{"id":12145,"date":"2021-11-11T15:38:17","date_gmt":"2021-11-11T14:38:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=12145"},"modified":"2021-11-12T11:38:54","modified_gmt":"2021-11-12T10:38:54","slug":"dorothy-molly-the-poems-of-dorothy-molloy-reviewed-by-david-cooke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=12145","title":{"rendered":"Dorothy Molloy, The Poems of Dorothy Molloy<\/em><\/strong> reviewed by David Cooke"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Poems of Dorothy Molloy<\/em><\/strong>. Faber & Faber:\u00a0 \u00a310.99.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Born in 1942, Dorothy Molloy starting writing poetry relatively late in her life and it is a sad irony that, having been accepted by Faber and Faber, her first collection, Hare Soup<\/em>, had just been delivered by the printers in the week that she died of cancer in 2004. Prior to her commitment to poetry, she had worked as an art critic and painter. She was also a highly qualified linguist who had lived for many years in Spain. On returning to Ireland, she did research in medieval Catalan and Castilian literature leading to the award of MPhil and PhD degrees. It is not surprising, therefore, that her training in both domains, the visual arts and languages, should have left its mark upon her work: the latter in the clarity and focus of her syntax, the economy with which she achieves her effects and, above all, her relish in the sound of words; the former in her many painterly effects, as in the conclusion of \u2018Hare Soup\u2019:<\/p>\n

When I stab at the O of his mouth with my little<\/p>\n

canif, <\/em>bouquets of old-fashioned roses
\nfall into my lap: petals shot with bright flashes
\nof scarlet and purple, vermilion, alizarin,
\nruby, carmine and cerise.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

On its publication, Hare Soup<\/em>, was received enthusiastically and, inevitably, created a demand for more. This led to the publication of two posthumous collections: Gethsemane Day<\/em> (Faber & Faber. 2006) and Long-distance Swimmer<\/em> (Salmon Poetry. 2009). The contents of her three published collections have now been brought together in The Poems of Dorothy Molloy<\/em>, along with forty unpublished poems and four poems \u2018in progress\u2019.\u00a0 While it is fascinating to have nearly all the extant work of this poet in one volume, it must be borne in mind that the poet only saw one collection through the press. Moreover, it was not the poet\u2019s practice to date poems or drafts, so it\u2019s difficult to identify any lines of development. Throughout this volume one sees her constantly revisiting certain themes. Since, at the time of her death she left a relatively large number of previously unpublished poems, one might expect the law of diminishing returns to kick in as they were sifted through for each posthumous collection. However, this is not entirely the case. It is of course more than likely, that if the poet had lived longer, she might have further refined many of these poems before their publication, yet there are some here that are as good as her best. In particular, there are poems in which her clear-eyed acceptance of own mortality are all the more powerful for being written in a race against time.<\/p>\n

To get some sense of Molloy\u2019s strengths as a poet, it might be as well to start with some of the astonishing poems she included in Hare Soup<\/em>, the only collection she signed off on. It opens with a stunner, \u2018Conversation Class\u2019, in which she shows her ability to evoke characters in a few brief strokes: the overbearing French teacher and the timid girl who is browbeaten by her: \u2018I redden to the roots when Jacqueline Dupont zuts \/ at my French.\u2019 The humiliation reaches a climax until, just as it is about to end, the teacher offers the student a glass of Armagnac and everything is turned on its head:<\/p>\n

My tongue is loosed. My eyes are glazed. I sing
\nthe Marseillaise<\/em> \/ <\/em>I feel a revolution
\nin the red flare of my skirt.<\/p>\n

In \u2018Pascual the Shepherd\u2019, she convincingly portrays a lecherous old soak leering at a couple of newlyweds. In \u2018Hare Soup\u2019, which has already been mentioned, she creates an atmosphere fraught with sexual anxiety that centres upon the \u2018idiot Didier\u2019, who makes \u2018cow eyes\u2019 at the protagonist, and the unbridled instincts of the dog Kruger who \u2018unsheathes his prick: a startle \/ of red, pencil thin, sticks out of his fur.\u2019 Notable character studies are also a feature of Long-Distance Swimmer<\/em>: \u2018Waiting for Julio\u2019, with its depiction of Spanish machismo and \u2018Carlitos Gonzales Mart\u00ednez makes a desperate bid for freedom\u2019, the title of which sounds like it could have been a short story by Gabriel Garc\u00eda Marques.<\/p>\n

Impressive, too, is \u2018A Walk in the Forest, where, immediately, the reader is mesmerised by Molloy\u2019s mastery of rhythm and sound:<\/p>\n

Electric fences hum in the forest of Fontainebleau,
\ndisturb the twig and branch, the hand and hoof and bristle,
\nand the silver-sickled tusk.<\/p>\n

