{"id":6174,"date":"2016-03-24T11:04:03","date_gmt":"2016-03-24T10:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6174"},"modified":"2016-03-24T12:20:22","modified_gmt":"2016-03-24T11:20:22","slug":"tony-curtis-approximately-in-the-key-of-c-arc-publications-8-09-reviewed-by-peter-viggers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6174","title":{"rendered":"Tony Curtis, Approximately in the Key of C<\/em> (Arc Publications) \u00a38.09, reviewed by Peter Viggers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tony Curtis Approximately in the Key of C <\/em>(Arc Publications)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tony Curtis was born in\u00a0Dublin, his latest collection\u00a0Approximately in the Key of C,<\/em>\u00a0is a work of seeming ease. \u00a0The key of C is thought to be the simplest of keys because it has no sharps and no flats, though Chopin apparently regarded the scale as the most difficult to play with complete evenness. Music recurs in the collection, starting with \u2018Blessing on Things Made Well\u2019 where a set of uilleann pipes made by Michael Egan are displayed in a museum under a sign that says \u201cApproximately in the Key of C\u201d. Curtis loves \u201cthe beauty of those words\u201d seeing in them a metaphor for the difficulty of writing a good poem (and for life), when they are too often \u201cbuckled and bent\u201d.<\/p>\n

Fortunately for the reader Curtis poetry moves with subtle cadences and deceptively simple language, singing in his own way, on the borderline between the earthly and the unseen, evoking Ireland\u2019s landscape and past.<\/p>\n

In the collection\u2019s first poem, \u2018The Mole and the Cosmos\u2019, Curtis writes \u201cI have taken down a piece of the night sky\/just for the night\u201d giving a clear sense of the scope of his poetic world, where the mole is described as \u201ca poor country fellow naming wildflowers\u201d with \u201ca voice sunk like the roots of a tree, sturdy reassuring.\u201d<\/p>\n

Curtis places himself in an historical context, both political and more personal, exploring a <\/em>sense of loss and of reconciliation in a present haunted by the past. There are two moving poems about Seamus Heaney and Curtis also examines political issues from a very personal perspective. <\/em>In \u2018Civil war\u2019 he writes of two brothers his grandfather knew and says, \u201cWhat\u2019s odd is their dead ghosts haunt me.\u201d In the same poem a girl in his class realises that Civil War is an oxymoron.<\/p>\n

His language is clear and alive, with irony and wit, he is effective in capturing the rhythms of ordinary speech and giving voice to the otherwise unheard as evident In \u2018Talking to the Wallpaper man about a Sculptor\u2019, \u201cNo, I\u2019m completely lost. Maybe his art \/ is beyond me, says Kevin \u201c.<\/p>\n

The poems range from the humorous including an appropriately shaped poem, Mallarme style about pregnancy \u2018One Hundred Words on the Consequences of Sex\u2019, to those about the arts, including \u2018The Old Painters\u2019 Journey\u2019, where \u201ca pair of old boots, not good enough for gardening\u201d\u2019 prove to belong to Lucien Freud with his \u201c\u2026relentless journey\/ from his bed to the fierce solitude at his easel\u201d. Sigmund Freud is also the inspiration for another poem about being a poet. Poet Elizabeth Bishop is featured a number of times, with a short sequence of two poems in her memory,<\/p>\n

Religious imagery emerges, whether Christian or Eastern, as in \u2018Two Poems for Gary Snyder\u2019. \u201cthe old poet logger \/ Buddhist, is eighty five today \/ he climbs a different mountain now \/ higher, steeper\u2026.. \u201c<\/p>\n

This sense of the sacred comes naturally to Curtis and is reflected in poems, revealing a sensitivity to the cycles of birth, aging and death, of journeying and of return, asking in \u2018Fair Weather\u2019, \u201cdo poets ever reach their destination?\u201d<\/p>\n

His sensibility is manifested in rich imagery \u201cpoems written on prayer flags\/ and chanted by an old Buddhist by a butter lamp\u201d taken from his homage to Seamus Heaney \u2018Electric Light and Butter Lamps\u2019.<\/p>\n

A concern for those marginalised by society is also clear, as in \u2018 From the Central Mental Hospital\u2019 \u00a0and \u201c In the Wilderness\u2019 featuring \u00a0a vagrant in an asylum who appropriately carries\u00a0 a quote of John Clare\u2019s in his hand, which is also the epigraph for the collection \u201c I have a friend I value here\/ and that\u2019s a quiet mind\u201d. Poetry and marginality combine in \u2018The Blue Eyed Fish\u2019 where Hannah Barnes, a poet admired by Elizabeth Bishop, according to Curtis, is last seen \u201cheading toward the pier at midnight\/ running over the stones as if someone were calling to her.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is the recurring theme of music of course, with Schubert appearing in two poems and most tellingly in the Samuel Beckett inspired \u201cThe Last Breath\u201d where a woman speaks of her old husband near the end of her own life and of how he \u201cplayed Schubert up and down my back\/ I could feel the notes pulsing through his fingers.\u201d<\/p>\n

At times it feels that Curtis is too keen to refer to other poets in his poems, as if seeking to validate his own work. Despite this, he is accomplished in a variety of forms, showing the care and precision found in Michael Eagan\u2019s pipe making: a lucid lyricism is present throughout, the narratives finely balanced between lightness and gravity, with economy and eloquence, sitting alongside self-deprecation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Tony Curtis Approximately in the Key of C (Arc Publications) Tony Curtis was born in\u00a0Dublin, his latest collection\u00a0Approximately in the Key of C,\u00a0is a work of seeming ease. \u00a0The key of C is thought to be the simplest of keys because it has no sharps and no flats, though Chopin apparently regarded the scale as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"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":"\nTony Curtis, Approximately in the Key of C (Arc Publications) \u00a38.09, reviewed by Peter Viggers - 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=6174\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tony Curtis, Approximately in the Key of C (Arc Publications) \u00a38.09, reviewed by Peter Viggers - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Tony Curtis Approximately in the Key of C (Arc Publications) Tony Curtis was born in\u00a0Dublin, his latest collection\u00a0Approximately in the Key of C,\u00a0is a work of seeming ease. \u00a0The key of C is thought to be the simplest of keys because it has no sharps and no flats, though Chopin apparently regarded the scale as […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6174\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-03-24T10:04:03+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-03-24T11:20:22+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6174\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6174\",\"name\":\"Tony Curtis, Approximately in the Key of C (Arc Publications) \u00a38.09, reviewed by Peter Viggers - The Manchester Review\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2016-03-24T10:04:03+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-03-24T11:20:22+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/e6deb0374609919f6e86f6ee1defe8cc\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6174#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6174\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6174#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Tony Curtis, Approximately in the Key of C (Arc Publications) \u00a38.09, reviewed by Peter Viggers\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\",\"name\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"description\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/e6deb0374609919f6e86f6ee1defe8cc\",\"name\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"caption\":\"The Manchester Review\"},\"description\":\"The Manchester Review was founded in 2008 and is published by the Centre for New Writing at The University of Manchester. 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