BRIAN LYNCH
New and Renewed at New Island Books
I went out with nowhere to go, Past the houses And well past the snow. The river in the reeds Beneath the Tolka bridge Slowed down and froze, And I too waited On silence an age.
New and Renewed at New Island Books
I went out with nowhere to go, Past the houses And well past the snow. The river in the reeds Beneath the Tolka bridge Slowed down and froze, And I too waited On silence an age.
home | bio | poetry |
theatre | art
film/tv | novel | links
| news | contact
New and Renewed
Poems 1967-2004
Dublin, New Island Books
2004
€9.99
ISBN 1904301568
‘‘Such exceptional talent’’
-Samuel Becket
Review by Philip Casey
The Irish Independent
Brian Lynch’s poetry and its rhythms have beguiled me since reading a poem called Panic Stricken Love in his chapbook Outside the Pheasantry, (1975). This poem was included in his collection Perpetual Star (1981), as Panic Stricken, and here it is named Panic. Other than this, not a word has been changed from the original. Other poems have been altered, of course, hence the book's clever title. The Jews Escape (‘the yellow stars are ours’), previously entitled Ghost House, is practically a new poem.
In New and Renewed, Lynch has not only written powerful new work, but has examined the premise of each line and phrase to realise the full potency of that previously collected. It is a very potent collection indeed, and not just because its theme is often Eros in the everyday. Even when the poem is not overtly erotic, a sensual energy pervades it. Without artistry it would be as nothing, of course. Lynch's hard-won imagery stays long in the mind, and is marked by interplay and interdependence. Take Pension Alcoy, which has also had its lines and line breaks renewed. In the original I loved ‘To be empty you must be played upon’, but the change seems exactly right, the gong reverberating through a thousand windows until stillness reigns:
To be open you must be empty To be empty you must be struck As if you were a gong. Outside the window The window is open Its window is open And a thousand more And suddenly there is no more Mr Lynch.
This interplay and interdependence underscores the noted humanity of Lynch's work, and is its hallmark. Relationship is central, and meditations on the death of parents, the regrets of love, the complexities of marriage, and the mysteries of parenthood uncover deep emotion, as with the daughters of Myth:
But when they do return The house is empty in the sun, Mother has gone north or south, And, there now, fatherless, The door is wider than it was, Or wider than they thought.
The book ends with powerful political poems, including an eleven page excerpt from Angry Heart, Empty House, entitled The Murder of Margaret White, which really belongs in a book of its own. It is based on a harrowing true story, and will stalk your dreams.
Brian Lynch's poems have always been haunting. With New and Renewed Poems it seems inevitable that he will be given the wider recognition he has so long deserved.
Philip Casey
updated
23 May 2005
copyright & privacy
sitemap