Poetry: All five poets here are likely to be known to the few hundred readers who regularly buy books of new poetry. Kenneth Rexroth is purported to have responded to an "admirer", "anyone who professes to love poetry but never buys any is a cheap sonofabitch". If every poetry lover in this country bought a new book of poetry apiece every couple of months, the book trade might be shocked into stocking more poetry . . .
A Better Life is John McAuliffe's first book, though he has already received several high-profile awards. These are all short poems by a poet finely attuned to the sounds and rhythms of language. His imagery is mostly urban and understated: "The burning Fiesta in the car park/Is pink and grey like a sunset". His version of Horace's Laudabunt alii manages the general tenor of the original, though without the political satire. At the other end of McAuliffe's spectrum is 'Jam': " . . . The gleaming sugary green/Of apple jelly and apple jam/Bittersweet as age . . ." A sharp enough comment on aging - and he's barely passed 30!
Gabriel Fitzmaurice's new book offers ballads which are comparable with Burns's for their insights and lyricism. He has also rendered masterful translations of Gaelic folksongs and poems; these are followed by sonnets on widely varied subjects - 'I Have Seen Great People In My Time', 'Alzheimer's Disease', 'A Corner Boy', 'I Don't Care If What You Sing Is Shite' - through which runs the classic tension between pleasure and instruction. Chagall's famous painting, bearing the same title as the book, makes an appropriate cover.
Sean Lysaght, like Fitzmaurice, charges his poems with resonant imagery of locale. His best work extends beyond the "tyranny of the one-page poem": 'Limerick' (the poet's birthplace), is written in a kind of terza rima resembling Derek Walcott's Omeros though it doesn't function quite as well. Lysaght does, however, manage to intertwine description and reflection in effective patterns of revisitation. In 'The Helmet of Messapus' he tackles a narrative of Blacksod Bay, the Armada aftermath, with Tennysonian vigour.
Sonnets, rhymed and unrhymed, on patiently-observed subjects from nature, both wild and domestic, are followed by 'Into Connaught', a resonant fable in which Matthew and Hanna visit Kevin and Jane in Connemara, who " . . . live in a different geography". Then Matthew has a dream, starring Roland Barthes, followed by a morning swim. A peregrine from 'Limerick' reappears, and " . . . glides off into something undetermined/ by the beak of his circling pen. His final turn/describes their otter heads before abandoning". This complex poem succeeds at several levels, and rewards close reading.
Near St Mullins is John Ennis's "take" on the story of Suibhne, "Mad Sweeney", who has occupied the talents of quite a few writers and artists. Ennis sets his version near the abbey in Co Carlow reputedly founded by St Moling. Suibhne details his metamorphosis from maddened outcast to feathered, hollow-boned birdman. Then he addresses Moling, his "anam-chara" (according to the poet's notes). 'Plight' deals with adjusting to avian ways; 'Eorann's Poems' rebuke, plead, and argue with his estranged wife. 'The Mill Hag Poems' are delightfully vitriolic: "A quilt of stinging ants was more welcoming than her voice". A densely textured natural-history calendar of Suibhne's peregrinations is hard to digest. The final sequence, 'Resolution', resolves itself rather lamely.
Ennis can lapse into the extravagances that earned Wordsworth his place in Wyndham Lewis and Charles Lee's The Stuffed Owl. Yet some richly phrased passages would do a 21st-century Wordsworth proud.
Fred Johnston's folio of short poems provide snapshots from a summer sojourn in Paris. The stance is casual, intimate, the reader drawn into the speaker's experience. The imagery is presented with creditable directness, eschewing figuration for the most part-though 'Maria', about a missing Mexican teenager, does get a bit didactic: "Rain blackens your image,/Claws at your face". Characteristic verse from an experienced, accomplished practitioner.
Five books with plenty of the rich and rare for those who love poetry and would like to buy some.
James J. McAuley is a poet and critic
A Better Life. By John McAuliffe. The Gallery Press. €10 pbk, €17.50 hbk
Erris. By Sean Lysaght. The Gallery Press, €11.40 pbk, €17.50 hbk
I And The Village. By Gabriel Fitzmaurice. Marino/Mercier, €9.95 pbk
Near St Mullins. By John Ennis. The Dedalus Press. €8.80 pbk, €15 hbk
Paris Without Maps. By Fred Johnston. Northwords Folio/The Sandstone Press £5