Re: "old son," I think your complaint ill-founded. First, Donaghy is using the colloquialism literally--he's addressing his son, who, old enough to read the poem, is both old and his son. That's how you make a prefabricated expression work in a poem. Second, he's using it as you say the colloquialism is used, the father's age at time of writing and the son's at the age at which the poem imagines him addressed being approximately the same. This multi-layered usage is the sort of thing poetry does, and ought to do; it seems incredible to me that you feel it "mischievously undermines the intimacy proper to parent and child." I find the poem moving: the father is speaking to his son from out of death, haunting him, just as the son haunted the father with that unchildlike admonition so many years ago when he was too young to remember or know whereof he spoke. The poem's "Don't be afraid" reflected back at the son therefore means don't be afraid at my death, and don't be afraid at your own; and what would seem an unsatisfactory injunction coming from one living man to another ("courage is no good, it means not scaring others") gains far greater authority from beyond the grave: the communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living. I don't know when Donaghy wrote this poem or when it was published, but it seems to me that it was written in prophetic anticipation of his early death, and that that death, although tragic, makes of this a more intense and interesting and haunting poem. I agree with your admiration of the two Patersons you quote, but don't see why MD's poem has to do the same things: "Waking With Russell" is about life, "Haunts" is about death; the Paterson is a hug, the Donaghy, a mirror. Both move me, in different ways.
As for the Browning allusion in "Black Ice and Rain," I have to say that I've taught the Browning for several years, and I've taught "Black Ice and Rain" before, though not recently, and never noticed the 'allusion'--there are no precise echoes, the way Eliot alludes to Marvell, say, and although the reference to "exquisite taste" and "showing me your things," as well as the turn outward from narrative back to addressee, I'll admit, could conspire to conjure, however faintly, the Duke of Ferrara, surely this 'allusion' is not strong or clear enough to jolt one out of admiration for a poem one had been enjoying up to that point? Moreover if it is an allusion it invites us to contemplate the relationship between the source and the context into which it has been placed; must this make it a chilly intellectual game that inhibits intimacy?--even if, in this instance, it does serve to complicate the relationship between speaker and addressee, and by extension, writer and reader, one facet of MD's poetry that apparently turns you off. My opinion is that it need not be read as an allusion, need not jolt one out of the poem, which is manifestly brilliant, and that it would only do so if you're looking for things to dislike, rather than things to like.
You're right, of course, that this sort of discussion never changes anyone's mind, and you are certainly entitled to your own tastes and experiences reading, etc., etc., but I'm equally entitled to say that I find them alien and incomprehensible. I don't know if Donaghy will be read in 200 years, but he is self-evidently an excellent poet, and that's enough for me.
Chris
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