So Much For Life

I picked this up from the bookstore after loving [b:Love, Leda 63577939 Love, Leda Mark Hyatt https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1669140290l/63577939.SY75.jpg 99499818] so much. I have been trying to read a little more poetry. Like my recent review for Rupi Kaur's [b:The Sun and Her Flowers 35606560 The Sun and Her Flowers Rupi Kaur https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1499791446l/35606560.SY75.jpg 57044162], I have no idea how to review poetry. I don't know what good poetry looks like or what bad poetry looks like. All I know is that sometimes words are strung together and they give me an emotional reaction. So that's what I'm rating this collection on.I liked them! Some are depressed, some are lovesick, some are funny, some are farcical. In some, you can imagine the poet sitting at a typewriter and hitting his head against it trying to make things come out. I can understand that, at least to an extent. None of them hit me in any way comparable to how Love, Leda, did. They are not really personal (to me), but they're nice to read.It was lovely to read poetry written by a man about a man in a romantic or yearning way. I am pretty sure I've never had that experience before (at least, not knowingly). You do certainly feel the 60's England of it all. Some of the yearning is written in very rigid gender roles and that is a bummer. Still, there is an emotional thing that it sort of communicates. It comes across most starkly in “‘Let Him Go In My Mind'”, “Oral Pictures of Love” and “True Homosexual Love” (and the age certainly in the title of that one). In some of these, words like man and girl are juxtaposed in a transferencial (cannot believe I just wrote that sentence, what a snob I sound like). In some, Hyatt writes about being a wife or a woman to the object of the poem.It's a pretty interesting way of writing, to read in 2025. You wonder what is poetic license, the author communicating the ideas that go along with those concepts, and what is just a reflection of the author's understanding of gender constructs at that time. Still, if you're willing to empathize with the words, I think you can understand them. Two of those were some of my favorites (favs in a table below).Then again, another one of my favorites is this little ditty:when cornflakes fart boy how I singAnother one that gave me a big chuckle:“I LOVE MY ARSE TO BE SUCKED”——————————I love my arse to be suckedit makes me come awfully niceand I stretch the body open..................................................................you and today's fixed fantasiesreport you are bored by shitthat's because you're fucking weird..................................................................you write ugly poems to deathand you are a whore for wordsyou're a lovely tragedy..................................................................balls on your stupid wordshave games with your bloodless wifeand let imagination go..................................................................now if you really careand honestly understandthen gently dieNow, I have absolutely no idea what that is saying (other than the first two lines, I guess). But it is hilarious. I haven't read much poetry, but what I have didn't ever have the words “you're” and “fucking” and “weird” in that order. Gave me a good chuckle.It's impressive and admirable. Hyatt was illiterate until adulthood and worked with others to get his writing together. I think that is fascinating. He had a hard life, and it ended badly. But I am glad that he gave us these things. It is sad that they were not widely available for generations and only have been rediscovered and put out in the last year. Still, I very much appreciate being able to read these and read about queer experiences over time. Sometimes, despite all my reading and schooling and all of that, it feels like we tumbled out into the world over the last 30 years. It feels like so much of our literature deals with AIDS and oppression that having stuff about regular old love and heartbreak and cornflakes is rare. That's probably just a side-effect of me being so poorly read. I'm glad at least that I'm reading more of this.Some other favorites that I haven't mentioned in the review so far:- Daggers, p74- Poem. p86- Dear Friend Go Away, Please, p106-He is a Rose, p155-Queers, p35-“Two queers live on a hill”, p80

The artist who is discovered posthumously, an all-at-once unsealing of a voice that almost lost to us, is seductive. Mark Hyatt was practically never published during his lifetime and he never lived on his writing. He was a gay Romani man who was born in South London and died by suicide in Lancashire in the 70s. He spent some time on the edges of London's 60s bohemian scene but he was fringe and it sounds like he struggled in life and love. And he wrote poems.

I'm crap at discovering and reading new poets. All the poetry I've ever read was put in front of me by others and while I've never regretted reading it, I've never sought it out. This book was a thoughtful birthday present from the person I love and it's the life of a man told in arrestingly direct and passionate verse. He talks about wanking, cruising, fucking. He talks about friends and betrayal and money.

His friends saved his poems and now they're seeing the light of day with a nice little foreword laying all this out for me. It's one of those works that makes you think about a life, what mark you leave behind, and whether you'll be known and understood by anyone when you're gone. It's ugly and beautiful.