production of various pigments of paint. 

 

Ms Fuerst will be very aware of all this, I'm sure. For she's not only a hugely talented artist, but also a very well-read and intelligent one, who knows exactly what she's doing and what she wishes to achieve. And just like old Theo himself, she's very systematic and considered in her work; they may indicate playfulness, but there's nothing slapdash about her pictures. 

 

Readers who visit her website - sjfuesrt.com - will appreciate what I mean, whilst readers who recall my post 'Petrophilia: On the Geochemical Origin of Life and the Religious Worship of Rocks' (25 Jan 2024) - click here - will appreciate why I am so excited by Fuerst's new show [3].

 

Any male readers, however, who are thinking of attending should note that the artist has, somewhat controversially, forbidden ownership of the paintings by men and will be donating 20% of the sales to a women's rights organisation. 

 

I only hope that some of those organisations work with women who have fled from those nations and regions of the world where they still practice stoning (lapidation) as a method of capital punishment against women charged with illicit sexual activity [4]. This includes nations such as Afghanistan, Iran, Qatar, Saudia Arabia, Sudan, Yemen [5] - but not Malta, as far as I'm aware. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The small independent gallery is located on the first floor above the New Life Bar, 4 Church Square, Mqabba. The exhibition runs from 20 March until 5 April, 2026 and is curated by Melanie Erixon. For more information visit the website by clicking here.

 

[2] Originally from Lesbos, Theophrastus was mentored by Aristotle and eventually succeeded the latter as head of the Lyceum, in Athens. He is considered by some to be the father of botany, for a number of groundbreaking studies on plants.

 

[3] See also my post on Gauguin's painting La Vague (1888), which features giant black rocks off of the coast of Brittany (13 August 2023): click here. 

 

[4] Although men - particularly gay men - may also be subjected to stoning, the vast majority of the victims are reported to be women and it's generally accepted that women are not treated equally and fairly by the law courts in those countries where stoning remains a legal form of punishment.

 

[5] Readers will note that these are all Muslim countries, although, interestingly, stoning is not mentioned in the Quran. It is, however, a sharia-prescribed punishment on the basis of hadith (sayings and actions attributed to the Islamic prophet Muhammad), although one that is rarely carried out, even if Islamists call for its full reinstatement and the provision for stoning is retained in law.   

 

 

For a selection of other posts on Torpedo the Ark discussing the work of SJ Fuerst, please click here. 

 

 

In Defence of Stephen Alexander's 'Fragments of Glass' (2006) - by May Spear

Costas Varotsos: Dromeas (1994)

Glass and iron sculpture (Athens, Greece) 

Photo: Stephen Alexander (2006)

 

   

I. 

 

Recently, a cutting and rather condescending review of Stephen Alexander's poetic series Fragments of Glass (2006) was published by an anonymous critic assisted by artificial intelligence - or was it the other way round - in the comments section following a post published on Torpedo the Ark dated 19 Dec 2012: click here.  

 

Essentially, the critic targeted Alexander's morbid narcissism and the fact that his text allowed little space for the reader to move around in and do their own thinking (that it was authoritarian).  

 

The review certainly contained some clever insights; I particularly liked the idea of triangulation [1] i.e., that the poet positioned himself (somewhat self-dramatically) between two poles of delirium - love and death - symbolised by the two women. But to extrapolate from this that Alexander is simply posing and manipulating situations and that the fragments lack genuine feeling seems to me unfair and, in fact, mistaken. 

 

By viewing the two women as 'props' in a 'self-centred drama', the critic fails to see the fragmentation of identity common in traumatic experiences. The women represent two versions of the poet's own future; one of connection (a life together) and one of total collapse (suicide). 

 

Obviously, there is a degree of staging and performance - and yes there's an aestheticisation of trauma - but it's a work of art, after all, not a news report or a clinical history. And is it really so unusual for a poet to write about their bodies and their experiences? I think not. The kind of poetic reflection demanded by the critic is somewhat like the moon-cold objectivity that Nietzsche derides in Zarathustra as 'immaculate perception' [2].

