This little essay could easily be called “Why I Am Not A Scholar”, for in attempting to write about a poem that I love and which in some ways changed my life I immediately find myself being unscholarly and, instead, personal. In 1980, I had been editing my little poetry magazine (joe soap’s canoe) for two years – if ‘editing’ is the correct word to describe receiving poetry submissions, being too often appalled, and sending them back to the submitters. Indeed, the editorial in Issue 5, which came out in September of that year, is mainly about how I was receiving few poems that I considered good enough to publish. That’s the polite version.
But that issue of the magazine includes something else.
A little earlier that year, and quite out of the blue, I had received a letter from the English poet N.S. Thompson, enclosing some poems by an American poet that Thompson said he thought I might like. The American poet was Paul Violi, and my world was changed.
That canoe features two Violi poems: “Outside Baby Moon’s” and “Exacta.” Here is the latter, the poem that is the subject of this essay:
EXACTA
And they’re off!
Babe Wittgenstein takes the lead
It’s Babe Wittgenstein
Morbid Blonde
Queasy Phantom
Princess Spits
Squeaked Aorta
Dream Helmet
and Pigs in Moonlight
Princess Spits coming up fast
It’s Babe Wittgenstein
Morbid Blonde
and Princess Spits
Babe Wittgenstein has the edge
Here comes Dream Helmet
neck and neck
with Queasy Phantom
Pigs in Moonlight losing ground
Princess Spits nosing out Babe Wittgenstein
They’re bunched up on the rail
Queasy Phantom with blinkers on
It’s Princess Spits by a length
Babe Wittgenstein and Morbid Blonde nose and nose
Rounding the turn
Dream Helmet on the outside
Squeaked Aorta out of the running
It’s Princess Spits and Morbid Blonde
Babe Wittgenstein losing ground
Pigs in Moonlight breaking sharply
Queasy Phantom takes the turn
It's going to be close
It’s Princess Spits Morbid Blonde
Babe Wittgenstein Dream Helmet
Queasy Phantom Pigs in Moonlight
and Squeaked Aorta trailing the field
A little daylight now
between Babe Wittgenstein
and Pigs in Moonlight
It’s going to be tight
Princess Spits fighting it out
with Morbid Blonde
It’s Princess Spits
It’s Morbid Blonde
It’s Princess Spits
Queasy Phantom slowing down
Dream Helmet two lengths behind
Pigs in Moonlight
They’re going into the stretch
Morbid Blonde out front
Pigs in Moonlight closing fast
Here comes Pigs in Moonlight
sweeping past Princess Spits
Morbid Blonde and Pigs in Moonlight neck and neck
Babe Wittgenstein tiring falling back
It’s Morbid Blonde
It’s Pigs in Moonlight
It’s going to be Pigs in Moonlight
Pigs in Moonlight has the field
Pigs in Moonlight charging through
It’s Pigs in Moonlight
Pigs in Moonlight winning by two lengths
1980 is a long time ago. I can barely remember what happened last week, never mind 45 years ago. But I’m pretty sure that in 1980 I had never heard of the “New York School” or, if I had, I knew next to nothing about it. That changed pretty damn quick. But I am jumping the gun, and should focus on the poem. So:
The aforementioned N.S. Thomson contributed a brief introductory essay to Violi’s poems for the magazine, in which he said “One interesting development that has taken place in the search for new poetic modes of expression is the utilization of other language structures in the place of traditional poetic form”. He goes on to say “what can be more ridiculous than the deadly seriousness of a racing commentator or a television guide? . . . It is a poetry of protest, and Paul Violi is concerned with much of the ridiculousness of Americana . . . His poetry is more than a wry comment on the way Americans live, he picks it up and shakes it by the ankles: the consumer nightmare, gaping after its dreamworld of Coca-Cola adverts, is finally left gasping for breath.” In 1980 I thought this sounded fair enough. Forty-five years later it might still be all right – who can say for sure? Before publishing the poems, I wrote to Violi asking his permission to use the poems, and we subsequently became good friends (a friendship fairly well-documented elsewhere). And I like to imagine him reading Thompson’s essay, and his reaction: that charming and disarming smile, perhaps a wry chuckle, another cup of coffee, and lighting up another cigarette. Now, I wonder if it’s not a little too simplistic to think that life, American or otherwise, is ridiculous, and to write with that supposiiton in mind. I think Violi was (still is) a far better poet than that.
You see, what Thompson fails to mention is the horses. The horses! I don’t know why he didn’t mention the horses. And what horses!
I’ve noticed over the years that racehorses often have slightly odd names. For the purposes of (non-scholarly) research, I investigated at random today (August 20, 2025) the race card at York. (That’s York in the UK, just in case you were wondering.) In the 1.50 pm race the runners were: The Man, Vintage Clarets, Jordan Electrics, Brazen Bolt, Bergerac, Spring Is Sprung, Curious Rover, Copper Knight, Roman Dragon, Cuban Grey, and Tees Spirit. You may well have begun to fall asleep during that list, as did I, being utterly unable to muster any interest in any of the field by virtue of their name. Yes, as horsey names go they may be a little strange – there’s no Trigger or Silver there – but as far as I’m concerned none of them wake me up from my everyday lethargy, none of them are funny, and none of them say “My, that’s a fascinating and unexpected juxtapositioning of words” or ”What the hell?”
