Re: "irritants" & imperfections . . . I was thinking about this this morning. I always say, "of course he's not perfect!" but mostly because I know, intellectually, that he's not. My sentimentality (!) says otherwise.
But I took a second and really thought - what bugs me in a Donaghy poem? And I realized that there were a couple things, and that one of them was illustrated by one of his best-known, most beloved poems . . .
. . . which unfortunately I don't have to hand at the moment. But maybe someone has "Pentecost" laying around?
I love the poem, mostly. But the end! It just feels so abrupt. Like a bad mood swing. And the ending seems to be justified by, god help us, a pun:
And when you lick the sweat along my thigh,
Dearest, we renew the gift of tongues.
Argh. I get that it's a layered pun, a good pun. And I'm not anti-pun. (I couldn't very well like MD if I were.) But sometimes, I feel like this kind of move, the triple-entendre, the slick pun, is used as cover for a much bigger move (like ending the whole damn poem), but doesn't pull nearly enough weight.
So, there it is. A weakness for puns. Sometimes the puns are delightful. Sometimes . . . sometimes . . . I just wanted to stick to the story and have it resolve dramatically, rather than at a more superficial, that is, a purely linguistic/symbolic level. I guess that when someone hooks me into a narrative, I expect them to keep narrating all the way down the line. Pentecost is an example, I think, of where the narration rather abruptly stops, and the narrative voice instead turns to wordplay. Elegant, smart, imminently
clever wordplay to be sure. But it just isn't what I was expecting to get. I always feel let down at the end of this, one of MD's best known poems. Bummer.
EDITING IN: On an entirely unrelated note, I hadn't seen anyone link to this recent review in Poetry of MD's Collecteds. Apologies if it's already been shared:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/jour...html?id=239466