Poem 436
The novel was Diesel Mystic … Greg’s poetry had knocked me back and put a dent in my own ambitions when I first read it, I loved the vivid imagery (usually supported by his artwork) and read and reread his first collection Location Of The Least Person much of which featured his son Jack Marcel as a baby … so this is me writing a bit of an homage and enjoying speculating about what we might expect from his upcoming novel …
( … I like the rhyme on dishes/delicious, chicken foot as a description of how Greg drew eyes, the repetition of Jack Marcel’s name which is a sideways glance at how often he is mentioned in Location … the Z’s of cartoon sleep turning into propellers … and the way the whole poem gives a sense of one of Greg’s crowded hyperactive drawings … )
Greg’s Novel
Well Greg O'Brien has gone and written a novel will it have bicycles and dancing women will it have fruit in dishes and the delicious fingers of Catherine Deneuve paddling amongst them? it will have clouds for sure rough cut and pastes middle-aged men floating through them with noble brows and chicken foot eyes it will have children who are not like children at all aesthetes on tricycles Jack Marcel swimming down a carpet sunlight sticking to him Jack Marcel in the ascendant and later the head of Jack Marcel going behind the hills it will have many fine gradations of light rare colours mixed in the margins if there are people sitting down to dinner something gorgeous will happen outside the window or on the other side of the Earth before they're finished Catherine Deneuve is tickling Jack Marcel a cloud rains into a cup of tea the dinghies and the yachts and the sea bump about the eaves Gregory sleeps on his typewriter spilling out Z’s that tangle in the curtains or rotate like propellers into the corners of the world