ABSTRACT
The concluding lines of the ‘Loves of the Triangles’ are something of a hold-all for left-overs. The lines lack a binding impetus; each section is effective in its own right, but transitions are casual. The poem opens with more parody of learning, moves through a ghoulish episode based on a recent drowning tragedy, hops into Europe to watch Bonaparte’s conquests, returns across the Channel on an Invasion Raft crewed by United Irishmen, and finally puts Pitt to the guillotine. If, overall, the narrative dislocations are unsettling, passages nevertheless retain the earlier parodic flair. The energy with which the mundane and the fabulous are scrambled together in Darwin’s Botanic Garden, is perfectly recreated in cameo: ‘Where each spruce nymph from city compters free, / Sips the froth’d syllabub, or fragrant tea’. Darwin’s exuberant tautological pile-ups, where nouns squash nouns, or more exactly, nouns nouns squash, are wickedly echoed in: ‘Ranks close on ranks and squadrons squadrons crush’.
