Juvenilia

Or possibly 'Juvenalia'? No, probably not in this case.

And anyway, that gag's been done before (though I'm not sure if it was deliberate!) on the early Liz Phair EP which featured both spellings. I'm a long-time fan of Liz P, but perhaps that can wait until another post. Oddly enough - somewhat incongruously, perhaps, yet marvellously - she became the 'background' of my first visit here to The Unnameable Country more than a dozen years ago, when one of the people I visited generously gave me a tape of her recently-released 'Exile In Guyville' album (absolutely brilliant: one of the great albums of the '90s, and quite possibly the best debut album ever).

But, returning to the matter in hand, I have alluded on here once or twice before to the 'Vodka Poet' persona I created for myself back in my Oxford days so that I could anonymously contribute playful doggerel about drinking to various student magazines (the same era, in fact, in which I composed the Tom Waits homage I featured in this early post). I have just rediscovered one of the earliest of these silly poems, a kind of 'testament' or 'apologia' (though I don't think it ever had a title as such) attempting to explain what the 'Vodka Poet' was all about. Now I'm sending it out for a little sail around the shallow waters of this blog; I hope the winds of criticism won't blow too roughly on it! It was only ever meant to be a slight thing; and I was very young when I wrote it.

If it isn't received too savagely, I might share a few of his other works with you - mostly far shorter and (even) more flippant than this.

My Muse's name is Smirnoff;
I'll meet her late tonight
At the bottom of the bottle
Where I find my second sight.

Whether tossed on waves of ecstasy
Or in dark depression sunk,
I gain a newer vision
When I'm well and truly drunk.

As the body droops to slumber,
The inner voices rise.
Here I lie upon my back -
A watcher of the skies!

There's a melancholy wonder
In the view the gutter gives;
Among the lowest of the low
The poetic spirit lives.

As the bottle empties
And my mind begins to fill,
I gaze up at the distant stars
And try not to be ill.

Prometheus's liver grew again,
But I've seen the last of mine!
We, the thieves of heaven's fire,
Should expect no lesser fine.

Many chide me as a pagan
And revile my Muse's name;
But I'll continue in my worship
Without an ounce of shame.

The favours of a goddess
Entail an early death;
But I shall make the most of them
As long as I still have breath.

I may well die young and lonely
In my squalid little room;
But let the drab teetotallers
Read this lesson on my tomb:

"I've lived, and loved life keenly,
Though dying sooner than I might;
I may have burned out very soon,
But I burned very bright."