Selected Poems of Thomas Albert Fox
"Inscriptions"

1 Dali, Salvador 1904-89 (Fiery Catholic)
2 Gorbachev, Mikhail Sergeevich 1931- ( ghost)
3 Carter, James Earl 1924- (Jimmy)
4 Ceausescu, Nicolae 1918-89 ( Unpopular Dictator)
5 Adams, Gerald 1948- (Conspirator)
6 Rushdie, (Ahmed) Salman 1947- (Cartographer)
7 Nixon, Richard Milhous 1913-1994 (A Politician)
8 Wojtyla, Karol Joseph 1920- (Pope 0064-1997)
9 Mountbatten, Charles Philip Arthur George 1948- (Prince)
10 Heath, Sir Edward Richard George 1916- (Ex Prime Minister)
11 Bitzan, Ion 1924- (Solomon)
12 Maxwell (Ian) Robert 1923- (Swimmer)
13 Larkin, Philip Arthur 1922-85 (Librarian)
14 Eminescu, Mihai 1849-89 (Shakespeare)
15 Major, John 1943- (Prime Minister)
16 Murdock, Rupert Keith 1931- (Gob)
17 Heaney, Seamus Justin 1939- (snug)
18 Spencer, Diana Frances 1961-97 (Princess of Whales)
19 Hitler, Adolf 1889-1945 (Who's Whose)
20 Reagan, Ronald Wilson 1911 - (Ronnie Raygun)
21 Casement, Sir Roger David 1864-1916 (Hanged Man)
22 McGuinness, Martin 19 (Mouthpeace)
23 Bell, Mary 1957- (child killer)
24 Ciccone, Madonna Louise 1958- (Mother of Christ)
25 Clinton, William 1946- (William J Blythe IV)
26 Jagger Michael Phillip 1943- (rocks)
27 Wilson, Harold James 1916 - (Lord)
28 Benn, Anthony Wedgewood 1925- (Mr Viscount)
29 Lewinsky Monica 19 (That Woman)
30 Kennedy, John Fitgerald 1917-63 (Jack Apollo)
31 Blair, Anthony Charles Lynton 1953- (Bambi)
32 Hughes, Edward James 1930-1999 (seed)
33 Edwards, Terrence Allen 1942- (Inscriber)
34 Sutch, David Edward 1940-99 (Lord screaming)
35 Stalin, Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili 1879-1953 (Uncle Jo)
36 Presley, Elvis Aaron 1935-77 (King)
37 Paisley Ian Robert Kyle 1926- (the Voice)
38 Rodham-Clinton Hillary Diane 1947- (1st lady)
39 Mountbatten Louise Francis Victor Albert Nicholas, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, 1900-79 (Star)
40 Churchill, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer 1874-1965 (Winnie)
41 Thatcher, Margaret Hilda 1925-  (Baroness)
42 George W Bush 1946-  (Speaking softly)
43 Anthem to the Wall

44 The Queen 1926-   (Fairy Queen)
45 Queen Victoria 1819-1901 (Widow and Empress)
46 Larkin's Front (Larkin Philip Arthur 1922-85)
47
Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm 1844-1900 (Poet)

NOTES

"Inscriptions" consists of forty seven poems toward an English biography of the twentieth century. A further twenty or more are needed to 'complete' the volume. Each poem cuts a figure from the 20th Century mediasphere and engraves the lines of its face through the raster before the face of Fox at work cutting into cyberspace wherein it finds itself blackened upon the riddled lined face of his page. Each inscription enters the surface of arbitrary headstones carted remorselessly to encircle us both here in this wild share of England, surrounding truth with permanence, as if such permanence contained truth. Inscriptions are Fox's way of speaking about his world as it appears to him in his time and place and through the unmaterial realities which make it up (this world).

The poems needed to "complete" the biography may include, "John Wayne", "John Lennon",  "A Khomeini", "Jeffrey Archer", "Cassius Clay/Ali", "Neil Armstrong", "Buzz Aldrin", "Boris Yeltsin", "Yuri Gaugarin", "David Trimble", "Pol Pot", "T S Eliot", "Marlon Brando", "Cliff Richard", "Stephen Hawking", "Saddam Hussain", "Bill Gates", and some more. There is no rationale of choice or order here, outside the personal impression Fox has had of the old century and the incipient 'cybennial'.  It is not a logical selection as such (that's its true strength); as if Fox or I (me that is) could, or anyone could, set out to and succeed in logically experiencing their life in any sphere, let alone its subsistential trajectory through this or that mediasphere. The choices of subject are merely arbitrary or, at best, pure serendipity (luck of the poet).

The "Ronnie Raygun' poem is selected to show that an apparently silly poem has more to it than meets the superficial eye, as indeed did the Reagan administration, popular though it is to ridicule the size of the President's brain. Now, slowly dead in the clutch of that dreadful disease, lost to himself and all his loved ones and his friends and all his political contacts, we may just pause for a nanosecond to consider the "histry" itself, the enormous change wrought by Ronnie and his boys. Not too clever by half?

Fox keeps changing the last word of the poem from "flame" to "fame" and back. Can't make up his mind.

Of course, completion of "Inscriptions" would not necessarily make the work complete in terms of this or that retrospectively constructed rationale for an English biography of figures populating the mediasphere of the late 20th Century. It is merely complete to Fox in the moving mediasphere of his own experiences." 'istry" is someone else's bunk after all, isn't it?

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