Bob Mee
Reviews
The Bowsprit - Janice Fitzpatrick Simmons
Lagan Poetry, Unit 11, 1A Bryson Street, Belfast BT5 4ES
60 pages £7.95
Janice Fitzpatrick Simmons has created a moving yet disciplined book here, based on her responses around the death of her husband, the Irish poet James Simmons. Her stall is set from the opening poem, 'Cocoon', when she out for a walk with her son and dog, as she contemplates a strange future. Nothing will ever be the same./ You don’t want it to be. Let change come... Much of the language is plain, not all of the poems lift themselves out of the ordinary in themselves, but there are good poems too, like 'Making Room'. Having redecorated the bedroom where her husband will lie near death, and possibly through the dying itself, she begins as matter-of-fact as if in a chatty letter to an old friend or relative:
I have painted the walls/ something between mustard and sunshine. Then, it deepens, the walls are now hung with his last paintings, there are photographs of family occasions, and their beds are side by side - the first separation. And finally, her husband is actually there, behind safety rails. I reach/ through cot bars to hold your hand. Inevitably, there are times when lines flag, are derivative of innumerable elegies going back centuries, for example in 'A Lament': Angels speak to you who kissed me again/ last night in dream. They sing to you/ a music born of history, singing amid their joy/ my lament for you, beloved. This stuff really should not have made it past the editorial red pen, but taken as a whole it works. You would like it Jimmy, she writes in 'Bones' of her effort to embrace the future. And I want to believe he would.
60 pages £7.95
Janice Fitzpatrick Simmons has created a moving yet disciplined book here, based on her responses around the death of her husband, the Irish poet James Simmons. Her stall is set from the opening poem, 'Cocoon', when she out for a walk with her son and dog, as she contemplates a strange future. Nothing will ever be the same./ You don’t want it to be. Let change come... Much of the language is plain, not all of the poems lift themselves out of the ordinary in themselves, but there are good poems too, like 'Making Room'. Having redecorated the bedroom where her husband will lie near death, and possibly through the dying itself, she begins as matter-of-fact as if in a chatty letter to an old friend or relative:
I have painted the walls/ something between mustard and sunshine. Then, it deepens, the walls are now hung with his last paintings, there are photographs of family occasions, and their beds are side by side - the first separation. And finally, her husband is actually there, behind safety rails. I reach/ through cot bars to hold your hand. Inevitably, there are times when lines flag, are derivative of innumerable elegies going back centuries, for example in 'A Lament': Angels speak to you who kissed me again/ last night in dream. They sing to you/ a music born of history, singing amid their joy/ my lament for you, beloved. This stuff really should not have made it past the editorial red pen, but taken as a whole it works. You would like it Jimmy, she writes in 'Bones' of her effort to embrace the future. And I want to believe he would.
Page(s) 55-56
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The