Triangulation

So: The Bees. Before I open it, I feel as if I have at least partly read it. From my previous knowledge of Carol Ann Duffy (mixed: some meticulously turned work in the past, but some obvious and banal work more recently - especially the laureate poem for the Olympics…). But also from the title.

Bees: that hints at Plath, obviously, but also more recently Jacob Polley and further back Mandeville, with his fable about society based on bees. 

There will be something about social order and swarms (maybe dancing, although that feels unlikely for Duffy). Something about domestic danger (with allusions to spacemen or biohazard suits). Something about pattern and order, celebrating the environmental importance of apparently humble creatures. And something about pesticides or fears about the reductions in their populations. Of course, it will be impossible to resist touching on the sting (with a nod to self-sacrifice, since a bee dies with its sting).

Or perhaps I will be surprised…

Approaching the bees…

It's one I the most beautiful books of poetry I've ever seen: a circuit-weave of hexagons that glints golden in the light, a single, golden bee silhouette in the centre like a Louis XVI wallpaper. A delight.

And yet perhaps the type is a little large and babyish? And is the degree of prominence given to prizes (Costa Poetry 2011) and titles (Poet Laureate) not just a little brash? And is the cut-out for the title really an octagon? That seems a little strange, in the context. But these are quibbles, perhaps. Onwards…

Hardback or paperback?

Carol Ann Duffy's The Bees is available in various editions, but the choice I had (at the Buxton bookshop where I found it heavily reduced) was between a pale blue hardback, overlaid with a gold pattern, or the same pattern on a white paperback. They were the same price.

Although the former seemed like it was meant to be the better edition (hardbacks carry status and have 'primacy' in terms of publication), I chose the latter. As well as preferring the contrast of colours, I have a long-standing preference for paperback poetry. It feels humbler, less grandiose, and lines up more neatly on the shelves (where it also takes less space).

Perhaps if I bought fewer books, I'd prefer hardbacks. But I'm often caught between preferring the paperback, but not wanting to wait for it to come out (I've got a couple of Paul Muldoon's books in hardback for that reason). Sometimes I'd happily pay the premium hardback price if I could get the paperback instead…

When poetry fits

Sometimes, I carry poetry with me to read when the book that I'm 'really' reading is too precious or cumbersome to take with me, or if I know that I'm unlikely to get much reading done. This works particularly well if I think I'll only get short bursts of time to give attention: when it's possible to read a whole poem, but not a whole chapter.

This skews the process of reading, since it means I'm more likely to read poetry in the middle of, and instead of, something else: so it sets up a lop-sided relationship between the poetry and the 'something else'. It also means I'm more likely to read poetry when I'm more busy, which must affect the way in which I receive it.

At the moment, I'm part way through an antique edition of John Ruskin's Seven Lamps of Architecture, but carrying around Carol Ann Duffy's The Bees. Ruskin's what I want to be reading (but also what I feel postponed from 'getting through'); Duffy's what fits easily in my bag or my day.

It's a curious thought that the physical properties of a book affect when and how you read it - and that this effect can apply to whole genres/forms. The more direct substitution of Twitter and email for poetry is a related issue, but one for another time.