‘Alone’ in Latin means ‘solus’ thence the Italian ‘solo’ with its primary reference to musical performance. Someone who sings or plays an instrument alone is a ‘soloist;’ they may feel ‘solitary’ being the ‘sole’ performer. Our soloist’s a poet though, Owen Bullock, and his solo performance is a poem, ‘Solo’ by name. His instrument is his voice, his own voice. It reads like it is to be listened to. And going by the title it is also about ‘aloneness,’ but ontologically speaking, not sentimentally as in some personal or ‘confessional’ poem. ‘I am the abundance/ my breath/ my anchor/ my emptiness/ out breath/ stilled/ for a second/ a moment of nothing.’ It makes me think of Olson.

Practise is performance. It’s likened to playing ‘solo’—football without ‘the game’. I remember the pleasures of ‘solo tennis’ and how my body was the instrument. This poetry business is physical. As a practical necessity ‘you always have/ a wall.’ Owen Bullock kicks the ball my way, in our direction: we are that ‘wall.’ Or, rather, it stands in for us. Its hardness, resistance, makes good sense to me.

Reading ahead I come to a stop—at ‘distinguishment.’ The word means ‘the quality and condition of difference,’ where the italics stop (for the time being). Here I want to distinguish distinguishment itself from the quality and condition of being alone, solitary, going solo, etc. They are not quite the same: some measure of comparison and analysis is implied. So that I begin to think that the process of discovering distinguishment is SOLO’s main purpose, it provides a method and a series of examples for thinking ontologically.  

What are they on about, this couple?  A lone word, isolated from a familiar context, is a meaning fragment often as not. Someone takes the word ‘niblick’ out of context, for fun—how like a poet?  I don’t know about you, but I had to look it up. It’s true, it is a kind of golf club, an ‘iron,‘ with a ‘heavy lofted (?) head,’ good for getting you out of bunkers. I guess ‘afternoon niblick’ is a play on ‘nibble’—a suggested name for a snack between meals during lockdown. Having been corrected by ‘darling, however’ the poet persists in his foolishness: ‘I don’t see why the golfers should have [exclusive use of all the funny words] all the nice food.’

Then he writes, ‘Celenial/ is cream jug…’  Never heard of Celenial either. Could he possibly mean a ‘celedon’ glazed jug on his bedside table. I look her up and wouldn’t you know it she’s a character from Dungeons and Dragons (The Light of Dawn)?—I’m from an earlier generation. Now I understand that the jug is morphing in front of me. I had just read: ‘the rains are back/ like the raven/ black,’ and shortly I would come upon ‘if I relax/ fully/ I’ll fall/ through the floor ’ and the realisation of just how linguistically and psychologically deep-seated, the poet Bullock’s acts of distinguishment, actually are. They add up.

wystan curnow