 

Re context: the poem is set in Athens: but clearly it is not about the Greek capital and Alexander is not offering these fragments as pieces of travel writing, or postcards from a holiday destination. One might even suggest that the loss of context is crucial here; in a moment of crisis, time can stand still and the external world suddenly disappear. The poem thus accurately reflects an aspect of shock.   

 

Re scabs and scars: despite the critic's insistence that the latter are 'aged scabs in effect', that is not true. For as any nurse will tell you, whilst both are features of the healing process, a scab is a temporary protective crust formed by blood cells to seal a wound; a scar, meanwhile, is the permanent, fibrous tissue that replaces normal skin after a deeper injury has healed. 

 

It's a small point to pick at, perhaps, but indicative of the often slipshod thinking that the critic practises and by denying the difference between scabs and scars he misses the point; namely, that the poet is expressing a preference for the spectacular moment of crisis over the mundane process of healing. 

 

Re comparisons of Alexander to other poets, such as Plath and Sexton: this seems to me a pointless exercise; for as the same unnamed (but not unrecognised or unknown) critic often likes to say: All comparisons are odious. Having said that, the poppy imagery does, of course, reference Plath's work - of which Alexander is an open admirer - and the phrase 'little hell flames' is borrowed from her [3].    

 

Finally, the remark about Alexander being left to die 'once of blood loss and a second time of aesthetic delight' is admittedly humorous (one assumes AI came up with this cruel gem) and it made me smile like a splinter of glass. But there are, however, equally fine - and equally - sharp lines to be found in Fragments of Glass ...

 

 

II.  

Fragments of Glass consists of seven short verses, each six or seven lines in length. It opens with a crash and a 'sparkling chaos of glass, blood and sunshine' and ends with the shamefulness of scabs. 

 

In my view it's a fantastic work of trauma poetry, the logic and the beauty of which our anonymous critic often fails to grasp (or chooses not to acknowledge). It is also a visceral meditation on the fragility of the body and the malevolence of the inanimate universe; one that transforms trauma into art which delights in a mix of surrealism and synaesthesia. 

 

As the boundary between selfhood and the external world is shattered, the narrator of the poem is left to reflect on existential questions of the heart whilst quite literally watching his blood spill and splinters of glass assume mocking agency (the work pre-dates Alexander's interest in object-oriented ontology, but one can see already his fascination for things). 

 

To not see how glass might smile is a literalist failure.    

 

Ultimately, the poem promotes a tragic philosophy: life bleeds and we are born to 'embody our scars', a line borrowed from Deleuze, I believe, and one that further reveals Alexander's philosophical background; as does the celebration of vitality and 'everything that flows'.  

 

Fragments of Glass has its shortcomings: here, as elsewhere, Alexander tends toward the clichéd and melodramatic at times and his imagery lacks a certain nuance. I personally don't like the Alice metaphor, for example. But then, he's not pretending to be a professional poet, so I feel we can allow him some clumsiness (the same quality that resulted in his walking into a glass door in the first place).  

 

Notes

[1] For those who might be unfamiliar with this psychological concept, triangulation refers to a dysfunctional relationship dynamic where two conflicting subjects involve a third person in order to reduce tension, stabilise the relationship, or manipulate situations. 

 

[2] See Nietzsche writing in the section 'On Immaculate Perception', in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  

 

[3] See Alexander's post on Torpedo the Ark titled 'Little Hell Flames: On D. H. Lawrence's Poppy Philosophy' (29 May 2021): click here.  

 

 

May Spear is a contributing editor to the underground French literary magazine Pourquoi es-tu une con aussi odieuse? 

 

On the Borderline Sociopathology of Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld

 

Melanie Smith as Rachel and Jerry Seinfeld as 

a fictional version of himself in Seinfeld

 

 

I. 

