A. S. J. Tessimond "The man in the bowler hat" Poem animation

Heres a virtual movie of a recitation the bleak but beautiful succinct ode to the blandness of the common commuter "The man in the bowler hat" by the English poet ASJ Tessimond. "The man in the bowler hat" the rhythm of this poem accentuates the mundane nature of the subject, as it takes the reader through a hopeless self-realisation, a quickening of anger, and a sinking back to dispair on the last line; and all the way through, this poem is carried on the rhythms of the rail. It draws such a good picture of a London commuter in the 50's. One might wonder what stories the poet could draw from our present day commuters ?

Arthur Seymour John Tessimond was born in Birkenhead. He was an only child. He was educated at Charterhouse but ran away to London at the age of 16, only to return home two weeks later. He went to Liverpool University and then moved to London where he worked in bookshops and then as an advertising copywriter. He went INTO hiding during World War II, as he considered he would not be much good as a soldier. As it happened, he later discovered he was unfit to fight anyway. He was an eccentric with depressive tendencies whose inheritance went either on night-life or on psychoanalysts. He was given electric shock treatment and this may have contributed to the brain haemorrhage that later killed him. His work shows great clarity and often humour. He wrote about the ordinary and about city stereotypes. Some of his poems are conversation-poems and these often capture his tendency towards melancholy. Three volumes of his poems were published during his lifetime


Kind Regards

Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2011

The man in the bowler hat............

I am the unnoticed, the unnoticable man:
The man who sat on your right in the morning train:
The man who looked through like a windowpane:
The man who was the colour of the carriage, the colour of the mounting
Morning pipe smoke.
I am the man too busy with a living to live,
Too hurried and worried to see and smell and touch:
The man who is patient too long and obeys too much
And wishes too softly and seldom.

I am the man they call the nation's backbone,
Who am boneless - playable castgut, pliable clay:
The Man they label Little lest one day
I dare to grow.

I am the rails on which the moment passes,
The megaphone for many words and voices:
I am the graph diagram,
Composite face.

I am the led, the easily-fed,
The tool, the not-quite-fool,
The would-be-safe-and-sound,
The uncomplaining, bound,
The dust fine-ground,
Stone-for-a-statue waveworn pebble-round

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