Poetry review – ANXIOUS CORPORALS: Paul McDonald praises the delightful anti-capitalist riffing in Alan Morrisonâs âessay in verseâ
Anxious Corporals
Alan Morrison
Smokestack Books, 2021
ISBN: 9781916312128
162 pages. ÂŁ7.99
Itâs hard not to love Smokestack Books â for me theyâre one of the most interesting publishers around, with their status as torchbearers for the âunconventional, unfashionable [and] radicalâ borne out by their list, and publications like Alan Morrisonâs Anxious Corporals. Certainly itâs hard to imagine this polemical, poetic history of working class culture with anything other than Smokestackâs signature red spine; although, when it comes to books, itâs blue spines that interest Morrison – specifically the blue spines of Pelican paperbacks:
Pelican â so named by serendipity when publisher Allen Lane
Overheard a man at a bookstall mistakenly ask for âone of
Those Pelican booksâ when he meant Penguin of course â
Tipped its first title off the production line in pale blue spine:
George Bernard Shaw's The Intelligent Womanâs Guide to
Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism and Fascism â a sixpenny
Salvation of mankind, to paraphrase its authorâs enraptured
Pitch⌠[II, 13]
For Morrison, Pelicans symbolise a lost working class desire for intellectual self-improvement, which is the principal focus of this 162 page âessay in verseâ. Splitting into twenty five cantos, it opens with an indictment of the current working class myopia â an âectopic proletariatâ seduced and intellectually enfeebled by the specious allure of capitalism:
Misplaced in multiples of patchwork overlaps from cash-
Strapped and poverty-trapped working poor to tip-of-
The-slagheap grasping aspiration â O what hope for red roses
To grow among the thorns of red-top-hypnotised, populist-
Supporting proles, working-class Faragistes, Workington
'Gammons', purple-rinse reactionaries, blue collar
Conservatives, proletarian Tories (Old Benjamin Disraeliâs
âAngels in Marbleâ coming back to haunt us through
Poltergeist psephologists, now Boris's blue collars, his batmen
Bootscrapers), who mostly think theyâre petit-bourgeois â [I, 9]
Morrison laments the demise of intellectual curiosity among the lower classes, and their potential for critical thinking. He identifies a lost penchant for self-education with a particular character type â âAnxious Corporalsâ, a term first coined by Arthur Koestler in the mid-twentieth century. It denotes servicemen with a âthirst for intellectual sustenanceâ, required less for material self-advancement than to âsatisfy some / vitamin deficiency of the mindâ [XI, 63]. The type transferred to civvy street, âOut of uniforms into muftis, incorporating the lower ranks / Of the middle classes, but particularly the upper-working / Class, skilled trades and blue collars, shop stewards and / Repsâ [XI, 64]. Such autodidacts were intellectually autonomous, with minds more capable of ideological subversion:
Knowledge-hungry thought-guerrillas, unarmed paper armies
Scavenging for knowledge off-campus from academies,
Rusticating outside rusting institutions, such demand was
There for mutual improvement overturning the unintelligent
Margarine of âyellow pressâ matter, tabloidsâ butter-
Substitutes, âSunnyâ Harmsworthâs Daily Mail (inveterate
Barometer of lower-middle-class Villadom), Tit-Bits,
Answers, Readersâ Digest; an incipient curiousness
Outstripping supply of tepid potboilers⌠[I, 10]
Morrison explores this theme of working class self-improvement within a layered and discursive history of class in the UK, quoting extensively from several classic works on the subject – books like Walter Gallichanâs The Blight of Respectability (1897), David Lockwoodâs The Blackcoated Worker (1958), and particularly Richard Hoggartâs The Uses of Literacy (1957), which was itself a bestselling Pelican through the 1960s and beyond. Itâs a scissors-and-paste aesthetic in parts, but an effective one, particularly when served by the rich and lyrical language of a theorist like Hoggart, whose critique of mass culture underpins much of the middle section of the book. Among other things, he uses Hoggart to explore the consequences of âpassive receptiveness âTo synthetic culture and intellectually-vetted entertainmentsâ:
'We can soon put ourselves in a position in which we lie back
âWith our mouths open, whilst we are fed by pipe-line⌠from a
Bottomless cornucopia manipulated by the anonymous âThemââ [XII, 76]
Quotations are plentiful (scrupulously demarcated by quote marks and italics), with Morrison providing perceptive commentary on their relevance, and, with the likes of Hoggart, their prescience. In this sense the poem is very much like an essay, developing a coherent argument, whilst retaining a freewheeling feel, punctuated by delightful anti-capitalist riffing: impassioned, and unapologetically partisan, it often reminded me of Ed Sandersâ exuberant, multi-volume, America: A History in Verse.
For Morrison, the working class thirst for knowledge was eroded partly by Thatcherite philistinism, and partly by a postmodern relativism which âscooped out the point / from expression and criticism in order to try and prove âEverything is relative, ultimately subjective, intrinsically / Ironic, endlessly reductiveâ [XXIV, 145]. Such unfavourable cultural conditions led to Pelicanâs demise in 1990, with âits 2,878th title, William Sheridan Allenâs The Nazi Siezure of Power [XXIV, 144]. Doubtless youâve spotted the irony.
