Yellow Tulips: Poems, 1968-2011 (2024)

" NOTHING

I take a jewel from a junk shop tray
And wish I had a love to buy it for.
Nothing I choose will make you turn my way.
Nothing I give will make you love me more.

I know that I've embarrassed you too long
And I'm ashamed to linger at your door.
Whatever I embark on will be wrong.
Nothing I do will make you love me more.

I cannot work. I cannot read or write.
How can I frame a letter to implore.
Eloquence is a lie. The truth is trite.
Nothing I say will make you love me more.

So I replace the jewel in the tray
And laughingly pretend I'm far too poor.
Nothing I give, nothing I do or say,
Nothing I am will make you love me more."

Five stars for just this one poem? That's right: five stars to Camille Saint-Saëns' {Le Carnaval des animaux}, just for "Le Cygne" (the swan).

This was the first book by James Fenton that I've purchased. I'd heard of him from various sources - Clive James' memoirs, The Faber Book of Reportage, Zachary Leader's biography of Kingsley Amis. Now Fenton has graduated to the status of Faber poet - previously he was published by Penguin - the time seemed right to check him out.

How did it go? For all the tests you can put verse through, I have a simple one. Read the book once, slowly, then put it down. An hour later, see which poems you can remember, or which lines remain the most vivid. (Call this the Williams Test.) I found I remembered the later poems most, and noted how they seemed to flow more smoothly than the earlier ones. They make their points more clearly. I should add that 'God, A Poem' was the sole, witty exception - which is a useful poem for fellow atheists to commit to memory:

'I didn't exist at Creation,
I didn't exist at the Flood,
And I won't be around for Salvation
To sort out the sheep from the cud-

'Or whatever the phrase is. The fact is
In soteriological terms
I'm a crude existential malpractice
And you are a diet of worms.'

I liked 'The Ideal', 'Tiananmen', 'Blood and Lead', 'Jerusalem'. In spite of its weak last two stanzas, special mention goes to the collection's beautiful title piece, 'Yellow Tulips.’ It hits all the same high notes as the late Les Murray's 'The Broad Bean Sermon':

'They have come out of the wood now. They are skirting the fields
Between the tall wheat and the hedge, on the unploughed strips.
And they believe anyone who saw them would know
Every secret of their limbs and of their lips

As if, like creatures of legend, they had come down out of the mist
Back to their native city and stood in the square,
And they were seen to be marked at the throat with a certain sign
Whose meaning all could share.'

If I didn't like the collection as much as expected, I later bought and enjoyed his prose work All the Wrong Places: Adrift in the Politics of Southeast Asia. Maybe you will too.

"Don't talk to me of love. Let's talk of Paris,
The little bit of Paris in our view.
There's that crack across the ceiling
And the hotel walls are peeling
And I'm in Paris with you."

If I ever experience 1/8th of the love Fenton must have been feeling when he wrote In Paris With You, then I'll die happy. A beautiful book full of beautiful poems.

I'm not much of a reader of poetry - I've no objection to it, I'm just one of those people who doesn't really get it - but I enjoyed quite a lot of this. Lots of interesting takes on various situations, lots of lines that made me grin, or ponder, or sigh. A lovely collection from a talented writer.

I’m not well versed in English poetry but I thought this was lovely! I know he is more of a war poet but I preferred his love poetry. Just wonderful being able to say something so simple and obvious but so real. Not in an eloquent mood but yes. Just the magic of poetry. Reading a line and being like Omg yes that is what that feels like!
Great grasp of imagery and the sound of poetry as such. Loved it.

from The Memory of War and Children in Exile
--Wind
--A German Requiem
--Cambodia
--In a Notebook
--Dead Soldiers
--Lines for Translation into Any Language
--Children in Exile
--A Vacant Possession
--A Staffordshire Murderer
--The Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford
--God, A Poem
--Nothing
--The Song That Sounds Like This
--The Skip

from Out of Danger
--Beauty, Danger and Dismay
--Out of Danger
--Serious
--Ideal
--Hinterhof
--The Possibility
--The Mistake
--I'll Explain
--In Paris with You
--The Milkfish Gatherers
--Jerusalem
--For Andrew Wood
--Out of the East
--Blood and Lead
--The Ballad of the Imam and the Shah
--I Saw a Child
--Tiananmen
--The Ballad of the Shrieking Man
--Fireflies of the Sea
--Cut-Throat Christ
--Gabriel
--The Ballad of the Birds
--I Know What I'm Missing
--Here Come the Drum Majorettes!
--The Orange Dove of Fiji
--The Manila Manifesto

Recent Work
--At the Kerb
--Yellow Tulips
--Memorial
--The Twister
--Let's Go Over It All Again
--The Vapour Trail
--The Alibi

Spanish Songs:
--1. The Soldier Limping Down the Track
--2. The Ballad of the Raven
--3. The Watching Man
--4. Oh Run to the Door
--5. Wake Now
--6. The Night Comes Down Like a Cloak
--7. I Was Born with a Stain on My Chin

--Martine's Song
--Cosmology
--Rain

I first encountered James Fenton back in the early eighties as a renowned and sympathetic foreign correspondent; his reports on the Cambodian genocide are classics of their kind. The fact that he was a powerful poet as well only dawned on me when a Sunday newspaper published one of his longer poems, Children in Exile , if my memory serves me correctly. That poem, and the visceral Out of the East, ('It's a far cry/It's a war cry/Cry for the war that can do this thing') are stand out poems in this collection: they are angry, political pieces, written in direct language. Fenton's range is much broader than these examples would suggest, though. There are also lyrical ballads that remind me of the early poems of Auden, poems of love (Hinterhof is as perfect a love poem as I've ever read), and lost love ('Out of Danger', 'Let's Go Over It All Again'), elegies and poems of wry humour.

Beautifully rhythmic and mellifluous, Fenton's collection of poems are evocative shards from all warps of his life.

First time reading poetry on my own volition. Partly inspired by Christopher Hitchens' memoir, Hitch-22, which I am currently reading, as it has a chapter devoted to his friendship with Fenton. Not only this, but Hitch-22 is littered with literary references, particularly 20th century English writers, serving as light insights into some pretty great poetry. Laila also so happened to buy this book, which really broke the camels back.

I probably appreciated and enjoyed about 5% of it. That 5% was really great though and reckon I will be coming back for more 😝

This is a fantastic collection of my favorite living poet of the English language. Much of this has already been published so the standout works here for me come in the final section of, "Recent Work." Spanish Songs and Cosmology are two new personal favorites. Fenton has that admirable quality of being equally brilliant regardless of the subject matter. This is a great collection and would serve as a great introduction to Fenton for those not familiar.

Wonderful selection of one of Britains most interesting living poets.

2.5/5

Picked this up for €4 in a second hand book store, mainly because it was a steal for a Faber book in perfect condition, but oddly enough I'd never heard of Fenton.

Happy to say I was very pleasantly surprised. His earlier work is more political, and his later work is more musical. I loved both sides of this, as well as everywhere he's explored in between. I'm glad that he's still alive (I'm still working my way through mostly dead poets), so I can follow any new work he releases.