LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS LITERATURE SOCIETYLITERARY REVIEW

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CONTENTSON VISITING OSCAR WILDE’S GRAVE 6JOE MEADWAYTHE DOCTOR CALLED 7N.M.SLEEPY, LITTLE BABY 8EUNICE NGWOOLMORE 10EMMANUEL AKPAN--INWANGMOZAMBIQUE 11JOHN-PAUL NUNESWITHIN 12BEVERLY THORNEDISPRIZED LOVE 13ANDREAS MARCOS PAPASIFAKISBZZZZZZTZZ 14ELEONORA SCHINELLAALWAYS HAVE CREAM WITH A FRAPPUCCINO 16SAM NAIRHER SMILE 17CHRIS HARERHYTHM 18SHILPA VISWANATHTHE TRANSFORMATION 20ERIN OROZCODOVE (ONCE UPON A TIME) 22PAUL LATHERONLOVE SONG (AFTER WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS) 26JOHN-PAUL NUNESTROPICAL VIRGIN 27SHILPA VISWANATHWRINKLED FACES 28ANDREAS MARCOS PAPASIFAKISENTANGLED 30KABERI CHOWDHURY

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FOREWORDBY DIRK ROBERTSON

Years of underachieving and daydreaming at school led to work behind the counter of The Globetrotter fish and chip shop. Customers waited in vain for their suppers as I gazed through a grease stained window at the rainy Edinburgh streets. On the bench lay a copy of Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. It “rained like a bastard…” he wrote. My heart ached to produce stuff like that. No confidence and little vision of a future meant my ache would probably last a lifetime. Luck, good fortune and manufactured self-belief had other ideas. A degree from the LSE was part of the journey but easily the most important. My association with the School is the single most powerful thing in my life. Pride swells in my heart when I say I attended the School and that fact is not a piece of fiction. You could take anything away from me and I wouldn’t blink an eye. Turn back the clock, rob me of my time at the school and I will, however, crumble to dust and blow away in the wind, like I hadn’t even existed. It means that much to me. Years later and I am again staring out of a window. A stack of books I have written lie on the table next to me, along with a fish supper. My advice now is to “write like a bastard.” The quality matters little. It may be the worst piece of drivel ever to find its way onto a page but it is your drivel. The most unlikely worlds grow from one page of prose. Believe me, I know. It is a total honour for me to write this foreword to The Muse. The School consistently sends people out into the world who make their mark in every conceivable walk of life. This includes the arts. The Muse is a marvellous opportunity for writers to test their voices on a wider audience as they discover words have power which can match anything mother nature or small people with big bombs can produce. The work in this magazine is bold and diverse, like the writers themselves. Read and enjoy and if you think you can do better, then do so….

Dirk Robertson

Author, Mentoring Chair, Alumni Association Executive CommitteeThe London School of Economics and Political Science

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© Alice Ekman

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ON VISITING OSCAR WILDE’S GRAVEBY JOE MEADWAY

I stood where a famous man is dead,With an American, who sadly shook his head andTook photographs, to show the folks he’d seen;While his wife scratched her name to show the world she’d been.‘Janine’ it read, beside the obscene graffitiAnd the well-meant ‘miss you’;The hundred lipsticky kisses,And the roses, dead.

Passing mourners for brother and father cried,And the American piously crossed his breast and sighed ‘Let’s find Jim Morrison’So dodging coffin, map in hand,They left just me to stand and mourn – That a man of beauty be reduced to none.

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THE DOCTO

R CALLED BY N.M.

My darling doesn’t understand.Not my fault these tremulous sobsDissipating into high pitch.Then I know she’s crying. That,And a stampede of feet alongside my doorThat flaps with the herdAs they charge to the deathbed,And the clinical odour of open soresAnd dried bloodAnd medication which ITried to snatch –And short white hairWhich falls thinlyOntop of the patient’s slippers.All that remained on her headNow frames the deathbed.And my darling doesn’t understandThe cause of the differenceBetween ugly hardened staresAnd blissful ignorance.Between unattractive scars alongContours, and greasy stubble;Voids of dejection along my ribs,Jelly belly beneath his,My stomach curdles, I vomit,He has the appetite of a whale.I wail, for like me,All she does is cry.

My darling doesn’t understandThe unattractionThat I cannot control,Like a grasp at a bladeOr a rancid kiss.

