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).]
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