Sign-In
Cart
Polari
Paperback
Currently unavailable to order
Please enter your email and a message will be sent to you when this product becomes available on our website.
ISBN13: 9780864923868
Publisher: Goose Lane Editions
Published: Apr 22 2014
Pages: 128
Weight: 0.45
Height: 0.50 Width: 5.40 Depth: 8.40
Language: English
Polari, from the Italian polare (to talk) is a coded language, originating in the UK and dating as far back as the 16th century. Overheard in outdoor markets, the theatre, fairgrounds, and circuses, it was appropriated by gay men to provide them with cover as well as with a way to assert personal and shared identities. It spread around the English-speaking world via the Royal Navy, the merchant marine, and cruise ships, adding and subverting many foreign-language words -- like polari -- along the way.
While Polari does not employ this jargon or probe its success as a mode of connection between gay men, the language of Barton's poems may be viewed as an effective tool for communicating a sense of history, politics, and aesthetics. Think of Polari as a cross-sectional scan of a living tree that reveals ring after ring of Barton's experience of language, with the new buds at the tips of its branches adding colour, movement, and ornament.
Most of these poems were written using set forms drawn from Robin Skelton's The Shapes of our Singing: A Comprehensive Guide of Verse Forms and Metres from Around the World (Spokane: Eastern Washington University Press, 2002). While the forms Barton has appropriated are not by themselves the vehicles of a particular sociolect or an anti-language, except, say, of poetry itself, he have nevertheless twisted them to follow the turns of his point of view and aesthetics.
When it comes to time, geography, and subject, Polari covers a lot of ground: from child memories to the frailties and deaths of ageing parents; from Queen Victoria's coronation to the first ascent of Everest; from the October Crisis to the trial of Omar Khadr. The titles of nine poems are borrowed from the Diagram Prize, an award given out by the UK magazine, The Bookseller, for the oddest book title of the year. The titles chosen -- an example is Highlights in the History of Concrete -- may sound frivolous, even absurd, but the poems are less or more so. The serious nature of their themes being at odds with their titles gives them an engaging tension, and will be read as signature of his particular brand of polari.
Also in
General Poetry
Dante's Vita Nuova, New Edition: A Translation and an Essay
Alighieri, Dante
Pitavy, Francois
Paperback
Sounding the Seasons Enlarged Edition: One Hundred and Ten Sonnets for the Christian Year
Guite, Malcolm
Paperback
Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way
Le Guin, Ursula K.
Lao Tzu
Paperback
They Bloom Because of You: Poems on the Infinite Love, Growth, and Magic of Motherhood
Urlichs, Jessica
Paperback
Ariel: The Restored Edition: A Facsimile of Plath's Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement
Plath, Sylvia
Paperback
This Is the Main Event: Discovering the Life You Long for in the Life You Have
Smith, Joshua Luke
Hardcover