BY N. M.

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SLEEPY, LITTLE BABYBY EUNICE NG

It is Sunday, and surprisingly warm, and you are lounging on the back porch of the house she and you moved into a few months before Caleb was born. It has been three months since then and by all counts you should be inside, because after the bathing and the feeding, it’s only right that you stick around for the burping and lulling to sleep. But she had told you that you needed a break and that if you stayed any longer, your nervousness would rub off and the baby would never sleep. You wanted to tell her if standing around doing nothing required a break, think of how nervous she was. But she had fixed you with that impeccably sharp blue gaze of hers and you shuffled outside, into weather that allowed just jeans and a t shirt for the first time in weeks, sprawled on your cushioned deckchair with your iPod, Miles Davis filtering into your ears.

You are dozing off when you feel the movement behind you. She has come out as well, unable to resist the pull of sunlight and blue sky, singing something to the infant in her arms. She has different lullabies for each time. Yiddish or Gaelic or plain old English depending on what mood she’s

in and what part of her heritage she feels loyal to that day. At night she’s partial to “All the Pretty Horses”, but sometimes it is a Yiddish song her mother sang to her, low and rumbling about night coming, and bidding the three horsemen to go to sleep. Here under the sun, in the warmth of the world slowly turning green, she is still singing in the Yiddish, still in that language you only half understand, but it is just one verse, simple and tinkling. Sleep my child, my beautiful one. Sleep,

little son. Sleep. You wonder how she remembers all those songs, why you didn’t know she could sing so well even though you’ve known each other half your lives. You’d tease her that she’s a secret sap, deep down, if it weren’t for the fact that you like listening too and she knows it.

There she stands, dappled in sunlight, bare feet moving slightly across the flagstones in the garden, in time to the song, a sweet, gentle half dance. The soft sarong skirt she wears clings to her just right. Your eyes travel up to her back, the play of muscles gathering from where she holds your son very tenderly, very close. To the thick waves of her hair, whose myriad of auburn highlights dazzle quietly in the sun, whose silkiness

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and abundance Caleb has inherited, but its directionless messiness is yours. Your son’s eyes are closed, but if they were open, it would be a blue so poignant that you don’t know who to attribute it to. Both your and his mother’s stares are so blue. And you want to shout for the sharpness of the sun bringing out the brightness of her shirt, bringing the two most important

people in your life in such sharp focus in this moment, the colors so bright you can almost taste them on your tongue. You watch until Caleb falls asleep, and she stops singing and just stands there for a while, rocking your child, her cheek canted towards his small head, his tiny fist on her shoulder, before she turns to go back inside. She catches your eye, smiles, and you get up, follow her inside.

© Alexander Wills

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WOOLMOREBY EMMANUEL AKPAN -INWANG

Dragging my feet as I walk away for the last time, past the window that, my best friend, Ben Nicholson pushed me through, when I broke my arm,

Past the classrooms, down the stairwell that I must have walked up and down a thousand times, where Malcolm McAdams and I got into a fight over Vicky Goode, so I pushed him down the stairs but she fancied Mark all along.

I remember all the tricks we played on teachers and smile. A supply teacher we once had for a whole year, Elizabeth, we splattered fake

blood over my top, the fright it gave her. The scent of a thousand of school dinners.The talk and laughter of hundreds of children.I remember when Mark Brown took my glasses,Put them on the bike shed, so I climbed up and got themThen was stupid enough to jump off,And how the nurse said I was lucky I only broke my leg and not my neck.I rustle my feet through the fallen leaves and recall the time I painted my brand

new NIKE trainers bright red and all the trouble I got into with my mum.I stride through the play-ground where we used to play rugby, when we were

supposed to be playing football.

Stepping through the gates that we once painted red, yellow, and green I lookback at my school, at my childhood turn away, pull- the collar of my coat around

my neck and begin the long journey home.

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Most of all, I rememberthe beach and the white skinon me so differentfrom your tiny coloured limbs. I recall a vague image of a mother standing, waiting, sittingus by the wrecks of aship to sail no more. Blue shorts and blue eyes,blue skies of that sort,sand so white and hot,and mother, and you, and I

MOZAMBIQUEBY JOHN-PAUL NUNES

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The cold, saddened eyesAre fed up of living the lies.Where did her warmth go?Where’s the girl we used to know?

