[Margaret Moore]

See http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/poetry for Nick Laird's assessment of complains of John Montague's latest collection, entitled 'Drunken Sailor'. (PLease note my comment below if full link doesn't work). Laird complains that many of the poems therein reinforce Celtic stereotypes and contrasts M's take on the role of the Catholic Church in rural Irish life with that of Patrick Kavanagh.
Whatever the justice of this review, Montague's earlier work deserves scrutiny. His early life experiences, and in particular the separation from his parents at the age of four when he was sent from New York to live with two aunts in Co.Tyrone, Northern Ireland, impacted strongly on his poetry. Biographical info and poetry are readily available online.

Here are two sample poems:

The Trout

Here on the bank I parted
Rushes to ease my hands
In the water without a ripple
And tilt them slowly downstream
To where he lay, tendril light,
In his fluid sensual dream.

Bodiless lord of creation
I hung briefly above him
Savouring my own absence
Senses expanding in the slow
Motion, the photographic calm
That grows before action.

As the curve of his hands
Swung under his body
He surged, with visible pleasure.
I was so preternaturally close
I could count every stipple
But still cast no shadow, until

The two palms crossed in a cage
Under the lightly pulsing gills.
Then (entering my own enlarged
Shape, which rode upon the water)
I gripped. To this day I can
Taste his terror on my hands.

A Grafted Tongue

(Dumb,
bloodied, the severed
head now chokes to
speak another tongue -

As in
a long suppressed dream,
some stuttering garb-
led ordeal of my own)

An Irish
child weeps at school
repeating its English.
After each mistake

The master
gouges another mark
on the tally stick
hung about its neck

Like a bell
on a cow, a hobble
on a straying goat.
To slur and stumble

In shame
the altered syllables
of your own name:
to stray sadly home

And find
the turf-cured width
of your parents' hearth
growing slowly alien:

In cabin
and field, they still
speak the old tongue.
You may greet no one.

To grow
a second tongue, as
harsh a humiliation
as twice to be born.

Decades later
that child's grandchild's
speech stumbles over lost
syllables of an old order.



[This message has been edited by Margaret Moore (edited January 11, 2005).]

[oliver murray]

By coincidence, the only two poets I ever heard reading their work live were John Montague and Les Murray, above.
All I can say is that John Montague, although he wasn't great, was the better reader. No words can describe how bad Les Murray was ( I heard him in Australia) and it put me off poetry readings for life. That link doesn't work for me, Margaret - is the article in today's "Guardian" which I haven't got yet? (I only get it on a Saturday)

I wonder what a "Celtic stereotype" can be? - I have never come across anything Celtic in this country, except the odd cross or piece of jewellery.

Here is a poem I like, set in the USA, by John Montague,

All Legendary Obstacles

All legendary obstacles lay between
Us, the long imaginary plain,
The monstrous ruck of mountains
And, swinging across the night,
Flooding the Sacramento, San Joaquin,
The hissing drift of winter rain.

All day I waited, shifting
Nervously from station to bar
As I saw another train sail
By, the San Francisco Chief or
Golden Gate, water dripping
From great flanged wheels.

At midnight you came, pale
Above the negro porter's lamp.
I was too blind with rain
And doubt to speak, but
Reached from the platform
Until our chilled hands met.

You had been travelling for days
With an old lady, who marked
A neat circle on the glass
With her glove, to watch us
Move into the wet darkness
Kissing, still unable to speak.

[Katy Evans-Bush]

Thanks - this reminds me to buy the paper! I keep forgetting on a Saturday.

Oliver, you should try and hear Ciaran Carson read, he's from your neck of the woods and he's wonderful. I don't know how much reading he does.

I once sat in a workshop with Nick Laird - he brought a poem to share, read it, and when asked about it told us it had already won a competition! Never came back, either. Ah well - his first book is out in the spring from Faber.

And the name John Montague is new to me, so I'll read the article with interest.

Ta,

KEB

[Margaret Moore]

Sorry, Oliver, if the full link didn't work. Have just tested http://books.guardian.co.uk with success (leaving the system to fill in the pre-slash component). It should be easy to locate the review title from there. Yes, it was in last Saturday's Books Supplement.
Margaret.



[This message has been edited by Margaret Moore (edited January 11, 2005).]

[oliver murray]

Thanks, Margaret, I got the paper anyway and read the review. I didn't really understand the distinction the reviewer made between the views of Montague and Kavanagh on the Catholic Church, or, poetically, why one should be more acceptable than the other. I haven't read Montague's latest book, but Kavanagh often surprised me by his piety and I'll bet Montague never saw the Virgin Mary trotting across the bog on a donkey as Kavanagh did on a few occasions, if his poems are anything to go by.

