Jeremy Over Surreal-Absurd Sampler

“When I was in my mid-teens my dog— an unruly Weimaraner with a taste for the absurd as well as for cliche—ate my homework. It’s in the breed apparently—see William Wegman’s photos of his Weimaraners ‘Man Ray’ and later offspring wearing wigs and human clothing. The book our dog chose to destroy—it was the only book I remember him treating in this way so his intentions were clear—was Albert Camus’ ‘L’Étranger’. Camus’ work had already become a kind of awakening for me, but the dog’s intervention subsequently sealed things and I have been chewing at the absurd and transforming texts through various different procedures ever since. On and off.

Later on, attending an Inland Revenue residential training course provided another kind of ‘Weimaraner on the road to Damascus’ moment. By day I failed to understand the basic principles of bookkeeping and by night I read Kenneth Koch’s The Art of Love and found that the absurd and the surreal could live together amiably and humorously. I had until then thought that ‘one must imagine Sisyphus happy’ only in a heroic, Gauloise-smoking sort of way but here was the new possibility of imagining him gladly and goofily performing pratfalls near the top of the hill. I’m not sure why I persist in associating absurdity with happiness when the concept is rooted in death and when a human induced sixth mass extinction has recently upped the absurdity stakes significantly. But here we are. ‘Now for lunch’ as Ron Padgett writes at the end of his poem ‘The Death Deal’.”—Jeremy Over

H.C. Kind Man              

The years pass simply: blue, white, yellow.
Feet become mushrooms
often intractably
and an apparent banality circles around my thoughts
completely moving the shoes
to Vienna
said Vienna
the city mourns in the violet clumps.

It is again a merry again and again
out: shedding mountain encyclopaedias
somewhat left of my suspect bicycle
or snow on hot bread waking
with an inclination for the punchline solemn
and pleasing for the other whoms behind the sofa
wherein Dandytum the son of a shoemaker
rules out all the larger travellers
with a strong interest in smearing.

Nut marks foam in the garden
when the early cock is to meet the day
like a red tongue that cock cries red
it is a red tongue and the tongue
snaps out at the roof
snaps out at the root
and the eyes open again and again and we couple the horses and cattle
down in the damp green clover for sweet slow juice lurking
all somewhat shower-romantic
in the highest tree tops’ open latches
and with it the first lark’s
squatting gush
as nature shows up time and again
and is met with hostility.



The Fine Art of Writing
After Ernst Jandl

in poetry, to say it one more time, we need all that to which we have
not become accustomed; we need it to begin poetry at all, and we need
it to make even the very first steps towards understanding poetry,
something which is itself a beginning. Everything to which we have
not become something; we need it to begin something at all, and we need
in something, to say something one more time, we need all that to which
we have not become fully something so long as, with every something, a new
something begins for us. I believe we will all of us come to the end of our somethings
without even something of us having become something, and we have a word
for this something of the utmost something which is itself something.
Something to which something something with every something, a new
something somethings for us. Everything to something not something
to itself. We need something no longer to begin something at all.
We just need to say something one more time. Something.



Choose any animal in the park

The Siamang gets about the canopy of the forest by ‘brachiation’, swinging from hand to hand. The baboon’s ischial callosities are highly developed, bright vermillion and… nice try but you really need to work on your short words.

Maurice sounds like Sheila.
Mother sounds like Bach
as in German
as in get
as in my hat
but with the lips spread wide
sounds rather like quid at the beginning
of a huge    fat    summer    face down
my dress in the garden face down
is rather like choosing to choose
my pullover over
your gate &
blowing fantastic raspberries on her arms.

There are purple stripes in the Tiger.
There is a Rodrigues fruit bat or Zorro Volador the ‘flying fox’.
This dragon has two heads.
Why aren’t you writing anything down?

Red sock in yellow box
After Robert Filiou and GK Chesterton

I
A red sock in a yellow box

One can easily understand
A red sock in a yellow box


II
So that a man sitting in a chair
Might suddenly understand
That he was actually alive

And be happy

With
A red sock in a yellow box


III
One cannot put one’s foot in the same river twice.
One cannot even put the same foot in the same river twice.
It’s hard to explain why but one cannot. One has tried.

One can however fall in the same canal repeatedly

One can
One canal
One can easily 

May In April

He who chooses to forgive, is forgiven, but
he who chews his loofer gives the wrong impression.

And that’s all.
And that’s all?
And that’s all.

Well, thank you anyway.
‘And doesn’t that smell like ham and eggs?
No, that smells like bacon and eggs.
Bacon and eggs, ham and eggs, oh gee!
Mr Lindbergh made Paris.
But I made God’s own heaven you see,
And there ain’t no land like Dixieland to me.’

Trumpet solo.

Jeremy Over lives near the top of a hill above Llanidloes in the middle of Wales. His poetry has been published by Carcanet Press in three collections: A Little Bit of Bread and No Cheese (2001), Deceiving Wild Creatures (2009) and Fur Coats in Tahiti (2019). He completed a Creative Writing PhD in 2019 (at the University of Birmingham under Luke Kennard) researching a poetics of wonder and not knowing how to do things in the poetry of Ron Padgett.