Her defences are firmly builtBehind the wall, the flower wiltsWanting someone to break through the disguiseFind the lonely girl, before she dies.

She hopes, perhaps in vainThat one day she’ll be whole againThe emptiness has filled her core,She can not take it anymore.

Her eyes fix upon meQuestioning why I didn’t seeThe dry tears that stain her face,Her desire to leave this place.

Guilt I feel for taking her thereNow I face that horrible stareWish I could tell her it’ll be okBut instead, from the mirror I turn away.

WITHINBY BEVERLEY THORNE

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DISPRIZED LOVEBY ANDREAS MARCOS PAPASIFAKIS

Chattering men of ivory teethAnd greasy gold that are invulnerableTo the blows of love or coldly muttered wordsat midnight walks by rivers, and in their foolishignorance happier than Pope, Philosopher or Prince.And I whose blood burned with passionBear nothing in my memorynothing but a girl’s face and the bitterness of rejection in the dying blossoms of youth, the beggar braying at my blowsbefore the break of day.The black hours and sweat-stained pagesWhere I spent my youth. The loverless nights.The morning dew unshared in a kiss. And what shall I tell if they ask?Give youth free reign. Drink deep of it.I am your witness; time has made a fool of me.

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BZZZZZZTZZBY ELEONORA SCHINELLA

Virgilio knows how to imitate voices really well. It all began when, to keep his unbearable little sister away from his secret den in the garden’s apple tree, he barked just like a dog. Exactly the same! Little Vanessa, terrified of dogs, stumbled away at the highest speed possible for her stumpy little legs dressed in the pink trousers. Virgilio looked at her through an eye hole between two axles, and thought that those trousers were really ugly.Some years later, Virgilio could imitate voices perfectly. And this had often saved his desk-mate, Bert. Bert was a bit chubby but he had a limpid look behind his glasses, and he was intelligent. It’s just that he was secretly in love with the teacher and so he would always get emotional. Virgilio, readily, gave the correct answers, with that slightly feminine voice Bert had, and the teacher smiled happily.One day the teacher came to school with a bizarre idea. She brought a lot of magazines and newspapers with lots of pictures in them. Magazines of all sorts. Even one about motors, with the picture of a mechanic hunched over some replacement pieces. This one was immediately seized by the most aggressive boys in the class – those who had little regard even

when scratching the arms of the girls and calmer males. Nothing strange up until here, the teacher often brought magazines to class. But then she said she had brought them to show examples of many jobs, because it was time to choose what to do when they grew up. Virgilio panicked: he doesn’t know. But then he decided he’d follow whatever Charlotte said. He loves Charlotte, after all. And she knows it, and, even though she hides it in front of the others, once, behind the fire escape stairs, she kissed him.

© Rebecca Gillespie

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And Charlotte, hardly giving a single glance to the colourful cover pages that showed pop-stars, decidedly said: a singer! A singer? thought Virgilio, scared. Singer, singer. He could not say singer, no. And “singer manager” sounded too boring to say. So, when the teacher asked gently: “Virgilio?”, he answered “Recorder”. “Recorder? Do you mean a reporter, a journalist?”. Virgilio was slightly disturbed by the request for further explanation, but still he said: “No. Recorder. Tape recorder.”

From then on, Virgilio worked hard to become a recorder. He repeated everything. Like true recorders, when he was asked “rewind and play again” he repeated what had just been said by Bert, by the teacher, by his little sister, even the school bell signalling the beginning of the break (which cost him a whole morning in the Headmistress’ office), even starting again from the middle of a word, with precisely the same intonation. At the beginning Charlotte laughed, a lot. But then, when Virgilio repeated the noise of the long kiss he gave her, no, she never forgave him. Virgilio tried to explain that by that point it was instinctual, that it was stronger than him, that it was his vocation. Charlotte didn’t want to hear his excuses, and never spoke to him again. Without Charlotte’s words and even worse without a singer, Virgilio was lost, and he often stopped in the middle of a sentence with a big bzzzzzzzztzzz like an unravelling cassette.I saw Virgilio today. He was there, black and sulky on my left, forced to record my babbling about the adventure of the overcoming and the attainment of the infinite. And as the tape kept running, he was thinking to himself: “I should have said astronomer”.

