| Top
of the Form |
A 1960s quiz show between competing teams of school
children - who, representing their school and in school uniform, would
answer general knowledge questions in front of an audience of school
children. Notice the individually competitive suggestion of the
name of the show: individual competition was emphasized in the education
system of the 50s and 60s (it would not be unusual for a class to be sat
in their rank order according to the last set of exams - I know; I
remember), and it precedes the change to a comprehensive system. This
competitive tone, the sense of a hierarchy, will be an important element
in the poem |
|
| 1964 |
Why 1964? It relates to the poet's own age and childhood
memories ( but that is not to say that the speaker of the poem is
too be simply identified with the author! See the note
below on the poem's use of a persona ). But there is
something more: the specified time is one of great and peculiar change:
a Labour government after the 50s dominated by the Conservative Party;
the arrival of the Beatles, and what they signify - the discovery of the
teenage market and an emphasis on leisure and individual
possibility; the change in popular morality (this is the time of the
introduction of the contraceptive pill, etc). The date is in the
period of widespread, radical social change - though the speaker of the
poem will have a kind of ambiguous or complex relation to that change.
(For another poem which concerns itself with almost exactly the same
time, see Philip Larkin's Annus Mirabilis
- although this poem, with Larkin himself 33 years older than Duffy, is
more simply and personally ironic about the changes and opportunities of
the time). |
|
| Do
Wah Diddy |
The poem begins by recollecting the time in terms of the
popular music of that moment - something not in itself unusual (music,
for a lot of people, is a great spur and aid to nostalgia), but it is
particularly fitting for this date - marking as it does the moment when
pop music first becomes a massive, universal market and experience.
Perhaps, though, there is already something costive about the emphasis
upon facts in the voice of the speaker ('I can give you the
B-side/ of the Supremes one. Hang on. Come See About Me?' )-
the music has survived as a series of quiz-show type answers rather
than an experience in itself, perhaps. |
|
| fizzing
hope |
Despite the caution of the previous note - the first
strong impression of the poem is one of the optimism and physical
energy of the speaker at that time: fizzing, gargling, blew like
Mick, whooped... |
|
| the
clever smell |
Why should the smell of the satchel be clever?
Perhaps something also behind the lines: 'I look / So brainy you'd
think I'd just had a bath.' The speaker of the poem comes from
a nice middle class home (or one with such aspirations) - with
parental pride and support ('My mother kept my mascot Gonk on the TV
set for a year.') The satchel is new and leather - ie
relatively expensive - and there is a relation between parental income
and success in school, parental care and academic achievement.
(The phrase is a good example of how Duffy can compress in a phrase a
range of meaning by depending upon the jumps of association). |
|
| a
two hour snog |
The 'academic' success the poem will describe is cashed
out in a kind of sexual optimism (suitable, no doubt, to teenage years)
; the speaker's competitive success isn't just something in
itself. There's no necessary suggestion that the speaker was a
veteran of two-hour snogs - it's a kind of schoolboy fantasy -
like the reputation of convent girls. It's something which
seemed to be on offer - which would arrive in time. The only
'sexual' success which the poem will mention will be 'My name was in
red on Lucille Green's jotter.' - again, more of a promise than an
actual fulfillment.
Of course, what time has actually brought him is 'my stale wife' -
the 'sexual' success which seemed to be on offer was never fulfilled -
like all the other promises. |
|
| No
snags |
The consonance in the short phrase (straddling the
verse break) '..snog // No snags.' seems to sum up the optimism
of this time in the speaker's life: no problems - which would in
time be cashed out in plenty of snogs |
|
| The
Nile rises... |
The second verse begins in the kind of facts which brought
the speaker success on Top of the Form. Why this set of
facts - which seem so arbitrarily listed and personally
disengaged? Of course, the main point is that they are arbitrary,
disconnected - the kind of 'knowledge' which wins quiz shows.
But the reference to the Nile perhaps prepares for the later reference
to Rhodesia - in 1964, although the Empire has already in real
terms disappeared, general attitudes in British society and 'school'
knowledge had not quite caught up with that fact. The humming
bird's blur in flight perhaps suggests something of the boy's
physical energy and his optimism about his personal rapidity in his
life's career. And the Kings and Queens introduce something
which this verse will go on to develop: an emphasis on, the speaker's
acceptance of, a traditional hierarchy and authority in society. |
|
| saluted |
The white sleeve saluting is a visual image emphasizing
the speaker's success in the classroom, answering the teacher's
questions - but the use of saluting as the verb suggests a kind
of respect for the teacher, and is also, perhaps, a bit reminiscent of
fascist salutes: the speaker was in league with authority, since that
authority was what rewarded him, what promised him so much. |
|
| no
hands, famous |
If the first verse ended with a kind of teenage fantasy of
adult life - snogging -this ends with placing the speaker within
his boyhood - a fantasy of being a cowboy, riding his bike. Whooped links
back to fizzing and gargling. His boyish exuberance
is underpinned by his success in the classroom, his saluting of the
given adult authority. No hands links back to no snags: there
is no anticipation of any problem - the future seemed guaranteed: the
local and temporary fame of winning the TV quiz show seemed to lead to a
guarantee of more substantial, adult fame. |
|
| dominus |
The boy, while biking, chants the declension of a Latin
noun - a suitable enough example of his education: still dominated by
the classical model. But it is also significant that the noun
being chanted is the Latin for master: the speaker has made his
pact with the hierarchy which seemed to be in place at the time, which
seemed to promise that it would always be in place. |
|
| Dave
Dee Dozy.. |
A return to the form of the very first line - and doesn't
the 'meaninglessness' of the 'facts' retained from the speaker's past
seem indicated by these lists of meaningless syllables? (The names ate
the first names from a pop group's name: Dave Dee Dozy Beak and Titch -
aargh, I'm turning into the speaker of the poem!)
