{"id":5176,"date":"2016-01-07T16:51:30","date_gmt":"2016-01-07T15:51:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=5176"},"modified":"2016-01-23T14:08:40","modified_gmt":"2016-01-23T13:08:40","slug":"matthew-sweeney-inquisition-lane-bloodaxe-books-9-95-reviewed-by-david-cooke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=5176","title":{"rendered":"Matthew Sweeney, Inquisition Lane<\/em> (Bloodaxe Books) \u00a39.95, reviewed by David Cooke"},"content":{"rendered":"

Inquisition Lane<\/em> is Matthew Sweeney\u2019s eleventh collection and his second since moving to Bloodaxe with Horse Music<\/em> in 2013. Both collections are substantial volumes weighing in at over ninety pages each with Inquisition Lane containing some sixty poems, while its predecessor had seventy. Normally, such copiousness would set alarm bells ringing, but with Sweeney one\u2019s fears are soon allayed. As has always been the case with this fine poet, there is an impressive balance between containment and vision, so that however off the wall his flights of fancy might at first glance seem the details are precisely observed and rendered, the logic is impeccable, and the language restrained and clear. The collection opens with \u2018The Dream House\u2019, a poem whose four shapely stanzas draw us into Sweeney\u2019s imaginative world:<\/p>\n

The dream house was yellow<\/p>\n

and had no chimneys. Its one<\/p>\n

window was round, a porthole<\/p>\n

so big a child could stand in it.<\/p>\n

The door was smaller, and red,<\/p>\n

with a golden chain and padlock.<\/p>\n

Thereafter, as if this were the opening shot in a film, the scene expands to take in \u2018a Zen \/ garden of sand raked in circles\u2019 and, beyond it, \u2018a long, \/ flat mountain\u2019, \u2018white goats\u2019 and \u2018a few climbers, or walkers.\u2019 As in the poetry of Peter Bennet or Eil\u00e9an N\u00ed Chuillean\u00e1in, Sweeney creates a parallel universe which seems similar to, but not quite the same as the one we are more familiar with. In \u2018The Devil\u2019s Castle\u2019 he imagines another habitation, but here the vision is more outlandish and increasingly ominous: \u00a0\u2018It would be a genius who\u2019d know \/ what to say there \u2026 I\u2019d opt for the silence \/ of the moon, the stare of the sun.\u2019 \u00a0In this poem and throughout the collection there is an existential uncertainty, where the protagonists have to make their way as best they can: \u2018I\u2019d leave hungry, \/ thirsty. I\u2019d hitchhike back to the \/ harbour and take a boat to Limbo. \/ I\u2019d keep looking after me, though\u2019. \u00a0Sometimes, however, there is an almost childlike satisfaction in the act of creation or in the successful completion of a performance, as in \u2018Circus\u2019:<\/p>\n

The dog walked the tightrope<\/p>\n

with a yellow bow round his neck<\/p>\n

and a red top hat.<\/p>\n

He was followed by a monkey<\/p>\n

on a unicycle. The hairy fellow<\/p>\n

wore a luminous green jockstrap.<\/p>\n

The visual impact of the writing here and its painterly qualities are in evidence throughout this collection in poems such as \u2018Blue in the Tiergarten\u2019 and \u2018Green Sky\u2019, while Sweeney\u2019s affinity with magic realism is evinced in \u2018The Indian\u2019, which could almost be an incident taken from a novel by M\u00e1rquez: \u2018he \/ remembered, in a previous life, being \/ a pre-hispanic Indian in Monte Alb\u00e1n \u2026 then collapsed asleep \u2026 to dream of his murder \/ at the hands of a Spanish conquistador.\u2019 In \u2018The Poem You\u2019ve Been Waiting For\u2019 one senses that this is a poet who has the confidence to follow his muse wherever it takes him and that he expects the reader to do the same:<\/p>\n

This is the poem you\u2019ve been waiting for \u2013<\/p>\n

me too \u2013 and in it I have a blind dog<\/p>\n

walking alongside a slithering rattlesnake<\/p>\n

on north main street in Cork, where<\/p>\n

Romanian gypsies in long skirts walk by<\/p>\n

in groups, and Auntie Nellie\u2019s sweetshop<\/p>\n

tempts \u2026<\/p>\n

The tone is even more defiantly explicit in \u2018Do Wa Diddy Diddy Do\u2019 where the poet\u2019s song earns him \u2018a German expletive\u2019 to which he replies \u2018in kind, barely disturbing the song\u2019s \/ rhythm.\u2019 Moreover, if nothing is certain, then maybe one is almost justified in having a childlike belief in miracles as in \u2018The Chocolate Mine\u2019, one of this collections tours de force:<\/p>\n