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ALW

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So I floated along above the road made of syrup,past trees of liqourice and througha bright purple and yellow polka-dotted sky,yeah, until I met a gang of harmonicaplaying fox hounds, who bid me good dayand told me that the being that I seek,is yonder the hill of white powder,before reciting a truly original versionof amazing grace in their subtle tones.yeah, so I carried on floating, dippingmy hands in the syrup beneath me,and tickling the yellow dots in the skywith my middle toe, until I came upona meerkat who was holding a sign,written on a piece of rye bread,saying the one I seek is to the leftof the big pink boulder upon whicha big H is engraved. So I somersaultedover there, and looked, and there wasa tuxedo wearing baby, who, in betweenpuffs of his musical cigar, told me“I am the one you seek, now go to sleep”.

BY SAM NAIR

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An attempt to describe the feelings,Envoked by her smile of pleasure,Leaves me grasping for words and for meanings,How can I quantify thoughts beyond measure?Have I become a slave to chance,Or is this anatomy’s ordered science?

A smile, as you’ve learned, is the derivative functionOf a human emotion.This is known, of course, as happiness.To detect the magnitude of this emotion, Find the gradient of her upturned lips;Observe as they part in a moment of bliss,As she brushes her hair with her fingertips.These all manifestations, you see,Of something so clear and calculable,Of something known to all, even me.

But there’s more to this than can be explained,By scholars in their towers of ivory,For existing beyond those shifting contours,Is a beauty that lifts me to ecstasy.Such nuance and complexity in her face, An insight to within, but only a trace.

Whatever becomes of the girl with this smile,Whether we hide forever behind the clouds,Or drift apart amongst the bustle and crowds,Whether I see her for just one more day,Or stay by her side, never to stray,I hope that soon she can clearly seeThe joy that her smile has brought to me.

HER SMILEBY CHRIS HARE

RHYTHMBY SHILPA VISWANATH

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Caught in eternal waters,Boatmen in utopian boats sail.Vigorously rowing with flattened oars,Out they go,Conquering flossy illusions.Made in visibility of the crimson star,On a fractioned hydrosphere.Unaware of the marine’s crudity,And the star’s ceaseless journey.On they go rowing with flattened oars,To conquer mere glossy illusions.

Caught in eternal waters,Boatmen in utopian boats sail.Vigorously rowing with flattened oars,Out they go,Conquering flossy illusions.Made in visibility of the crimson star,On a fractioned hydrosphere.Unaware of the marine’s crudity,And the star’s ceaseless journey.On they go rowing with flattened oars,To conquer mere glossy illusions.

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I found change in your pocketsA bag full of pennies, a cup full of dimesAll still in your closetAt cleaning time.

I can’t equate this –Is losing Bukowski’s manuscripts,Or missing one’s plane?Damned because I didn’t book the Concord,grapes left to sour on the kitchen table,raisins before take-off,And the pointless journey home.

the tinkling of coins

as I rely on other peopleto do the little things for me.RegressionReverseI don’t want to think I’m helpless without you – forgetful – because I cannot see your face the way it was before.I tried to look at you that last timebefore they turned you into dust.

the tinkling of coins

THE TRANSFORMATIONBY ERIN OROZCO

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but I was startled by the counterfeit.It didn’t fit.And I realized that it wasn’t my mother I was meeting.

the tinkling of coins

The days,the numbers,I cannot touchbecause they’ve been spoiltsomehow.Euphemismsand black outs.The calendar, now shortened,and the inabilityas I grope for wordsto define this transformation.

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DOVE (ONCE UPON A TIME)BY PAUL LATHERON

A creature withdrew its fingers from the ground. Nails caked in wet sand. A few sparkles. Ten thousand living organisms bred inside.

It lifted a closed fist to eye level. An intelligent green watching out from thick black hair that curled in the air. Wind howled as it came and sighed when it went, and the wild thing’s true form was disguised. Brown legs were bent out underneath like a spider thinking. Small fingers released a clump of sand into the tingling air. When it fell straight to earth, the thing sprang up and ran away.

Along the coast black rocks rose sharply.

From where she had slept, Zoe watched the little form leap up and over them.

Market-places are full of spirit. Forests are laced with mystery. Zoe had come here to be alone. Often we push a meaning onto everything we experience. Her stretch of beach was rarely occupied and the only building within an hour’s walk was hers. Why would anyone else come here? This place could be quite dangerous. On days like today.