 

One of the most critically acclaimed episodes of Seinfeld - and a firm fan favourite - is the season 5 episode entitled 'The Opposite', dir. Tom Cherones, and written by Larry David, Jerry Seinfeld and Andy Cowan (1994). 

 

There are many memorable moments, but, for me, one of the most amusing is the scene in Monk's restaurant in which Jerry's girlfriend Rachel (played by Melanie Smith) decides they should end their relationship:

  

 

Rachel: Jerry ... 

 

Jerry: Yes? 

 

Rachel: I've been doing a lot of thinking. 

 

Jerry: Aha? 

 

Rachel: Well, I don't think we should see each other any more. 

 

Jerry: Oh, that's okay. 

 

Rachel: What? 

 

Jerry: Nah, that's fine. No problem. I'll meet somebody else. 

 

Rachel: You will? 

 

Jerry: Sure. See, things always even out for me. 

 

Rachel: Huh? 

 

Jerry: It's fine. Anyway, it's been really nice dating you for a while. And ... good luck! 

 

Rachel: Yeah, you too. [1]

 

 

As Jerry leaves the restaurant having thrown some money for the bill on the table, he cheerfully sings to himself: She'll be coming round the mountain when she comes ... It's a perfect illustration of Jerry's ironically detached character and the upbeat nature of the song highlights his lack of emotional concern about a romantic relationship being terminated. 

 

Such nonchalance is obviously played for comic effect, but some might see it as a sign of a borderline personality disorder ...

 

 

II.  

 

Fast-forward twenty-seven years and we arrive at the following scene in the season 11 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm entitled 'IRASSHAIMASE!, dir. Robert B. Weide, and written by Larry David, Jeff Schaffer, and Carol Leifer (2021) ...

 

Larry is at his favourite Japanese restaurant with his date for the evening, Gabby McAfee, played by Julie Bowen, and the conversation goes something like this:   

 

Gabby: Larry, I wasn't even gonna come on this date. I've had such bad luck since my divorce, but Jeff told me the worst thing that happens, it doesn't work out, he's a great person to break up with.   

 

Larry: Oh, yeah. I'm great.  

 

Gabby: Really? 

 

Larry: Yeah. Like, if we go out for six months or eight months or whatever, all you gotta do is say, 'Hey, I don't want to see you anymore'. And I go, 'okay'. 

 

Gabby: No drama?  

 

Larry: Zero. 

 

Gabby: That's a good quality. 

 

Larry: I walk away, and I never give you ... 

 

Gabby: Not another thought. Wow! That's almost like a sociopath, but borderline. 

 

Larry: That's one of the nicest things anyone's ever said to me.   

 

 

Again, this is obviously intended to be funny; we are meant to find Larry's attitude and ability to just walk away as questionable at best - if not absolutely reprehensible. Journalist Mark Matousek writes:

 

"Larry is a narcissist and a sociopath obsessed with the rules of social conduct but completely insensitive to anyone's feelings but his own. [...] You could argue that Larry is one of the most sadistic characters in television history because he has no excuses. He is aware of his moral failings, makes no effort to change them, and [...] has no emotional traumas or existential threats to explain his behavior. Larry's life is one of exceptional comfort and privilege, and he uses it as an opportunity to become his worst self." [3]

 

But, actually, like Gabby McAfee, I think we might say it's a good - rather noble, somewhat stoical - quality. For as Barthesians, we have been reared into a way of thinking that sees the making of scenes and the insistence on emotional posturing as infra dig.

 

Like Barthes, I can't stand those who manufacture conflict in order to act like drama queens; or those who seek to entangle others in their psycho-political games. Like Barthes, as one gets older, one longs to be socially adrift and detached from all kinds of sentimental obscenity (to not be bullied or blackmailed into caring).      

And so, like Jerry and like Larry, one learns how to just walk away - and/or let others walk away if that's what they want; to become borderline sociopathic and trust that things will all even out in the end, so there's really no need to worry or get upset. 

