The Age of Cardboard and String

Charles Boyle

• Publisher: CB Editions
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781909585133
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

Shortlisted for the 2001 T. S. Eliot and Whitbread Poetry Prizes. A number of poems in this collection by Charles Boyle take their cue from Stendhal, whose characteristic blend of artfulness and candour particularly evident in his unreliable memoirs is sustained throughout the book. In material ranging from intimate narratives to social commentary, Boyle takes selfdeception, mixed motives and honest misunderstandings as the norms of human behaviour, and delights in the comedy of errors that results. The collection was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.

PART ONE

A Respectable Neighbourhood

I was walking with irregular strides, avoiding

the cracks in the pavement and keeping a weather eye open

for the humdrum but telling detail –

the one I could never make up,

the proof that I tell no lie –

when this woman starts screaming blue murder

from an upper window. Fuck you!

she was yelling, and meaning it, and only stopped

to draw breath when I came to a stop myself.

A black-haired beauty, souls

have been sold for less.

I was flattered but about to move on

when she threw down a blue checked shirt –

followed by, in random order, pants,

jeans, a jumper and scuffed leather jacket,

half a dozen compact discs

and a copy of La Chartreuse de Parme

that, when it hit the ground, fell open

at chapter twenty-one, ‘A Strange Encounter’.

The window slammed shut.

The sun ducked behind a bank of clouds.

A man dressed too smartly for comfort

stepped out of the doorway and gave me a look

that implied I should make myself scarce.

Will Fabrizio escape from the citadel?

Will Clelia cheat on her vow

never to set eyes on him again?

As I bent to retrieve the book

I felt like a thief of dead men’s boots

on the field at Waterloo.

Hotel Rosa

In the open briefcase

of the man across the aisle

on the bus from the airport

lies the manuscript of my poems.

I keep sneaking glances,

wondering about that haircut.

As we cross the lagoon,

and a smell of decaying fish

pervades the bus,

he turns to face me

with the look of one interrupted

by yet another of the pointless

bureaucratic intrusions

to which travellers are prone.

*

The style, Herr Fischer remarks of A—,

over our breakfast omelette

under the jacaranda tree

at the Hotel Rosa,

is that of a man

whose work has been translated

into forty-two languages

and then back into English.

His fingers are long and bony

but heavy on the keys.

From his room overlooking the garden

bouts of regular typing

alternate with curious ble...

Table of contents

• The Age of Cardboard and String
• Contents
• PART ONE
• A Respectable Neighbourhood
• Hotel Rosa
• An Earring
• Follain’s Leeds
• Seven Poems from Prose By Stendhal
• My Alibi
• The Nature Trail
• PART TWO
• Life Class
• Hosea: A Commentary
• Second Alibi (Other Business)
• Railway Porters
• The Age of Cardboard and String
• Things to Do Indoors
• The Break
• Russians
• Theories of the Leisure Class
• Summer School
• Eleanor of Aquitaine
• Third Alibi (The Blessings)
• Fourth Alibi (Room 209)
• 14th February Street
• Street Furniture
• Long Story Short
• Casual Work
• Moonlighting
• West One
• My Overthrow
• PART THREE
• An Aberration
• The Pink Hotel
• Skadarlija
• Cabin Fever
• Unexamined Life
• Events with Parked Cars
• The Wellington Group
• Literals
• The Body Double
• The Lady with the Dog
• The Privileges
• From the Rooftops
• Summer, an Afternoon
• Notes and Asides