Many dreams took her to the sagging stairs and weather-beaten walls beside the wide sea. She would come, for the duration of a deep breath, to this place whenever she needed to leave her normal life. The fading light made the real cottage look more like the place of her imagination. Late afternoon was becoming her favourite time of the day.

Zoe stepped off the porch, and made her first imprints in the sand.

It was sharp and raw and comforting. Sunlight sparkled on wet shells and stones and she felt the thin dress was billowing around her like she was wearing the union flag. It was getting cold. She shut her eyes by the water. A pebble raised a toe above the rest. The other foot was stealing into the sand. Zoe never knew you could feel so vividly though your feet.

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Sleeping with the sounds of the winter ocean; the warmth was vanishing with the light. She wasn’t really running away from anything. Her old life would still be there when she went back, and she would go home soon. It was too close to night to attempt it now. There was a bed waiting in the sea-cottage. Cold. She would need to light a fire. The heavy brow of a wave furrowed as it flowed against others towards her shore.

Last night something about it had called to her. As a child, she had leapt upon every chance to come here.

Dark gull shapes soaring around the dusk-stricken cliff. Water swelling around her ankles. The woman licked her lips and brushed one leg against the other. A taste of the salt in the air. Large eyes spun open. Her mouth tilted. She crouched closer to the ground and forced her fingers down into the soft sand.

White clouds tumbled and hustled by in the brilliance of the sky. Black dogs of rock stretched out of the ground. Up there the air was spirited and noisy.

The wild creature rested upright against the back of the cliff-ledge.

Rocked back on two legs, it pushed two palms against the basalt and leaned forwards. It took two steps and leapt into the sea.

The wind swirling up from the tides caught and spun it over ice blue whirlpools and threw her back hard.

Yelps were caught up in the strong breeze. A racing heartbeat was a personal secret. Cuts covered, with old bruises, the young body, and it felt the pain. But no power could resist the jump. The animal clambered up again and eyed the brink once more.

Old Zoe knew a thousand stories about the sea. The wild surf, and countless shipwrecks. A father had died out there. Many relationships were broken by this coastline.

She lifted her leg to stand upon the black rocks. Her hands ran over the coarse basalt and pulled. Out from the shelter, the wind streamed her hair behind her. It always made her feel young. When people didn’t need purposes to be important, to be worth life. Facing the strengthening sky, she understood survival is the only thing that nature admires.

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Events of the last few days had crashed by with more elation and more excitement than she had ever felt. But being adult, and responsible, tied her down.

She couldn’t help but look back.

For a long time, it had been enough for the little creature to sit on the ledge and feel the wind rush up in spirals around her head, sucking at her legs. She had spent days there, exploring her mind, dreaming things until an idea arrived. She tensed her muscles and listened with all of her senses, and knew without deliberation what would happen. The first day she jumped had been forgotten. She was a lonely, little girl exploring the beach near her grandparents’ cottage. A perfect moment that told her how to leap to heaven and back. A gift of listening to nature.

Zoe slipped and an urgent cold sliced through her left foot. Her leg thumped and scraped down the rock. Her shoulders fell forwards. Blood dripped through a channel onto ancient lava.

A word came out of her mouth that made her frown at herself, and tears swelled the corner of her eyes. She didn’t succumb easily to pain, which helped with her work, but just as pleasure builds when it is resisted, what Zoe felt was overwhelming. Her arms wrapped around the rock, and she pressed her cheek to

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it and wished she wasn’t alone. The roar of the wind in her ears waged against her skull a powerful siege. Icy strands of hair stuck to her neck and chilled her. Against the rock, she buried her head in the darkness of hands.

The girl had watched the birds use the same current to soar from their nests. She closed her eyes and soared to the rock above her. She had seen thunderous white mustangs trampling the deep blue, their legs bursting to escape the very substance that made them. Often she could hear them shout.

There was grass this close to the cliff’s edge. It was long and tough but was deep green and alive like lightning. Even as she raised herself to her feet, she was gauging the force of the air. She grabbed a handful of grass, and pulled on it as she looked back down beneath her.

How had it changed so much?

Zoe was whispering a sort of prayer.

Many years had passed since the final time she grew up here. The world was a much newer place, people had strange impossible ideas, and the beach had not changed shape at all.

It frightened her. This openness. Her vulnerability. Zoe had never felt this in her dreams.