 

 

 Larry David and Julie Bowen in Curb Your Enthusiasm 

(S11/E5 - 2021)

 

  

Notes

 

[1] Dialogue from 'The Opposite', Seinfeld (S5/E22), as found on seinfeldscripts.com: click here. For those who want to watch the scene on YouTube, click here.  

 

[2] Dialogue transcribed from 'IRASSHAIMASE!', Curb Your Enthusiasm (S11/E5). And for those who want to watch the scene on YouTube, please click here. 

 

[3] Mark Matousek, 'Me Myself, and I: Curb Your Enthusiasm and the Art of Being a Sociopath' (29 Sept 2017), on popmatters.com: click here. 

 

 

Thanks to Simon Solomon for suggesting this post.

 

 

Sid Vicious Vs the Royal Tunbridge Wells Civic Society

Sid Vicious (Sex Pistol) Vs Chris Jones (Editor of the

Royal Tunbridge Wells Civic Society Newsletter)

'Tunbridge Wells is Tunbridge Wells, and there is nothing really like it upon our planet.' [1]

 

 

I. 

 

Tunbridge Wells - or, as it likes to style itself Royal Tunbridge Wells - is a town in Kent, about 30 miles southeast of London, with a reputation for being a bastion of conservative middle class values and disgust with any ideas which might possibly conflict with these values. 

 

 

II.

 

Sid Vicious was assigned the role of bass player for the Sex Pistols after Glen Matlock was pushed out of the band in February 1977. He couldn't play, but he looked good and had the right attitude and his tragic death two years later, aged 21, established him as a punk icon.  

 

 

III.

 

In 2017, Chris Jones, editor of the Royal Tunbridge Wells Civic Society Newsletter, decided to offer readers his personal view on the question of whether Sid Vicious should be commemorated with a red plaque, due to the fact that he had lived for several years as a child in Tunbridge Wells (1965-71), before moving with his mother to Stoke Newington. 

 

In a nutshell: he wasn't happy about the idea, describing Sid as an exhibitionist thug - which is not entirely unfair or wildly mistaken - and challenging the idea that he should be celebrated as a symbol of youthful rebellion:   

 

"He was rebelling certainly, but mainly against the preceding generation of popular culture the 'peace and love' generation, which, as you might gather, was 'my generation'. We were idealistic, campaigning for a fairer world, civil rights, equal pay, and fighting against apartheid and the Vietnam War. To Sid Vicious, though, we were pretentious,and perhaps some of our beliefs, or the expressions of those beliefs can seem a little twee ..." [2] 

 

In a piece that becomes increasingly laughable as the moral and political rhetoric is ramped up, Jones continues:     

 

"Sid, though, was driven by darker thoughts and motivations. He would not have liked today's Tunbridge Wells: open-minded, international, tolerant, proud to have been the only part of Kent to vote 'Remain'. He would have thought us politically-correct, though he may have used rather stronger language." [3] 

 

 

IV. 

 

This, obviously, is an old story. 

 

I'm sharing it, however, partly because I'd not heard it until a few days ago and partly because it amazes me that, forty years after the event, punk - and the memory of the Sex Pistols in particular - can still get members of civic society hot under the collar; that the ghost of Sid Vicious can still frighten and appall old hippies like Jones.     

 

Needless to say, Sid didn't get his plaque: it was decided that his connection to the town was too slight to merit recognition (but that no moral or musical judgement was being passed on the deceased Sex Pistol). 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] H. G. Wells, Christina Alberta's Father (Jonathan Cape, 1925). 

 

[2] Chris Jones, writing in an editorial for the Royal Tunbridge Wells Civic Society Newsletter (Autumn 2017): click here. 

 

[3] Ibid.

 

Reflections on Two Recent Poetry Collections by Simon Armitage 2: New Cemetery (2025)

Simon Armitage: New Cemetery (Faber & Faber, 2025) 

Cover Image: Insecticide 24 (2008) by Matt Collishaw 

 

'In this collection, if the poems concern themselves with one kind of mortality, 

then the moths relate to another: death within nature.' 

 

 

I. 