Also what was already implicit in the tone of the opening becomes here
more apparent: '..Try me. Come on.' - speaker's tone
has become one of a 'pub bore': competitive, button-holing, refusing to
let you escape while concentrating on things of no interest to you at
all. |
|
| Gonk |
Little plastic troll-like figures - briefly popular in the
1960s - much used for lucky mascots in things like exams.
As in Litany, Duffy uses the objects and trade names of the past
to conjure up the past.
In this verse, the past is a set of specific objects and places - it
gives the past a kind of concrete reality - except it is ironic: that
past of gonks, and roads named after traditional British heroes ( Churchill,
Nelson ) now has disappeared. The uniform: 'The
blazer. The badge. The tie.' - is simply listed ( the
form of expression seems to suggest a kind of simple, unquestionable
existence of the objects: the nouns need no explanation - they don't
need to be placed in 'proper' sentences. Again, ironic - since what that
uniform represented has disappeared) |
|
| prize
shoes |
Like gonks, referring to a craze of the time: the shoes
had the moulded shapes of various animal paws on the sole, so that
wherever you went you left the imprints of badgers and skunks and foxes,
etc behind you. Very boy-scoutish - although 'skunks' suggests
also an American influence. |
|
| pink
pavements..blue evenings |
The speaker's past is made up of objects,
local names - and a kind of pastel shade. Both concrete, specific
- and kind of artificially coloured. |
|
| My
country |
This sums up what the third verse has depicted: the place
which the speaker recalls, which he continues to want to live in.
The phrase recalls perhaps the famous first sentence of the novel by L P
Hartley: The Go-between :' The past is a foreign country; they do
things differently there.' Except here, the past is the
speaker's home; it is the present which is foreign to the
speaker. |
|
| I
want it back |
The jump between the verses is an absolute jump: the
speaker is cut off now from his past, all it promised, exiled in the
present. What is he exiled from? The captain - the
importance and success he had then, his feeling that he knew what was
important (he was the one with all the answers ); the simple
availability and immediate response to that certainty of knowledge (Bzz
- the sound of the buzzer rung by him on Top of the Form ). |
|
| a
child who went missing |
The reference is to the kinds of photos
published in newspapers when a child goes missing - since they tend to
be ordinary family snapshots the child, about whom in reality now hangs
a probable tragedy, is usually smiling broadly. The speaker is a
child who has gone missing - his journey on the way home from school has
not arrived where he thinks it should have arrived; instead he has his
flat present: stale wife, a boss, thick kids - promise not
fulfilled. |
|
| Six
hits |
The speaker is kind of locked in the form of his success
of his past - which, unfortunately, cannot have any meaning now.
The questions, the game of asking meaningless questions to which he
already knows the answer, the desire to prove his knowledge in a form
stuck 40 years ago - is surely sad in effect - pathetic in both
the exact and slang meanings. |
|
| How
can we know.. |
The most unexpected line in the poem - perhaps
uncomfortably so: whose 'voice' says this line? It's difficult to
think it is the speaker's. The line comes from a more difficult,
more ambitious, richer poem by Yeats: Among
School Children . This poem deals with something of the
same subject as 'The Captain of the 1964 Top of the Form Team' - that
is, the disappointments of growing old, the difficulty of thinking of a
life as one continuous thing. The line comes at the end of the
poem when Yeats is trying to arrive at a conclusion which would allow an
integrated view suggests a positive model: the dancer cannot be
separated from her activity: body and action, being and behaviour are
one, integral thing. But for the speaker of 'The Captain..',
his experience is one of disjunction, disconnection; his life now has
no connection to his life then, no relation between the parts. |
|
| thick
kids |
Why are his children 'thick'? Because they do not
know the answers to their father's questions. But the questions
are not 'general' knowledge - why should the children know how many
florins in the pound? Such 'facts' are stuck within the
Sixties - no connection beyond that particular time.
Notice the derogatory nature of the adjectives applied to his family: thick,
stale. These are his closest human relationships now - but
they have no value to him, because they do not link him to his
'successful' past; they do not fulfill the 'promise' of that past as he
understood it then. Recollection, nostalgia has turned rancid:
just a barrier to what is present now. |
|
| Rhodesia |
The name of Zimbabwe when it was a British colony (and
then a minority white- dominated state). Rhodesia as a name
has disappeared into history - just as the British Empire as a whole
has, along with such things as florins.
But there is something more than just a past name - it links to a whole
set of past assumptions about the world: Britain is 'Great',
authority exists and should be saluted, History is the record of
'greatness' : these truths are and will always be. These
assumptions have gone - carrying with them into oblivion all the facts
that underpinned the speaker's boyhood success |
|