There is a natural ease in the way she underpins her lines with alliteration and the interplay \u00a0of vowels, the way the lines are propelled by shifting accents. This is the work of a poet who has an instinctive feel for the way that language affects us at an almost visceral level, so that the lines have to be read aloud and savoured with a physical relish. Thereafter, the reader is drawn into a gothic forest, such as one might find in the work of Chr\u00e9tien de Troyes, where everything seems ominous: \u2018We cannot find the star-shaped clearing \/ where the five paths meet\u2019. The only other contemporary poet I can think of, who might be capable of achieving this kind of oneiric clarity, is Molloy\u2019s exact contemporary, Eil\u00e9an N\u00ed Chuillean\u00e1in. <\/em>Folkloric elements are also used to good effect in poems such as \u2018Ice Maiden\u2019 or the wonderful \u2018Grandma\u2019s Zoo\u2019, with its childlike vision of a dangerous world, which has to be placated by magical beasts, creatures inspired by those recollected from pre-decimal Irish currency: \u2018There\u2019s a zoo in Grandma\u2019s pocket: \/ horse and bull, fish and bird, \/ stag, pig and rabbit. Hound [\u2026] a charm against the foghorns \/ booming on the pier.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Like N\u00ed Chuillean\u00e1in, Molloy\u2019s poetry has been shaped by the Catholicism in which she was brought up and which in turn informs her feminism. Her exploration of sexuality has been hinted at above, but it\u2019s a theme which is given prominence throughout her work. There are several wry poems on the subject of marriage:<\/p>\n

Lurching on the see-saw of marriage,
\nthe hard plank under your bottom,
\nyou gasp at the repeated jolts
\nthat shiver your timbers.<\/p>\n

(The See-saw)<\/p>\n

In \u2018Eternity Ring\u2019, in which, consciously or not, she seems to be reinventing an image from Heaney\u2019s \u2018Mother of the Groom\u2019, she tries unsuccessfully to \u2018get this blasted thing off\u2019. The poem concludes with typical dark humour: \u2018I dropped a bomb onto my hand \/ the ring is still grand\u2019. Sex is frequently seen as a dark force that is never very far beneath the surface, as in the opening lines of \u2018In the makeshift village cinema\u2019:<\/p>\n

The stalls are kitchen chairs. They\u2019re no good
\nfor courting. The adults above on the balcony
\nwatch every move.<\/p>\n

The custodians of morality are here firmly in control, but elsewhere she explores male sexuality in terms of its potential for predatory violence. \u2018In Lady of Sorrows\u2019, she subverts H.C. Andersens\u2019s story, \u2018The Steadfast Tin Soldier\u2019, with a menacing refrain: \u2018Ratatatat,\u2019 until the inevitable occurs:<\/p>\n

He comes goose-stepping back,
\na gun in his pocket.
\nwork to be done. Ratatat.<\/p>\n

In the outhouse he plugs her
\n\u2013 love-bites on earlobe
\nand nape \u2013 shoots himself<\/p>\n

in the crotch.<\/p>\n

In \u2018Les Grands Seigneurs, the protagonist works though a litany of romantic clich\u00e9s: \u2018Men were my buttresses, my castellated towers, the bowers where I took my rest\u2019 only to discover that \u2018after she was wedded, bedded\u2019 she became \u2018a toy, a plaything, little woman, wife, a bit of fluff\u2019.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

It might be tempting to associate the somewhat tortured sexuality in some of Molloy\u2019s poems with her Catholicism.\u00a0 Be that as it may, religion clearly informs many of them. \u2018The Infant of Prague\u2019 is a mock-baroque vision which gives her plenty of scope to indulge her descriptive skills, but beyond that she evokes the sense of guilt which is so frequently a part of one\u2019s Catholic inheritance: \u2018He looks into my soul, sees the sixpence I stole \/ from my grandmother\u2019s purse.\u2019 There\u2019s a scary description of nuns in \u2018Black Flies\u2019 with, as elsewhere, an appropriately menacing refrain: \u2018Black flies on the floor\u2019<\/em>; while \u2018Plaint\u2019 catalogues various sites of pilgrimage with their associated relics, culminating, somewhat grotesquely, with le Saint Pr\u00e9puce<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The inclusion in this collected edition of so many previously unpublished poems is a welcome opportunity to gain further insight into the poet\u2019s creative processes.\u00a0 Of particular interest are the extended narratives, the lengthiest of which, \u2018The Loneliness of Catherine the Great\u2019, stretches out over fifteen pages in twenty-one sections and which she may still have been working on. Then there is \u2018Alcossebre\u2019, which, although it might also have received further attention, is nonetheless a sustained and rapturous celebration of life, all the more powerful given the circumstances under which it was written:<\/p>\n

The thing to do is to get into water.
\nSalt water slaking the heat.
\nThe beat of waves under the tin-can
\nsun, flashing silver into the corners
\nof my eyes. The skies too blue to bear.<\/p>\n

Memorable, too, are some of her briefest pieces, which have an affinity with the work of Stevie Smith and give the reader a further insight into her grit and defiance:<\/p>\n

I built myself a harbour made of granite
\nwith cunning steps and lighthouse fiercely flashing
\nfor I am weak and vulnerable, dammit.<\/p>\n

Lyrical, moving, sassy, Dorothy Molloy was a unique voice in Irish poetry and this collected edition is a book to be returned to and cherished. By way of conclusion, one can do no better than to quote from the brief \u2018Credo\u2019, which she left among her final drafts: \u2018The one essential thing is for my voice to ring out in the cosmos and to use, to this end, every available second. Everything else must serve this. This is being in love with life.\u2019<\/p>\n

by David Cooke<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Poems of Dorothy Molloy. Faber & Faber:\u00a0 \u00a310.99.\u00a0\u00a0 Born in 1942, Dorothy Molloy starting writing poetry relatively late in her life and it is a sad irony that, having been accepted by Faber and Faber, her first collection, Hare Soup, had just been delivered by the printers in the week that she died of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":113,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nDorothy Molloy, The Poems of Dorothy Molloy reviewed by David Cooke - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=12145\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dorothy Molloy, The Poems of Dorothy Molloy reviewed by David Cooke - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Poems of Dorothy Molloy. 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