 

Armitage opens his new collection with a preface entitled 'Moths': "Because moths / bring word / from the dead" [a]. A moth also features on the front cover of the book; a powerful image by contemporary British artist Matt Collishaw [click here to visit his website].  

 

And so, we're off to a good start: for moths are one of the privileged creatures on Torpedo the Ark - click here - and unlike Armitage, I do not think they are drab and dull in comparison to butterflies [b]. 

 

Armitage explains that a new cemetery was recently built near to his moorland home in West Yorkshire and that rather than object to this development, he decided to make "peace with the dead" (xi) and accept them as his new neighbours. And I think he's right; better to look out over the dear departed than a car park, shopping centre, or a new housing estate (see the poem '[Dark Brocade]', pp.4-5).   

 

And, as it turned out, the cemetery proved a source of poetic inspiration and Armitage produced a significant number of new verses; I've not counted, but there must be over fifty or sixty poems collected here, written "in short-lined tercets linked with/by intermittent rhymes and half-rhymes" (xii). 

 

That's a size and structure I'm personally very fond of and I loved the fact that Armitage describes the process of writing the poems and assembling them into a book as like "threading daisy chains or stringing shells" (xii).  

 

What I didn't love, however, was Armitage's confession that, in the end, he "fell back on a fairly conventional approach" and that he belongs to a school of thought "that believes the best way of enclosing the lifespan of a written sentence is with a capital letter and a full stop" and that finally admitting to this has provided him with "a kind of grammatical relief" (xiii). 

 

That offends me not just as an admirer of E. E. Cummings [c], but as a Nietzschean, who regards grammar as the presence of God within language, i.e., its metaphysical component subscribed to by theologians as well as pedants, pedagogues and, apparently, our present Poet Laureate [d].     

 

Enclosing language with capitalisation and periods is an impossibility in an intertextual universe; you can no more do that than you can permanently enframe being within technology. Any logical stabilisation or relief gained can only ever be temporary.   

 

Still, I'm happy for now to overlook this compromise with grammar - which arguably mirrors his making peace with the dead - and move on to the poems themselves, which are intriguingly named (but not titled) after a species of moth, 

 

In a lovely passage, Armitage explains his thinking: 

 

"Any relationship between a specific moth and the specific subject of the poem is at best ambiguous, and at times accidental. Instead, their inclusion is a form of honouring and memorialising. They are the dedicatees of the poems, and if it is stretching a point to claim that each three-line stanza should be thought of as two wings and a body part, in my mind there is something intentionally fragile, diminutive and moth-like about their construction and design." (xiv)

 

 

II.  

  

The collection opens in Armitage's shed, where it seems he likes to (if not exactly bury) then at least busy himself with his writing: a "stripped-back world / of a wooden chair, an old desk" (3). 

 

One thinks of Heidegger's hut; but also of Van Gogh's bare little room in the Yellow House. And perhaps even of Jesse Pope, as played by Mark Williams in The Fast Show, coming out of his shed to announce that this season, he will be mostly writing poems about moths and the recently deceased.  

 

It is followed by '[Dark Brocade]', mentioned above, which is one of my favourites in the book, dripping as it is with contempt for the living and preference for the company of the dead who "shore up the good earth" (5). 

 

I rather like the idea that, in some ways, the deceased are more vital than obese consumers and weed-killing gardeners.   

 

 

III.  

  

Sometimes, the writer can sit so still at the desk, lost in contemplation, that they might almost be mistaken for one of the dead by an electronic device: "a sensor detects / no movement, /no signs of life, and turns out /the one light bulb" '[Blossom Underwing]' (7).  

 

I think it was the American conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein who said: 'Stillness is our most intense mode of action. In stillness, the human being becomes a poet or most resembles an angel' [e]. Or a moth. 

 

 

IV. 

 

In its modern sense, the word smug refers to someone who is self-satisfied and shows excessive pride in their achievements; not quite arrogant, but moving in that direction. 

