Out of Danger

by James Fenton

Out of Danger (1994) was Fenton's first collection of poems in ten years, and the poems in it renew and amplify the qualities of unflinching observation and freewheeling verbal play that made his earlier Children in Exile so distinctive and distinguished. The poems in this book's title sequence address the dangers of love, and the love of danger; Fenton proposes that in love, politics, and poetry alike the truth is "something you say at your peril" and yet "something you shouldn't contain." Part II of the book, "Out of the East," is a series of ironical fight songs about political violence-- in Manila, the Middle East, Tiananmen Square, and elsewhere. Part III, "Maski Paps," reveals again Fenton's celebrated talents for light-verse nonsense. And in "The Manila Manifesto" he turns his gifts loose upon the world of poetry itself in ways that will both enrage and delight. Out of Danger is refined and daring, jocular and deeply challenging.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

James Fenton was born in Lincoln in 1949 and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford where he won the Newdigate Prize for poetry. He has worked as political journalist, drama critic, book reviewer, war correspondent, foreign correspondent and columnist. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was Oxford Professor of Poetry for the period 1994-99. In 2007, Fenton was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.

Reviews

[Warwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

James Fenton is my kind of poet – gruff, unromantic, a man of the world whose poems sometimes seem to have more in common with front-line reporting than with contemporary poetry; and yet possessed of the most extraordinary lyrical ability that can be turned on whenever necessary. In many ways he is a journalist's poet, and indeed when you bring up poetry in newsrooms, or foreign hotel bars, his name is often the one that is voiced with most approbation by drunk hacks who otherwise would be tempted to assume that enjambment and vers libre are things that you can get an ointment for from the chemist's.

Fenton's gift is to capture complex situations in clean, rhythmic verses which bounce like song lyrics – and in fact when you hear him reading them, he does not read across the line-endings as so many poets do, but rather stresses every beat, every line-break, in a driving rhythm whose attractiveness can easily disguise the skill involved in the actual writing. For instance, the opening two stanzas from ‘Tiananmen’:

Tiananmen
Is broad and clean
And you can't tell
Where the dead have been
And you can't tell
What happened then
And you can't speak
Of Tiananmen.

You must not speak.
You must not think.
You must not dip
Your brush in ink.
You must not say
What happened then,
What happened there
In Tiananmen.

The short lines, the simple rhymes, the monosyllables, all contribute to this sense of simplicity without simplification. Many of his poems sound a little like fairytales for politically-aware grown-ups, even when they become more prosodically complex. The poem called ‘Jerusalem’ is another whose plain appeal is of a kind that makes me feel that I'm listening to someone who knows whereof he speaks.

            I
        Stone cries to stone,
        Heart to heart, heart to stone,
    And the interrogation will not die
        For there is no eternal city
        And there is no pity
    And there is nothing underneath the sky
        No rainbow and no guarantee—
There is no covenant between your God and me.

As the poem goes on, Fenton blends in alternating voices, from Israelis and Palestinians, mixed with everything from tour-guide clichés to customs forms, to create one chaotic symphony of past and present:

            III
        This is your fault.
        This is a crusader vault.
    The Brook of Kidron flows from Mea She'arim.
        I will pray for you.
        I will tell you what to do.
    I'll stone you. I shall break your every limb.
        Oh I am not afraid of you
But maybe I should fear the things you make me do.

[…]

            V
        The city was sacked.
        Jordan was driven back.
    The pious Christians burned the Jews alive.
        This is a minaret.
        I'm not finished yet.
    We're waiting for reinforcements to arrive.
        What was your mother's real name?
Would it be safe today to go to Bethlehem?

The whole poem is outstanding, and it's only excerpted here because its length makes it difficult to reproduce in full. Having said that, I am now about to write one out in full, because as well as a lot of semi-political verse, Fenton also wrote one of my favourite love poems ever made and I can't bear to cut any of it out, nor can I find a decent reading of it on YouTube. It's the great antidote to all those starry-eyed Paris love poems, and yet simultaneously one of the most genuinely romantic and sexy poems I know.

In Paris with You

Don't talk to me of love. I've had an earful
And I get tearful when I've had a drink or two.
I'm one of your walking wounded.
I'm a hostage. I'm maroonded.
But I'm in Paris with you.

Yes I'm angry at the way I've been bamboozled
And resentful of the mess that I've been through.
I admit I'm on the rebound
And I don't care where are we bound.
I'm in Paris with you.

      Do you mind if we do not go to the Louvre,
      If we say sod off to sodding Notre Dame,
      If we skip the Champs Elysées
      And remain here in this sleazy
      Old hotel room
      Doing this and that
      To what and whom
      Learning who you are,
      Learning what I am.

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.

Don't talk to me of love. Let's talk of Paris.
I'm in Paris with the slightest thing you do.
I'm in Paris with your eyes, your mouth,
I'm in Paris with…all points south.
Am I embarrassing you?
I'm in Paris with you.

Hopefully these extracts are enough to convince you of the power of his unusual voice, which so brilliantly mixes comic flair with rhetorical weight. His internationalism is a fantastic counter to the navel-gazing of so much modern poetry, while at the same time there is something very distinctly English about his tone that gives all of his work a familiar address. This is a collection I return to all the time, and so far my admiration has just kept growing every time I come back.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read no better master of rhyme and verse than the supreme jokster Fenton.

[Vlad · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite is "The Journey".

[Emily Boyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

The poems in here that I love, I love with my whole heart. Every time I pick up this book I find something I overlooked before.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a brilliant book of poetry, which is effectively the second collection of Fenton’s poetry. This is the first Fenton I’ve read and I found it clever, moving and thoughtful.

Is there better poem about the Tiananmen Square Massacre in English that ‘Tiananmen’ or about the Vietnam War (and associated conflicts) than ‘Out of the East’?

“He taught how to kill a man.
He taught me how to try.
But he forgot to say to me
How an honest man should die.

He taught me how to kill a man
Who was my enemy
But never how to kill a man
Who’s been a friend to me.”

There are love poems - In Paris with You, Hinterhof & Serious are all superb; there are poems about friendship and loss. ‘The Mistake’ is a great poem about...well...Mistakes.

Only the last section ‘The Manila Manifesto’ did I struggle with. But it’s something I’m willing to work at, which is a compliment in itself.

Highly recommended.

[Steve Cooper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful!
Out of the east, Jerusalem, Hinterhof, & In Paris with you just some of the amazing poems in this collection.
'Stay near to me, stay true to me, I'll stay
As near, as true to you as heart could pray
Heart never hoped that one might be
Half of the things you are to me -
The dawn, the fire, the rainbow and the day.'
Sublime.

The poetry, whether love, war, or a commentary on the social way of different cultures is perfect.
A brilliant read and reread. Definitely coming back to this collection again and again.

[Jee Koh · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are lyrical poems here, and then there are poems that are very nearly song lyrics. Both give pleasure, though arguably pleasure of different kinds. The book has keen observation, social conscience, and musical intelligence in abundance. Are the rhymes worn-out in places, like tires losing their treads? Maybe, but the Philippines and other South Pacific islands provide new rhymes.

[Paul · Rating 1 out of 5]

Supposedly one of Britain's finest poets, but strictly chump change based on this unimpressive collection, embarassingly greeting-cardish except for a few effective personal lyrics.

[Mills College Library]

821.914 F342o 1994

[Putnam Harper · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first modern poet, where I dropped the act that "poetry was dead" after a certain point.