The reader come to this long poem uncomfortable with the knowledge
that it has been born from death, or rather, as the work itself
lays claim, ‘out of the shadowlands between life and death.’ Kennelly’s
latest muse, the rainmaker, finds him after a quadruple bypass
and stays with him until satiated with his panegyric, forty-three
sections later. Although their journey together proves to be as
comforting as it is confrontational, lit it be understood: this
is not cheery stuff.
The undaunted reader is not likely to emerge undeterred from the
remainder of Kennelly’s prefatory remarks. Always distrust what
a poet has to say about his own work. Be particularly wary therefore
of a writer who purports to be able to show the ‘dreamenergised
English of pure being.’ Thankfully Kennelly seems to distrust
his contrived ‘creative’ stance, admitting that ‘It is odd or
tricky when you try to speak of…[vision]… afterwards.’ Can
cliché become the tool of the dream-visionary? Kennelly,
making a similarly grating rhyme-scheme his accomplice, would
have us believe so:
It is my stricken guess
that more men die of caution
than excess.
The dreamsurrenderer’s chief preoccupation is with his own morality.
It is only natural that he should deal with all manner of matters
arising; the past, the present, sex, love, alcohol, mushrooms
and, of course, blood. Kennelly’s grim humour:
‘It’s mine,’ I said. ‘That blood is mine
and it’s running all over the bloody place.
can leave one as uneasy as the bitterest truism:
Some men never see their blood, is it
any wonder they’re so keen to shed the blood
of others, some of the worst evil is spread
by men who’ve never seen their own blood
spilled.
The dreamnarrative is anchored in the specificity of the Ireland
of the poet’s child- and adulthood. Though the two landscapes
are frequently fused with potency, it is while on a journey through
his ‘hacked body’ that the central facet of Kennelly’s philosophy
actually becomes acceptable. The tangible can, simply by virtue
of its inanimate nature, unlock the meaning of the intangible.
It becomes as understandable for a mushroom to symbolise the afterlife,
as it is for a ‘festering scar’ to be a lost ‘love in a yellow
house on a hill.’ Thereafter Kennelly’s obvious talent for revealing
the sacred in the absurd (and vice-versa) becomes more than enjoyable,
it becomes exciting:
‘Many a man carries a lunatic asylum
on his neck and shoulders
and has the gumption to call it his head.’
Colours and textures are described both for themselves and as
the essence of feeling and of being in such a shape-shifting universe
as this. Drowning can be as comforting as the lethargy of every
day’s routine:
drifting in a sea of warm blue oil,
I’ve been drifting for years, mushrooms
at my side, whispering
The beauty of Kennelly’s poem lies not necessarily in its coherence
as a whole (the man of rain motif can, in truth, get a little
wearing after the fiftieth page), but in its willingness to be
broken down into fragments which (like the life and death Kennelly
has chosen to describe), are in themselves gilded and lilting
and more than a little bit frightening.
Reviewed by Mari-Hughes-Edwards