She thought of the tingling atmosphere on the headland above. Little legs were whipped by the grass and sparkles made the absorbing sky white and dazzling. With all her muscles tensed, she willed the chaos to calm. Could not even stop her own young body from swaying closer to the rock’s edge. A path was visible out of this. A sagging staircase to the stars. She placed one foot tentatively into the air. When she came back she would bring her father too.

Until lately, her community didn’t kill each other. She was safe. Then this talk of demon worship came across the valley, and suddenly all her old ways were deemed deviant. A man from a city had arrived to make everyone see sense. Sweet, but less than useless.

Zoe is a fugitive.

Will they follow her here?

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While I made coffee for youthis morning,a stain of lovefell upon the floor. All day it remainedthere, beside thewhite cupboardsand the blue china. I stare at itand it stares back.Black, black, black,it eats into me.

LOVE SONG(AFTER WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS)BY JOHN-PAUL NUNES

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TROPICAL VIRG

INBY SHILPA VISWANATH

Kin of scienceEnrolls,

Still a virgin.Brawny ultra violet,Like male hardness

Ejects galactic diamonds.Makes you eyeless

To ceaseless ongoing otherness,You only spectate

Him,As prime chandelier

LOVE SONG(AFTER WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS)BY JOHN-PAUL NUNES

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WRINKLED FACESBY ANDREAS MARCOS PAPASIFAKIS

Death is hideous, but life is too

Marguerite Yourcenar

We buried him today,This soft October afternoon,His eyelids closed like petals.There was an awful silenceDown the passing stream of hands.Soft voices lingeredIn the rain,And all seemed perfumed withthe stench of death.Such glum civilities, we think,befit the dead.

They say that in the bloom of youth,Raising your eyes to the heavensTo compose yourself, and,Seeming to assemble within youAll gifts held in that moment of time,You held a table clean in your teeth anddanced and caroused whenNight stirred and the fire brought the crowds in.

In the perfect silenceMy heart turned to wax.Your wasted frame,One time so strong,now so drooped in decay that weasked the undertaker tospare your silvered beard.I cried hot tearsat your humiliation.

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We parted.An awful darkness envelopedYou as we covered youWith fat slabs of stone.A horrible night swallowed you,the clouds roared,And I thought of the tragic incertitudeOf life.

A man has the right to decide howlong he may usefully live,and the nothingness which you had come to inhabit,was a cruel mockery of your former days.

I did not then knowThat death had become to you,In your sickness,an object of blind ardour,Of a hunger like that of love.

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ENTANGLEDAN ARTICLE ABOUT JAPANESE TANKA POETRY

When Irie Jones in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth wanted to get rid of her impossible Afro, possibly inspired by Balzac’s famous statement ‘what can a woman not do with her hair?’, she wanted it irreversibly straightened, flick-able, stunning, finger-through-able, silky. While many women today resort to the technique of Japanese Bonding to achieve this miracle, generations of Japanese women have viewed this asset as symbolic of their limited existence, imposed by men.

My black hair tangledAs my own tangled thoughts,I lie here alone,Dreaming of one who has gone,Who stroked my hair till it shone.

- Akiko Yosano, Midaregami / Tangled Hair (1901)

The history of women in ancient Japan is, like so much else in early Japanese history, filled with missing parts. Although Meji Japan began to accept Western culture, the majority of women still lived confined by the conventions of the feudal system. The advent the voluptuous, sensuous variety of tanka poetry, predominantly traced to the revolutionary Akiko Yosano of the late nineteenth century, very different from the haiku of the monks, first marked the inception of a remarkable process of liberation. Prior to the twentieth century, over 70% of the membership in all haiku coterie in Japan was female but yet the anthologies in English of contemporary Japanese haiku show a meager number of woman poets. Kenneth Rexroth, in Women Poets of Japan noticed that haiku was almost exclusively masculine because most club magazines were run by men and thus excluded women to a conspicuous degree.

As Pico Iyer explains in The Lady and The Monk, the central image of ‘tangled hair’ suggests all the wildness and careless abandon that the Japanese tend to keep so austerely under wraps. Black tangled hair implied the confusion of love, suggested erotic beauty and alluded to the intimacy of bed. Hair, for the Japanese, is a way of

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maintaining perfection and when in the form of carefree wispy strands, refers to a distraught mind. Young Akiko Yosano, locked up by her father in her bedroom, wrote some of the most rebellious verses, throwing her hair and everything else into disarray. She sympathized subversively with women who had traditionally been regarded as playthings and adopted a multi-layered style that in some ways echoes Simone De Beauvoir of so many decades later. Akiko also committed the heresy of outdoing her poet husband. Her seductive poetry was sensational at the time, challenging patriarchal society as well as literary and cultural conventions. She received severe criticism but inevitably provided great inspiration to women.

