Reviews
New and Selected Poems by Kelvin Corcoran,
196 pp, ISBN 0-907562-39-9, Shearsman Books, 58 Velwell Rd, Exeter EX4 4LD, A5, 2004.
First of all I liked the book's warm colours - a Greek ceiling on the front cover, and on the back the author's complexion under a Greek sun.
The sign of a successful work is the realisation, at some point during your reading, that for a time your critical faculties, indeed most of your faculties, have been suspended, and that you are turning the pages for the simple and only reason that you want to read on. This is a happy situation for the average reader. Not so, however, for the reviewer, because in such circumstances the only honest critical statement is "I like it because I like it", and where does that get us? In reading for reviewing purposes then, the appropriate position is one of distance. This is why I had to approach Corcoran's book twice, the second time with my critical faculties switched on.
Which country is more conducive to poetry, Greece or Ireland? Corcoran has them both. Readers familiar with any or all of his previous collections will be delighted to find that all nine are represented here, as well as a complete new collection, Against Purity. There are shades of Seamus Heaney in tone and subject-matter (the remembered family radio; its litany of place-names), and echoes of Leonard Cohen: "... your perfect body". Byron and Shelley are languidly recalled. These are sensuous poems, binding myth and history to personal experience. They are not easy poems but they amply reward a careful reading, and they are none the worse for their bouts of homage. Words weave their way around sense:
I cast the cards of the myriorama
for musing swains and lacustrine vistas,
traffic jams and haunted bedrooms.
Do you reach for the dictionary? Or do you let your mouth savour the sounds, and your eyes read on?
Page(s) 21
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