dublinka

Lawrence Ferlinghetti has released a reading made in Potsdamer Platz, Berlin in 2004. It includes the fantastic History of the Airplane, a beat polemic on planes, war and capitalism, and is worth getting for this alone. It begins with the Wright brothers who "thought they had invented something that could make peace on earth, if the wrong brothers didn't get hold of it" leading to the day the third world struck back and "stormed the great planes and flew them into the beating heart of skyscraper America". On first listen it's powerful stuff, and followed by the melodic Allen Ginsberg is dying you'll find yourself listening to it over and over. Certain criticisms in the poems lose their strength after a while, and there's a certain hokey 1960's feel to it, but hearing this audio really brings Ferlinghetti to an immediacy in a way that the printed word never could. Let's hope he records everything.(Tnx D.)

Mary O' Donoghue has just released her second collection of poetry. It's titled Among These Winters, and is replete with a catching image of a seahorse on the front cover by Tammy Peluso. It appears an apt choice given that a theme of twisted spine and curvature, pervades many of the poems and is made concrete in the poem Ess. But these are but preludes to darker material. In fact this volume alone is justified by one poem Leading the Apes into Hell; a title which owes itself to an old proverb, "and you know it well, that women dying maids lead apes into hell". The poem takes us through the gates of hell, (a nod to Dante?), and evokes a surreal renaissance procession, of gibbering and jibing verse, which mercilessly mocks its subject (Guess). At time the energy in this verse make it appear almost out of control. It is as if for a moment, O'Donoghue is inseparable from that same ingenious poetic which influenced Hieronymus Bosch. As it happens other work, such as Dauernarkose, Catalepsy Provoked by the Sound of a Tuning Fork, and Swallows - "The days starve her down, birds scream at her from the fire", bring to mind a different aspect of Bosch: madness. But unlike Bosch, there seems to be a greater urgency to move beyond observation, or description and pass over to judgement. Elsewhere some of O'Donoghue's verse sails perilously close to portentousness and verbosity. With yet other poems a self conscious literary sensibility reflects off their surface. But all this is usually tolerable enough, because of the kind of originality in thought, humour and feeling, that she manages to conjure up throughout. Finally, there's an exactitude of mind and precision here reminiscent of Marianne Moore, and a sentimental culchie streak qua Kavanagh, which seem to sit uneasily in each others company. One I suppose, will eventually give way as her work progress. In sum, five stars. Destined for greatness.