 

Poets are not immune - even Armitage with his cheeky-chappie grin and boyishly annoying haircut - might be found a little smug by some readers on occasion, including me (not least when he consents to having the title Poet Laureate printed under his name on the covers of his books) [f].  

 

But the universe, despite being the totality of all space, time, matter and energy, is not smug and nor does it possess a face and to suggest otherwise - as the poem '[Speckled Yellow]' suggests - is profoundly annoying. I do wish Armitage would abandon his attempts at humour - can't someone at Faber take him aside and speak to him about this ...? 

 

His bathos, vulgarity, and anthropomorphism may be very knowing, but it simply isn't funny.     

 

 

V. 

 

I like '[Vapourer]': for one can never tire of descriptions of mummification. 

 

And I like '[Pine-Tree Lappet]' for its "undying loyalty / to simple things" (20); wristwatch, comb, leather belt, shaving brush, wallet, boots, and pen. We remember the dead best of all by the objects they handled [g].        

 

And I really like '[Figure of Eight]' - it seems to me that Armitage really ups his game when it comes to writing about foxes (even dead vixens which he's obliged to bury); perhaps they're his totem animal, who knows? [h]    

 

Some of the poems, however, I don't really understand, or see how they belong in the collection; '[Reddish Light Arches]', for example. 

 

And it transpires that many of the poems did, in fact, appear elsewhere originally - including the latter, which was "commissioned by Aberdeen Performing Arts, for an exhibition of poetry and illustration for the reopening of Aberdeen's Music Hall (2018)" (vi) ... So what has it to do with the new cemetery on the outskirts of Huddersfield?   

 

  

VI. 

 

The annoying thing is, when he wants - and when he resists the urge to play the joker - Armitage is capable of writing some really lovely lines, full of powerful and evocative imagery. Lines like these from '[Lunar Thorn]':

 

 

But at night

            the false moon 

                        of the moth trap

 

bloomed and bloomed,

            the unwordly glow

                       of the 'black light'

 

drugging the air,

            the lawn and flower beds

                       under your window 

 

steeped in an ultraviolet brew. (42)

 

 

I would like a little more of that. 

 

But then perhaps I'm one of those readers that Armitage lampoons in the poem '[Brown-line Bright-eye]' (47); i.e., one who wants shrivelled chestnuts, rusty apples, and human gravediggers shovelling dirt; one who cannot accept plots being dug by heavy machinery and litter being strewn on graves.

 

Perhaps when it comes to death I remain Romantic ...

 

 

VII. 

 

'[Reed Leopard]' is a meditation on a millipede that ends with a terrible thought: if humanity could be vanished with just one magic word leaving the world / to the world, would you / say it? Would you / sing it out loud?" (51) 

 

Armitage doesn't answer: but we know how Rupert Birkin would respond and his reassuring fantasy of a posthuman future expressed in Women in Love is a vision that is shared by several groups on the radical fringes of deep ecology whose members believe, like Birkin, that mankind is an obstruction and a hindrance to the future unfolding of evolution and that only man's self-extinction will allow life to continue perfect and marvellous and non-human [i]. 

 

I have to admit, I'd also find the temptation to whisper the word almost irresistible.  

 

 

VIII. 

 

Is the narrator-poet of '[Heath Rivulet]' the same as the poet-author and did he really call an exterminator "in T-shirt and shorts / to pump white dust / under a roof tile" (52)?

 

That is to say, did he really arrange for the destruction and removal of a wasp's nest in his attic? 

 

I find that more than a little disappointing: readers familiar with Torpedo the Ark will recall my battle with moths in the summer of '22 and how my reluctance to spray them ultimately won out over my bourgeois desire to protect a new carpet. See the post 'Insouciance Über Insecticide' (31 July 2022): click here.     

 

Were the lines in the preface mourning the rapid and shocking decline of insect numbers over the last twenty or thirty years [j] just so many words?  

 

 

IX.

  

Another verse I love: '[Maiden's Blush]' ... off-white moths and ghostly barefooted women - what's not to love? 