You have yet to touchThis soft fleshThis throbbing blood –Are you not lonely,Explainer of the Way?

-Akiko Yosano, Midaregami (1901)

In this revealingly naked tanka verse, Akiko succinctly expresses her irrepressible love, sexuality and liveliness of youth. The women depicted in her poetry are agents of love, free and assertive. Throughout Midaregami, imagery such as the breasts, lips, skin, shoulders and hair are emphasized, signifying a completely new femininity. Akiko through her poetry did not hesitate to display her curiosity for the world of Eros and dared to break the taboos in poetic expressions. Interestingly, the image of a maiden touching her own breasts in a shy manner recalls Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus. The body of a woman is glorified, mythologized and treated as if it is that of Venus. The door Akiko opened led Japanese women to new representations of sexuality and the female body. Of course, such a reading could possibly run the risk of too easily essentializing Japanese femininity and history. The whole question of hair and entanglement and eroticism is an old one for all literature and art after all, and a universal at that. And it would be incorrect to simply explain it by the patriarchy in Japan alone.

BY KABERI CHOWDHURY

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I also had an hour when I,After a hot bath, dressed arightWith a smile playing in my eyeDid stand before a mirror bright - Akiko Yosano

By only being under the gaze of men, women were still enveloped in limited self expression. Though we must not forget that as the gaze of the poetry reader changes, so does the meaning of the poem. Akiko’s poems constructed the narcissistic world of a girl, teaching their female audience that it is normal and acceptable to appreciate and indulge in their own beauty. The sumptuous words with their palpable musk of sensuality indicate a lack of inhibition and spontaneity, incomparable even with her Western counterparts. Admired for her understanding of classic Japanese literature and her ability to use these vivid images in her poetry of modern feelings, she was remarkably progressive but the times were against her. As Japan increasingly became embroiled in wars, the tanka genre was used a vehicle for nationalist poetry which was mostly written by men. Still, at the beginning of the Second World War, in a subtle womanly way there was Fumi Saito publishing such poems as:

ViolenceLike this is beautifulLiving in the worldAll day long I singMy nursery songs

It was only in 1997, after having written ten more books that Fumi Saito was

declared Japan’s Poet Laureate along with other honors. Intriguingly, the Japanese woman’s desire for freedom from a man’s whims and fancies that has been perfectly captured in this verse dates back as far as the ninth century:

Doesn’t he realise That I am not Like the swaying kelp In the surf, Where the seaweed gatherer Can come as often as he wants -Ono No Komachi

THE MUSE 33

The design of tanka that gives itself so generously to the mind-substance of the Japanese poetess traces its origin to a secret message between lovers. After having dallied with a lover all night, it became the custom to write a thank-you note for the hospitality. Stylized into a convenient five lines of 5-7-5-7-7 onji, the little poem expressing one’s feelings were sent in special paper containers, written on a fan, or knotted on a stem of a single blossom. And often, like in this Shikibu verse, there is an understated subdued aura of a double meaning.

Lying down aloneI am so lost missing youThat I’ve forgottenAll my tangled long black hairDesiring who unbound it - Izumi Shikibu

This powerful poem encapsulates the cycle outlined by domination, retaliation and finally the gain of control by Japanese women. In this tanka, desiring the person who unbound her hair is very telling of notion that suppression, though it came tangibly from men, also was born of the female mind, representative of an almost self-imposed exile from life and expression. As Pico Iyer so eloquently does himself in his writing, such tanka also ‘romanticises the everyday’ not only for the progressive Japanese woman but also for the dreamy reader.

References:

Women Poets of Japan. Kenneth Rexroth and Ikuko Atsumi (1977)Tangled Hair - Selected Tanka from Midaregami. Akiko Yosano (1987)The Lady and the Monk – Four Seasons in Kyoto. Pico Iyer (1991)From the Country of Eight Islands – An Anthology of Japanese Poetry. Hiroaki Sato and Burton Watson (1981)

34 THE MUSE

ANDREAS MARCOS PAPASIFAKISAndreas believes that poets, by abusing their talent, and making the follies and

feignings of religion the subject of their base endeavours, have so discredited this faculty, that a ‘Poet’, a ‘Priest’, and a ‘Liar’ are but three words of one signification.