Morrison is characteristically cynical about Penguinâs decision to reintroduce the Pelican imprint in 2014:
...Will contemporary Pelicans have such
A common place reach or will they simply fill a niche? As Paul
Laity speculated in a Guardian piece, âNo doubt Penguinâs
Aim is to capitalise on the now-fetishised Pelican brandâ, just
As it has on its own brandâs iconic designs reproduced on
Mugs, coasters, postcards, tea-towels⌠[XXV, 149]
One canât help but feel that Morrisonâs cynicism is well founded. The good news is that so many blue Pelicans were published between 1936 and 1990 that thereâs an inexhaustible second hand supply; indeed, Morrison, in a utopian moment, envisions âpop up Pelican Universitiesâ that might âFurnish disenfranchised mindsâ, offering âan alternative world view to conventional educationâ [XXIV, 147]. I like the idea, although Iâd also encourage people to supplement their blue spine education with a few red spines along the way: Anxious Corporals is an excellent place to start.
London Grip Poetry Review – Alan Morrison
April 13, 2021
Poetry review – ANXIOUS CORPORALS: Paul McDonald praises the delightful anti-capitalist riffing in Alan Morrisonâs âessay in verseâ
Itâs hard not to love Smokestack Books â for me theyâre one of the most interesting publishers around, with their status as torchbearers for the âunconventional, unfashionable [and] radicalâ borne out by their list, and publications like Alan Morrisonâs Anxious Corporals. Certainly itâs hard to imagine this polemical, poetic history of working class culture with anything other than Smokestackâs signature red spine; although, when it comes to books, itâs blue spines that interest Morrison – specifically the blue spines of Pelican paperbacks:
For Morrison, Pelicans symbolise a lost working class desire for intellectual self-improvement, which is the principal focus of this 162 page âessay in verseâ. Splitting into twenty five cantos, it opens with an indictment of the current working class myopia â an âectopic proletariatâ seduced and intellectually enfeebled by the specious allure of capitalism:
Morrison laments the demise of intellectual curiosity among the lower classes, and their potential for critical thinking. He identifies a lost penchant for self-education with a particular character type â âAnxious Corporalsâ, a term first coined by Arthur Koestler in the mid-twentieth century. It denotes servicemen with a âthirst for intellectual sustenanceâ, required less for material self-advancement than to âsatisfy some / vitamin deficiency of the mindâ [XI, 63]. The type transferred to civvy street, âOut of uniforms into muftis, incorporating the lower ranks / Of the middle classes, but particularly the upper-working / Class, skilled trades and blue collars, shop stewards and / Repsâ [XI, 64]. Such autodidacts were intellectually autonomous, with minds more capable of ideological subversion:
Morrison explores this theme of working class self-improvement within a layered and discursive history of class in the UK, quoting extensively from several classic works on the subject – books like Walter Gallichanâs The Blight of Respectability (1897), David Lockwoodâs The Blackcoated Worker (1958), and particularly Richard Hoggartâs The Uses of Literacy (1957), which was itself a bestselling Pelican through the 1960s and beyond. Itâs a scissors-and-paste aesthetic in parts, but an effective one, particularly when served by the rich and lyrical language of a theorist like Hoggart, whose critique of mass culture underpins much of the middle section of the book. Among other things, he uses Hoggart to explore the consequences of âpassive receptiveness âTo synthetic culture and intellectually-vetted entertainmentsâ:
Quotations are plentiful (scrupulously demarcated by quote marks and italics), with Morrison providing perceptive commentary on their relevance, and, with the likes of Hoggart, their prescience. In this sense the poem is very much like an essay, developing a coherent argument, whilst retaining a freewheeling feel, punctuated by delightful anti-capitalist riffing: impassioned, and unapologetically partisan, it often reminded me of Ed Sandersâ exuberant, multi-volume, America: A History in Verse.
For Morrison, the working class thirst for knowledge was eroded partly by Thatcherite philistinism, and partly by a postmodern relativism which âscooped out the point / from expression and criticism in order to try and prove âEverything is relative, ultimately subjective, intrinsically / Ironic, endlessly reductiveâ [XXIV, 145]. Such unfavourable cultural conditions led to Pelicanâs demise in 1990, with âits 2,878th title, William Sheridan Allenâs The Nazi Siezure of Power [XXIV, 144]. Doubtless youâve spotted the irony.
Morrison is characteristically cynical about Penguinâs decision to reintroduce the Pelican imprint in 2014:
One canât help but feel that Morrisonâs cynicism is well founded. The good news is that so many blue Pelicans were published between 1936 and 1990 that thereâs an inexhaustible second hand supply; indeed, Morrison, in a utopian moment, envisions âpop up Pelican Universitiesâ that might âFurnish disenfranchised mindsâ, offering âan alternative world view to conventional educationâ [XXIV, 147]. I like the idea, although Iâd also encourage people to supplement their blue spine education with a few red spines along the way: Anxious Corporals is an excellent place to start.