 

One is almost tempted to credit Armitage with having established a zone of proximity [k]. Almost.   

 

Another verse I hate: '[Burnished Brass]' ... here's an additional anagram we can (almost) make with the author's name: I am a monster ego [l]. 

 

What is the point of this lipogrammatic exercise; is he trying to say his name is legion and that the unified subject is a convenient fiction (that the 'I' contains a multiplicity of selves)? Or that the living are all the names in history as they embody the molecules and memories of the dead? [m] 

 

Maybe. 

 

But this seems an overly generous (and overly philosophical) reading in my view. And the one thing I have discovered reading this book is that Armitage loves to see himself reflected in his own verse and play with his own literary persona - he's worse than Lawrence (though perhaps not as narcissistic as I can be).

 

 

X. 

 

Speaking of Lawrence, the fat brown trout  "hammocked in amber water / next to St Oswald's church" (62), reminded me of the shadowy fish that "slide through the gloom of the mill-pond" at the beginning of his debut novel The White Peacock (1911) - even though these fish were neither fat nor brown, but "grey descendants of the silvery things that had darted away from the monks, in the young days when the valley was lusty" [n]. 

 

It's funny the connections that the mind makes. Not just between literary fish, but rainbows too; cf. Armitage's "Cheap rainbows everywhere" (69) with the vast rainbow that Ursula Brangwen observes and which fills her heart with anguished hope. 

 

For she saw in the rainbow "the earth's new architecture [...] the world built up in a living fabric of Truth" - even as realises that "the sordid people who crept hard-scaled and separate on the face of the world's corruption were living still" [o]. 

 

And when Armitage writes: "Think of / your hand or arm / brushing / actual skin" (73), who doesn't reacall Lawrence's idea of the democracy of touch and by which he refers to:

 

"The touch of the feet on the earth, the touch of the fingers on a tree, on a creature, the touch of hands and breasts, the touch of the whole body to body, and the interpenetration of passionate love." [p]   

 

Armitage has admitted to being an admirer of Lawrence and often turns to his work for inspiration. But I wonder if he ever wishes he could write like him - or would that be admitting too much for a professional writer and Poet Laureate?   

 

 

XI. 

 

The fact that Armitage's father died when he was about to finish New Cemetery certainly adds a level of poignancy: 

 

"I had been ready to draw a line under the collection early in 2021, but my dad's sudden death that year provoked further poetic responses, less abstract this time, driven and informed by deep personal loss." (xiii)  

 

One wonders if it always takes the loss of a loved one - a parent, a partner, a child - to really bring home the visceral reality of death. And if that's so, what does this tell us about the limits of art and philosophy?  

 

(Having said that, I can't stand those people who value experience above everything else and boast that they are graduates of the University of Life.)    

 

 

XII. 

 

'[Straw Dot]' and '[Grey Chi]' are two further poems worth a mention and worth a read, although they require no further commentary, except to say that Armitage's direction and cinematography are at their best in the latter and his humour at its most charming in the former.   

 

And the line in '[Coronet]' "Here he isn't again," (94) brilliantly captures the absent presence of someone recently departed. When you enter the home of your dead mother or father, you do expect to see them rise from their chair to greet you.

 

It's pointless saying one doesn't believe in ghosts when the dead so obviously leave a presence of some kind. Whether we best think of this in spiritual or tangible terms is really the only point of debate; is it an emotional trace or memory left behind, or is it something a bit more like the mucous trail left behind by slugs and snails?  

 

Either way, I find it more comforting than disconcerting to experience this presence of a loved one. And whilst I clearly have certain issues with Armitage as a poet, I'm grateful to him for this collection in which he reminds us of the important truth that although the dead are "unable to love", they are "capable still /of being loved" (100).  

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Simon Armitage, '[Scotch Annulet]', in New Cemetery (Faber and Faber, 2025), p. 78. Future page references to this book will be given directly in the post.  

