KEN BOLTON + JOHN JENKINS
Review
Nutters Without Fetters showcases, in a deftly edited and highly condensed form, many of the strands and tendencies of their collaborative work. The book begins with a longer poem, 'The God of Trieste...', which is surprisingly serious and wistful, providing the reader, literally, with a god's-eye-view - a sort of elevated, panoramic overview of all the characters inhabiting the landscape of the book. This solidly classical framing device is used here to innovative effect.
Poems such as 'Sandwich Hand', 'An Albanian Problem', 'Phew!' and others are told using a distinctive narrative voice. They are narrated by some very comic, edgy, idiotic and eccentric people. These characters are marginalised, alienated or downright nutty! Each has a chip on his or her shoulder, is trying to resolve some problem, and sees things in a strange light. Or is it strange? Perhaps the assumption of normalcy, that all people are the same, is stranger. The 'I' (the narrative identity) of these poems and the 'you' (the person he or she is addressing) is often ambiguous, as if the poets were slyly playing with the reader's and his or her assumptions.
'Nutter Thing' is an outstanding comic/ironic example of this. It is a parody of 'the dramatic monologue form', narrated by a hillbilly called Nan. In the piece, Nan explains to Pappy how she became brain-damaged in an accident; how this led to her mock-profound discovery of the subjective nature of space and time; and to her own self discovery as an artist.
Because these poems are co-written, sometimes in a freely 'off-the-wall' sort of way, the narrative is continuously being disrupted and then retrieved, first pushed into interesting directions and territory, and then somehow brought back on track. This allows a great deal of free-jazz-style invention and lots of unexpected twists and turns.
The centrepiece of Nutters Without Fetters is the series, '5 Paintings and a Sculpture'. It is subtitled 'The Expatriate Poems, notes from a Grand Tour that you didn't have'. Again, the 'you' in this sub-title, is ambiguous. That the reader didn't have? That the character narrating the poems merely imagined (perhaps after looking at some art books)? Or that one or other of the poets, or both of them, didn't have? More subtly, a grand tour one of the poets thought he had had, but mainly reconstructed later?
Anyway, the series takes us to some great European museums and works of art - commenting, in turn, on famous paintings by de Chirico, Hals, Ernst, Beckmann and Bocklin, and on a piece of sculpture by Bernini.
This series refuses to reveal any final position vis a vis 'great art', except through a series of sometimes reasonably astute, well-informed and penetrating (and sometimes quite slippery and tangential) comments, couched in a tone which might be described as amused pungency. Perhaps it is a tone that might really belong to an Australian on tour: a bit flippant, a bit Philistine. This tourist is not easy to impress or to intimidate, yet is much better informed than you might have imagined, and he or she is still able to enjoy art, though without reverence, and still be moved, though without making a big deal out of it.
Finally, this book makes an unashamed appeal to nutters everywhere. Read on, and enjoy!