But look at the horses running in Paul’s poem! Babe Wittgenstein. Morbid Blonde. Queasy Phantom. Princess Spits. Squeaked Aorta. Dream Helmet. Pigs in Moonlight. I wanted to put an exclamation mark after each of those names, after each of those wonderful names. And I want to put my money on all of them!
And why are they wonderful?
Because, among other things (things that include being funny and a fascinating and unexpected juxtaposition of words) they happen to be in a chunk of writing that calls itself a poem. And it just occurred to me that a good reason for picking this particular poem to write about is that there’s no temptation to show off and try to analyse it as one might be expected to do if there were simile,
metaphor, structural complexities, metatextuality, intertextuality, and probably some other things with several syllables . . . while I neatly ignore the fact that Violi said, when speaking about impersonating and adapting prose forms, “When I do use such forms I assume I’m employing a simple metaphor . . . by which I don’t mean to celebrate the ordinary but to subvert it.”
We are modern, most of us, and we may also be smart and educated and informed and know that poems these days can look and sound like anything they want to look like, to the extent that we threaten to become bored by our own open-mindedness and generosity. But by virtue of combining the poet’s invention and imagination and wit, these horses ignite the readers' imagination as well as making them smile. In other words, they do what great poems do: they transport the reader to, and have life and create more life in, the realm of the imagination. For the duration of the poem – and, if one is really fired up, beyond it – we are elsewhere, a special place, while at the same time remaining firmly connected to the world around us: horse racing is indisputably a down-to-earth activity, and arguably more “of this world” than a lot of poets and poems I know.
The poem’s form is part of the reason the thing works, but it needs those horses, with their remarkable names, to finish the job. The names are key. And by being taken to and entranced by the world of the imagination that never lets go of the world around us, we by definition, I would argue, subvert the ordinary. We are in a place that only a work of art can take us, and it is unique, unique to each and every reader. It would be of little use – futile, actually – for me to tell you what those names make me think of and where they take me in my head; I have known blondes. By and large they were not morbid, but there were exceptions. And I would like to own and wear a dream helmet. I do not know how to begin to explain what Squeaked Aorta means to me: I’ve known that horse for more than forty years and love her still. (Why “her”?) Yes, it’s futile for me to tell you this. This is my head, not yours. These horses are alive in my head in ways they can never be alive in yours. And the other way around. Do you see what I mean? Possibilities become possible, life is enriched. The poem did that. And why am I even trying to explain something I don’t want explained?
Having said all of which, and after having re-written that paragraph so many times that I was tempted to cross all of it out once and for all except for the last sentence, I proffer another way of looking at it:
A couple of years after I published “Exacta” in my magazine, my friend Rupert Mallin, being something of an actor as well as a poet and visual artist, took part in an evening of arty things advertised as 'An Evening of the Surreal' at the Quay Theatre, Sudbury, Suffolk. (Ignore the “surreal” tag, although things were definitely rather “off the wall”.) Anyway, in front of a packed audience, Rupert, suitably attired to resemble a vaguely untrustworthy bookmaker on Derby day, stood next to a blackboard on an easel, and on the blackboard were listed the names of the horses from “Exacta”, and alongside them were the betting odds. Rupert (probably over-acting) set the scene of the horse race, encouraged the crowd to select their horse, and after a suitable time spent whipping up the excitement and the crowd’s enthusiasm he assumed the role of race commentator and embarked upon a frenetic commentary i.e. ”Exacta”. The audience went bananas, everyone cheering on their chosen horse, until Pigs in Moonlight won by two lengths.
So much for poetry readings.
My point is this: poetry can say so much. It can express love, despair, joy, grief, loathing, disinterest . . . the list is long. We all know this. And the list must surely include speaking a celebration of imagination and language, with joy and humour and excitement, the kind of excitement that comes from contemplating (dare I say it?) Pigs in Moonlight. One must surely be able to experience a poem careless of conventional notions of “meaning”, for whatever else this poem might be up to, its meaning is, at least in part (in large part) that experience, only explainable somewhere beyond words. “Exacta” tells us it’s good to be alive, even when we know that being alive comes with so many caveats that sometimes one may be allowed the occasional and understandable doubt. I’m not sure I care or not if the ordinary is subverted; a lot of the time it seems to be subverting itself, and doesn’t need poems to help it along.
“Exacta” is not a poem that invites the commentator or scholar to explicate the intricacies of its structure, or to compose a considered paraphrase and summary of its narrative, to dissect the import and critique of Wittgenstein’s philosophical investigations implied by the presence of that Babe in the line-up, or to delve deeply into the symbolism of Princess Spits. To write about the poem in that way may be possible, but it would be quite against the spirit of the poem and, frankly, tedious.
This is a poem that says Enjoy! Enjoy the language! Enjoy the pictures in your head! Enjoy the race! A fig for reality! Enjoy Pigs in Moonlight – even if you had your money on Queasy Phantom . . . .
Copyright (c) Martin Stannard, 2025