 

[b] To be fair, Armitage goes on to concede that, upon closer inspection, one sees within the somewhat sombre colouring of moths "arrangements of dazzling complexity and hypnotic intricacy" (xiv). 

 

[c] The 20th century American poet E. E. Cummings is known for his modernist free-form verse and much of his work uses idiosyncratic syntax and lower-case spellings in order to strip "the film of familiarity" from language and from the world, as Norman Friedman notes.   

[d] In Twilight of the Idols Nietzsche famously writes: "I fear we are not getting rid of God because we still believe in grammar ..." I'm quoting from Hollingdale's translation (Penguin Books, 1990), p. 48. For those using other editions, see the section 'Reason in Philosophy' (5). 

      You can tell grammar is ultimately a matter of faith by the fact that Armitage says he believes in it - that his use of it is not simply a preference or a question of convenience.    

 

[e] I'm paraphrasing from memory, so note that this might not be entirely accurate. I'm sure readers who wish to can track down the actual quotation.  

 

[f] No doubt Armitage was persuaded by the marketing people at Faber that this would be a good idea, but one assumes he gave permission for this. He is, of course, fully entitled to use the title Poet Laureate, but, like Foucault, I would welcome a time in which books were published in complete anonymity so that they could be judged on the contents alone and not the author's name, reputation, or title. 

      See Michel Foucault, 'The Masked Philosopher', in Foucault Live: Collected Interviews, 1961-1984, ed. Sylvère Lotringer, trans. Lysa Hochroth and John Johnston (Semiotext[e], 1989), pp. 302- 307. 

 

[g] See the post 'Notes on the Material Remains of My Father' (6 June 2016): click here.  

 

[h] Armitage wrote a poem with the title 'The Fox' which can be found in Ruth Padel's 52 Ways of Looking At a Poem (Vintage, 2004), p. 138. See also his fox poem 'Den', in the collection titled Dwell (Faber & Faber, 2025), pp. 12-13. 

 

[i] See D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ed. John Worthen and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 127-129. See also my post on the movement for voluntary human extinction (12 Oct 2013) - click here - and my post 'Birkin and the Ichthyosaur' (7 Mar 2023): click here. 

 

[j] Insects in the UK have experienced a severe (and ongoing) decline throughout the 21st century. Studies indicate a drop in numbers of over 60% between 2004 and 2023. See my post 'Insecticide and the Eco-Apocalypse' (21 Oct 2017): click here. 

 

[k] A zone of proximity is a concept used by Deleuze and Guattari to describe a chaotic space wherein distinct forms, subjects, or species - such as human and insect - lose their boundaries and become indistinguishable (thus they sometimes refer to it as a zone of indiscernibility). It is such zones, in other words, that allow the process of becoming to unfold.

      The reason that I hesitate before saying such is what Armitage establishes in his poem is because he shows little inclination to think in such terms and I don't want to simply map alien concepts and personal concerns on to his work. Needless to say, however, it would add a good deal of interest and philosophical depth to his poetry were he to do so.

 

[l] This only works if I am kindly given permission to swap an unwanted 'i' for an additional 'a' and 'e'.    

 

[m] See the post 'Even the Dead Don't Rest in Peace' (2 July 2013) - click here - in which I argue that, thanks to the conservation of mass, the carbon atoms of the departed are forever recycled and reincarnated and in this way the souls of the dead might be said to re-enter and pervade the souls of the living. 

      See also the related post: 'Atomic: the D. H. Lawrence Memorial Post' (1 Mar 2021): click here.  

 

[n] See D. H. Lawrence, The White Peacock, ed. Andrew Robertson (Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 1. The poem by Armitage I'm quoting from is '[Shining Marbled]'. 

 

[o] D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow, ed. Mark Kinkead-Weekes (Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 458-459. The poem by Armitage I'm quoting from is '[Mother Shipton]'.   

 

[p] D. H. Lawence, The First and Second Lady Chatterley Novels, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn (Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 323. 

 

 

For my thoughts on another recent collection of poems by Armitage - Dwell (2025) - please click here.