`The best words in their best order." Coleridge wished the "clever young poets" of 1811 would remember this definition of poetry. Some contemporary poets, whether young or "mature," need to be reminded of this dictum. Their great precursors were masters of ordering sentences in dynamic relation to the rhythmical and formal structures of their poems. Seatown, Conor O'Callaghan's impressive second collection, is flawed by inattention to syntax. He likes to launch his poems at his reader from what the late William Stafford called a "scat start, straight out of the blocks." This is commendable, but about a dozen poems use fragmented sentences which convey a kind of verbal tic to the ear. Yet poems like "In the Neighbourhood," a kind of free-verse sestina, and "The Oral Tradition" show that he can be quite adept at running sentence-patterns against the verse lines. And he provides bountiful examples of his wide-ranging intelligence and considerable wit. He is astute with the uses of punning, comic and serious, though frequently his off-hand slant-rhymes are too obtrusive.
The unifying voice of the poems is reporting to us from Seatown, a medieval name for Dundalk, whether the subject is familial, or on art, or snooker, or love (one witty love poem's title is an asterisk). Two quite disparate poems share the book's title; many more are redolent of the imagery, politics, and loneliness peculiar to a coastal town.
Upon Foreign Soil is the third in John F. Deane's "Icarus" series. Many titles suggest an Old-Testament, prophetic underpinning; and the same titles (or slight variants) pair up poems - for example, the first and last, "In his (Own) Image" - and other titles concern parched land, dark or waste places, etc. We might thus expect the governing tone to be prophetic, pointing to our corrupted mores and warning of the consequences. But by use of narrative and description, Mr. Deane places a carefully controlled distance between the poet's voice and his subjects. These are subdued, elegiac reflections on the overarching questions of religion, belief, and doctrinal literalism:
"Creation - to incarnation
to passion; such history
is a diagram of foolishness;
that we conceive of God
making of himself a depressive
maniac? ...
This is thought-provoking poetry, rooted in personal and national history. Mr. Deane is an important figure in current literature, principally as a poet in the tradition of AE, Denis Devlin, and Thomas McGreevy, but also as publisher of Dedalus Press, the booklist of which includes many essential titles. But in this 43-page "booklet" he is acting as his own editor, whereas another "pair of eyes" might have persuaded him to make complete sentences of material too loosely punctuated by semi-colons.
"Everything in the end comes down to location, location, location", Dr. Van Szinger says in Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks's hilarious parody of Dracula. In more, or sometimes less, serious terms, these three collections, as their titles demonstrate, have to do with place. Conor O'Callaghan's is Dundalk, John F. Deane's is the mystical western seaboard, and Ciaran Carson's third book from Gallery inside a year gathers poems about his birthplace from earlier books published between 1987 and 1996. The title poem is a surreal dive into maritime history from Homer to Heyerdahl, from sail to steam and back again. Here be monstrous puns and draconian allusions, nightmarish "Catestants and Protoholics," in long lolopping run-on lines, rhymed or not as the subjects suggest, the syntax straightforward or intricate as need be. Even those who are fortunate enough to own the five volumes from which these poems are culled will want this "compendium," with its cover cunningly suggesting Belfast as Babel.
James J. McAuley is a poet and critic