They\u2019re hacking away in the chocolate-<\/p>\n

mine beneath la Madeleine, and soon<\/p>\n

their dark wares will go on sale.<\/p>\n

They discovered it during a foundation<\/p>\n

check. They didn\u2019t believe it at first, till<\/p>\n

the bishop pronounced it a miracle \u2026<\/p>\n

Yet even here there is an underlying current of seriousness: \u2018In a year, the cardinals would wonder \/ what they did before the chocolate mine, \/ what they\u2019d do when it ran out.\u2019 \u00a0Inquisition Lane is a hugely entertaining collection with high jinks aplenty and yet from early on the humour is tempered by an acute awareness of mortality which becomes increasingly foregrounded as one works through the collection. It reaches its powerful conclusion, in an elegiac sequence written in memory of John Hartley-Williams, the poet\u2019s friend and collaborator, with whom he wrote Death Comes to the Poets, their brilliant send up of the poetry scene; and although much in life is uncertain one thing is clear: that death comes to us all, a fact that Sweeney explores unflinchingly. Early on in Inquisition Lane<\/em>, \u2018Cat Burial\u2019 is a beautifully restrained description of a pet interment that is devoid of sentimentality: \u2018I\u2019d picked that site because the beast \/ had sat in the tree, hoping to claw small \/ birds down to the ground.\u2019 In \u2018The Insurance Agent\u2019 the carnage associated with a plane crash is all part of the day\u2019s work. Faced with the reality of death, the Catholic Church, like \u2018The One-eyed Philosopher of Katmandu\u2019, offers platitudes but no comfort. In wide-ranging and manifold ways many of these poems are haunted by death. Two murderers are punished by a vengeful crow. A Matador feasts on testicles and believes he is invincible. However, it is when he is exploring his own mortality and that of the people who have been close to him \u00a0that Sweeney is at his most poignantly direct. \u00a0Returning from the funeral of Seamus Heaney he declares that he will soon forget \u2018the bishop .. \/ croaking out .. some blasted Latin \u2018 but will remember \u2018your Derry voice, your laugh, and yes, maybe a poem or two.\u2019 Just as moving are his lines to Dennis O\u2019Driscoll and John Hartley Williams. Poised and memorable, too, is \u2018The Stomp\u2019, a brief poem written in memory of his sister:<\/p>\n

You were the only one who could do<\/p>\n

the stomp with me, my dead sister \u2026<\/p>\n

You were a wild thing, a rare thing.<\/p>\n

You were a small horse prancing.\u2019<\/p>\n

Most direct of all are \u2018The Loop\u2019 where the poet is scathing on the subject of religion and states baldly that he is \u2018sick of coffins\u2019 and \u2018I Don\u2019t Want to Grow Old\u2019 where the protagonist looks back at his former self and wonders, somewhat forlornly, if there is \u2018any chance \/ at all of becoming that lithe fellow again?\u2019<\/p>\n

Faced with the inevitability of death, our only recourse is to make the most of the one life we have, and this Sweeney does as he celebrates the good things in life with an epicurean verve. In \u2018Co-author\u2019 John Hartley Williams is portrayed as a bon viveur who liked his food, drink and jazz, subjects obviously close to Sweeney\u2019s heart. Then there is his delight in the vibrancy of colours and the quirkiness he sees all around him, which translates not only into the creation of purely imagined worlds but the Verfremdungseffekt he achieves in his descriptions of real places such as New York, San Francisco, Paris. In \u2018Bouncing\u2019, a poem whose ostensible subject is trampolining, he concludes that \u2018His world was the same when he stopped\u2019, which is not dissimilar to Auden\u2019s \u2018Poetry makes nothing happens\u2019. Nonetheless, in this poem and so many others, there is an exhilaration in the act of creation and joy in savouring the moment. Matthew Sweeney is a hugely talented poet and this is a richly imagined and rewarding collection in which he is writing at the height of his powers.<\/p>\n

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

Inquisition Lane is Matthew Sweeney\u2019s eleventh collection and his second since moving to Bloodaxe with Horse Music in 2013. Both collections are substantial volumes weighing in at over ninety pages each with Inquisition Lane containing some sixty poems, while its predecessor had seventy. Normally, such copiousness would set alarm bells ringing, but with Sweeney one\u2019s […]<\/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":[13,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nMatthew Sweeney, Inquisition Lane (Bloodaxe Books) \u00a39.95, 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=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=5176\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Matthew Sweeney, Inquisition Lane (Bloodaxe Books) \u00a39.95, reviewed by David Cooke - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Inquisition Lane is Matthew Sweeney\u2019s eleventh collection and his second since moving to Bloodaxe with Horse Music in 2013. 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