Fondue

by A.K. Blakemore

‘never say / the best of summer’s gone’, the poem asks, a plea for permanence that sustains throughout Fondue, the second collection by A. K. Blakemore. In these louche, candid poems, bearing the marks of Mary Ruefle, Emily Dickinson and The Smiths, the inner life prowls, smoking a cigarette, as the fantasies of sex and violence are allowed to play out in the subjugations that have long been the poet’s concerns. Here they are exposed, interrogated, attacked and cauterised with a fierce melancholy.

In Fondue, the prototypes of personal history and regret – ex-lovers and friends, snatched and startling nights of intimacy and rage – are pinned by the investigative presence of Blakemore’s syntax and semantic reach. Here are romances – for places, for people, for the self – voiced with doubt and survival. These lines understand their power to manipulate: ‘this is a poem about my mouth / intended to draw attention / to my mouth’, the title poem instructs. This is what I like; this is what I don’t like – ‘i want you / like a scorpion down my shirt’; ‘i wanted to show it to you’; ‘i want you to describe the pain’ – there is a plaintive charisma in the ability to ask for the things a body needs, as well as the things it needs to understand about other bodies in order to coexist.

For all of Blakemore’s defiance, the savagery and storm, this world holds a prismatic, surprising beauty; the beauty of rain-washed streets, of comedown mornings, of the potential for tenderness in the brutality of love and play.  The poet who can strike so fiercely at the times when ‘truth is just a sharp thing you stand on in the night’ can also conclude ‘but god i love the world. the things you do’. Tigerish, impetuous, exacting and never self-pitying, Blakemore’s new collection reaffirms her place on the barricades.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published July 5, 2018

About the author

A.K. Blakemore is the author of two collections of poetry: Humbert Summer and Fondue. She has also translated the work of Sichuanese poet Yu Yoyo. Her poetry and prose writing have been widely published and anthologized, appearing in The London Review of Books, Poetry, The Poetry Review, and The White Review, among other publications. Her debut novel, The Manningtree Witches won the Desmond Elliot Prize 2021. She lives in London, England.

Reviews

[Dave Hirsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I will be happy reading anything by AK Blakemore.

[Thomas Goddard · Rating 2 out of 5]

I heard a lot about this author. Colour me a bit disappointed.

Why is it that all the writers people highlight in the bookshops and on bookstagram tend to be so disappointing? I could tell you, but I would probably gain a reputation. I’ll leave you to make your own mind up.

This is the writing of a person who is very interested in words, and clearly very good with them, but pays very little interest to any attempt to grapple with real larger meaning or purpose. At least… I mean… passing that meaning on to the reader.

And another example of VERY pretty words. Most of my stars are for the pretty words. I have recommended this for those lines, but the more I reflected the more I came to realise that I was getting sucked into a rather empty realm.

The collection fails to have any lasting relevance and I’ll never return to it. Which might sound harsh, but remember that I never judge a writer by a single work. I’m hoping that as they grow, they’ll improve and stop making the errors that a lot of similar reviewers have identified.

Biggest lesson: Always write clearly first. Convey the message without the prettiness. Then come back to the work and make it look good. Otherwise it is all fur coat and no… well… you remember how it goes.

[Juliano · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Fondue’ is a well-rounded, well-crafted collection from the brilliant A K Blakemore. Written with a voice that is never less than direct, the poems in this collection dance over the reader, beautifully composed to allow their language and their rhythms and their very vertebrae space to perform. “be there as you were.”

[Brooke Eubanks · Rating 2 out of 5]

:( only about one poem I liked in this collection.

"soft drink":

my desires are so
ultimately bourgeois —

mainly you standing by a window
with a soft drink in your hand

beneath the curling red paws
of the neighbors' rose-bushes.

[Pavol Hardos · Rating 4 out of 5]

These poems are

walking through mourning days
of a nitrous quality

with the calm and self-possession
of a knife-carrier.

(p.47)