{"id":7396,"date":"2017-03-11T19:35:16","date_gmt":"2017-03-11T18:35:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=7396"},"modified":"2017-03-11T19:35:30","modified_gmt":"2017-03-11T18:35:30","slug":"joey-connolly-long-pass-reviewed-by-ian-pople","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=7396","title":{"rendered":"Joey Connolly, Long Pass<\/em>, reviewed by Ian Pople"},"content":{"rendered":"
Joey Connolly, Long Pass<\/em> (Carcanet, \u00a39.99).<\/h5>\n

Joey Connolly\u2019s first book has elegance and charm to spare. But it also has a huge sense of doubt and a willingness to share that doubt with the world. Its epigraph is from John Ashbery\u2019s Three Poems<\/em>, and includes the statement \u2018Better the erratic approach, which wins all or at least loses nothing, than the cautious semi-failure.\u2019 And the book itself is divided into two parts \u2018Theories\u2019 and \u2018Windmills\u2019. None of which suggests whole of lot of certainty, even if it does suggest some bravado. <\/p>\n

The long poem \u2018Why\u2019, towards the end of the book, goes into this uncertainty in some detail. This is a poem which shows Connolly\u2019s ability to sustain a particular note while embellishing it with finesse and elegance. Here, Connolly uses an italic x to elide \u2018because\u2019, and, following the x there are a range answers to the inevitable \u2018why carry on?\u2019; \u2018as an excuse to sit, handled by the August sun\/ on a fourth-storey Turinese balcony,\/ swallowed by the late afternoon heat\/ and Peter Sarstedt playing from inside\/ moving your toes in a pool of shade cast\/ by the laundry drying on the storey above.\u2019 This is not only very fine observation, but in the midst of the observation, the two verbs \u2018handled\u2019 and \u2018swallowed\u2019 seem both neat and precise. Though what Connolly, a man in his \u2013what, mid-to-late twenties – is doing listening to the late Peter Sarstedt, I can\u2019t comprehend. But Connolly\u2019s magpie imagination is very adept at using that kind of \u2018period\u2019 detail, if to subvert it. <\/p>\n

A number of the poems here have this recursive, parallel structure. In \u2018Poem in which I\u2019, the paralleled, repeated phrase is \u2018There but for the…\u2019; in \u2018Incapable though the cards are\u2019, the parallel is \u2018of \u2013 ing\u2019, as in \u2018of putting paid\u2019, \u2018of enacting\u2019, \u2018of unseating\u2019, etc.; in \u2018Poem in which if not well\u2019, the parallel is \u2018if not X then Y\u2019, as in \u2018If not spires then phone masts\u2019, \u2018If not paint then the toadskin upholstery\u2019. In other hands, such a device might be a substitute for rhyme, acting as a crutch for the impetus for the poem. But Connolly is an imaginative writer, who weaves the repetitions in the poems into compelling trajectories. <\/p>\n

Elsewhere there is a range of equally compelling translations. However, in line with Connolly\u2019s need to subvert, these translations often stop and start, and pull themselves apart in the process of their delivery. \u2018Your room at midnight was suddenly\u2019 is a version of a Cavafy poem usually entitled, \u2018God abandons Anthony\u2019. Sachperoglou in the OUP translation gives line 4 \u2013 6, of the original as follows, \u2018your fate that\u2019s giving in now, your deeds\/ that failed, your life\u2019s plans that proved to be\/ all illusions, do not needlessly lament.\u2019 In putting the verb at the end of the sentence, Sachperoglou gives syntax of the original, but reduces Cavafy to doggerel. Connolly\u2019s version is an entirely in keeping with the spirit of the original, \u2018but now\/ is no time to mourn your loss,\/ your departing fortune \u2013 a life\u2019s work\/ spoiling before your eyes, a host of plans\/ proving illusory.\u2019 In the second \u2018version\u2019 of this poem, the narrator is falling in love\/lust with a woman who is \u2018explaining in an\/ almost unbroken English a poem from the Greek\/ of Cavafy: I don\u2019t know it.\u2019 In \u2018An Ocean\u2019 there are two \u2018versions\u2019 of a fragment by Montale. In fact, there are three parts to the poem, and the third part compares Edwin Morgan\u2019s translation with Jonathan Galassi\u2019s translation.<\/p>\n

This post-modernism is worn slightly on Connolly\u2019s sleeve, although he is aware of that; as he remarks \u2018the poem\/ its egotism of ambition;\u2019 in \u2018Average temperature at surface level\u2019. And the second of the Cavafy pair ends as follows, \u2018I don\u2019t know what it is which is leaving,\/ only the sweet draw of its\/ pain as it goes from me.\u2019 So Connolly can be a very personal poet and has technique enough to make the personal poems poignant and beguiling; as in \u2018The Big House\u2019 where a flight of \u2018unknown birds\u2019 suggest to the poet, \u2018a display of emotion I shouldn\u2019t think\/ I could put a name to it\u2019s so joyful.\u2019 <\/p>\n

Joey’s poems appeared in issue 17<\/a>.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joey Connolly, Long Pass (Carcanet, \u00a39.99). Joey Connolly\u2019s first book has elegance and charm to spare. But it also has a huge sense of doubt and a willingness to share that doubt with the world. Its epigraph is from John Ashbery\u2019s Three Poems, and includes the statement \u2018Better the erratic approach, which wins all or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"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":"\nJoey Connolly, Long Pass, reviewed by Ian Pople - 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=7396\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Joey Connolly, Long Pass, reviewed by Ian Pople - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Joey Connolly, Long Pass (Carcanet, \u00a39.99). 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