He espouses the view that it is the duty of the poet not to glorify God, but to write with painful clarity about death, love, beauty and human suffering.PAUL LATHERON

Paul writes from rage and boredom and believes that once you see someone incredible, you will never feel ordinary again.

ELEONORA SCHINELLAEleonora tends to long for the infinite but to live (and write) of small things. She can’t stand the sound of her voice when it’s recorded.

EUNICE NGEunice thinks writing is a silly job and doesn’t quite

understand why she still does it.

JOE MEADWAYJoe is a first year philosophy student, and kind of wishes he was Jack Kerouac.

JOHN-PAUL NUNESJohn-Paul is Deputy Head of Alumni Relations at LSE. He taught English Literature and Education at University and did an MA and an MPhil on American modernist poetry before he started working on management of education projects. He is an occasional writer and an avid reader of contemporary American novelists and poets.John-Paul’s Myspace is /j_p_nunes

BEVERLEY THORNEBeverley writes when she has the timeMost of all she likes it to rhyme.She often writes when she’s sad,Her happy poems are really bad.*

*Disclaimer: this is a happy poem.

SAM NAIRSam says: “I’m Sam, from Cheltenham. That rhymes!! The boring stuff about me is that I’m a third year geography with economics student. The rest is that I am very eclectic and emotional – I would say emo but I don’t have the hair anymore – and I write poems when I’m happy, when I’m sad, when I’m drunk and when I’m sober”.

ERIN OROZCOErin is a writer trapped in the body of an international

relations and history student. She is currently caught between following her artistic spirit and selling her soul for a job in the City. In unrelated news, she is currently open to any and all bids for one blameless soul… do I

have any bids…?

N.M. N.M. is a lovely person but would rather remain anonymous.

KABERI CHOWDHURYKaberi is a media student at the LSE and an aspiring writer at all other

times. Currently entertained by the clash between the social sciences and the arts, she is interested in the globalisation of food, travel writing and that fuzzy

point in your sleep where dreams begin.

CHRIS HAREFollowing the successful pursuit of an ideal Muse, Chris has at last taken to writing again. He now spends his time on literary creation in between bouts of procrastination, budget allocation and partial differentiation.

EMMANIUEL AKPAN-INWANGEmmanuel is the Dictator of the Literature society. After a successful coup he dipanded the committee and ruled by decree. He is currently considering occupying the Drama Society.

SHILPA VISWANATHShilpa is a published poet with a penchant for

degrees. She is currently studying her second masters degree and hopes to collect a few more before she collapses from the stress of keeping up with work.

A LITTLE SOMETHING ABOUT THE AUTHORS

THE MUSE 35

THE MUSE

THE MUSE is published by the Literature Society of the London School of Economics and Political Science. This issue of THE MUSE is funded by members of the LSE Literature Society, the LSE Students’ Union, Deloitte and Chris Bacon.

Special thanks also go to Dirk Robertson, David Kingsley, Judith Higgin, Rothna Begum and Peter Kail, whose encouragement, guidance and practical support helped make this publication possible.

The editors of THE MUSE are not legally responsible for the material published in this magazine. All views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors or sponsors. Correspondence should be sent to: litsoc.themuse@googlemail.com

Printed by LSE Reprographics, London

Coverpage image © Emma Yan Perry.

Copyright © 2007 THE MUSE All rights reserved

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF EUNICE NG

EDITORIAL TEAMEMMANUEL AKPAN-INWANGNUARA CHOUDHURYCHRIS HAREPAUL LATHERON

CHERRYL NGDEEPALI PATTANIELEONORA SCHINELLABEVERLEY THORNE

LAYOUT EDITORS CHRIS HARE ELEONORA SCHINELLA

“I once carved a woman’s tuppence out of mashed potato”Anonymous scribbler, Three Tuns Men’s Toilets.

Inspiration is everywhere at the LSE. You just need to find your Muse and direct her to the men’s toilets.

The Muse is the yearly publication of the LSE Literature Society,publishing the work of some of the best creative writing talent

at LSE.