Regards,

Oliver

[Tim Murphy]

"The Trout," which I have long adored, is proof positive of just how good Montague could be. I do have this sense that all the Irish poets kind of collapsed into a shambling modernity: Kinsella, Kavanagh, Montague, Richard Murphy, saddest of all, Heaney. Not to mention the execrable youngsters like Muldoon. All in reaction to what? Yeats? They couldn't sing any more. Thank heavens the Hayes and the Murray seem relatively uncontaminated by American fashions which have derailed the Irish.

[Jim Hayes]

Thanks for the compliment Tim, in my case unread and unlettered make it easier to be uncontaminated. I do however share your appreciation of The Trout, a veritable masterpiece.

Oliver, my suspicion is that bog trotting Virgin Marys became as scarce as leprechauns the more whiskey became expensive, no less so for Kavanagh's visions.

Jim

[Katy Evans-Bush]

Isn't Laird just saying that he thinks Montague is reverting to an outmoded stereotype about how the Church figures in people's lives? That sort of patriarchal relationship. I'm sorry, I haven't read the book, but in terms of this review I think Kavanagh's visions might come across a bit - pardon the phrase - bolshy for the characters in this book? I think the view of Catholicism he's objecting to goes hand-in-hand with the animal-like peasantry, the leprechaun-like locals, etc etc etc. Ireland is part of the modern world! I think that's all he's saying. Kavanagh is cited because he was trying to explode that very view that Montague, now in old age, is resurrecting.

KEB


[This message has been edited by Katy Evans-Bush (edited January 13, 2005).]

[oliver murray]

Perhaps it is unfair to comment on Nick Laird's review without reading the particular poems under review, but I fear it may be Mr Laird who is thinking in stereotypes, Katy, and in the use of the phrase "Celtic stereotypes" the word "Celtic" is so oddly inexact it makes one wonder. Yes, Ireland IS opening to multi-culturalism like those "other countries" Mr Laird mentions but it is not at all as universally “modern” as he seems to think. ( “a class-ridden corrupt society with levels of inequality and deprivation unrivalled in Europe.”to quote “History Ireland”) and many peasants may still be as “animal-like” as some obviously think they were, although Kavanagh clearly demonstrated they could have souls. Kavanagh’s poetry contains many pious references to religious worship and belief and, compared to his general attitude to just about everything, he wasn’t, so far as I can see, in the least “bolshy” about the Church. Some of the clergy are still as dictatorial and paternalistic as ever, when they can get away with it, which they still sometimes can, particularly as they still have considerable control in the field of primary and secondary education in the South and nearly fifty percent of it in the North. The majority of them, however, are in an extremely awkward position, embarrassed by the paedophile exploits of the few, the teaching on birth-control which is universally ignored, and caught somewhere between reality and the Holy See. I assume Montague was writing about particular people in their relation to the church, and I don’t know if he is writing from childhood memory, which he often does, about 1940s Co Tyrone, and perhaps he could be faulted for selection , depending on one's point of view. Anyway, I can assure you there are still many people of absolutely conservative religious views, even among the younger generations.

"Montague also shows Catholicism comforting as well as pacifying," Laird writes, apparently finding something reprehensible in this. Well, it IS comforting and pacifying for many people, even though I am hardly one of them, and if that is their choice who are we to complain?

I accept that Mr Laird might have expected views on the Catholic Church to have advanced a bit since Kavanagh's day, but if he wanted to compare Montague unfavourably with an Irish poet of novelist with a fairly jaundiced view of the Catholic Church (and he would be hard put to it to find any other sort) Patrick Kavanagh would be a mighty poor choice – he should try Austin Clarke, Sean O’Faoilean, Dermot Bolger, John McGahern etc.

Interesting introduction to the Patrick Kavanagh Centre:

Quote: “The Patrick Kavanagh Rural and Literary Resource Centre which celebrates the life and work of Monaghan's famous son is now housed in the historic former St.Mary's Roman Catholic Church in Inniskeen which Patrick attended.”

-- truly "the culmination of art's obscure pilgrimage through conscience and memory into everyday circulation." to quote Heaney, quoting Eugenio Montale. Incidentally, it appears that Heany wrongly credited Monague with the editorship of Kavanagh's original "Collected Poems"

[Katy Evans-Bush]

Sorry Oliver.

I tried to indicate in my response that all these viewpoints were only readable as framed in the review; & to be honest I found the review rather slight. As we see, he didn't support his arguments properly...

KEB

[This message has been edited by Katy Evans-Bush (edited January 13, 2005).]