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<\/a><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The author of this cerebral and assured debut is the joint editor of a magazine called Kaffeeklatsch<\/em><\/a>. Its manifesto suggests (in the midst of a post-modern welter of interlocking footnotes) that the reader of poetry \u2018must be like the cat, flirt with everything\u2019. Long Pass <\/em>offers a wide variety of attractions up to which the reader may sidle and against which to rub his or her back.<\/p>\n One of the themes of the book is poetry itself and its making, the mutability of the words with which \u2018[t]he darkness is swarming\u2019 (\u2018The Draft\u2019). Connolly is interested in \u2018[t]he orthodontic meddling of language\/ with the world, its snaggling malocclusions\u2019: \u2018[Untititled]\u2019 (sic). At times, his language mimics the sound of nature, as in \u2018Liguria\u2019, which captures \u2018the plump primary note\/ of a woodpigeon swelling rhythmically into the air\u2019:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2018 the glue<\/em> goes. We pool<\/em> so, it<\/p>\n schools <\/em>us. The rules<\/em>: yes, they fooled you, accruing \u2026\u2019<\/p>\n Demonstrating the scale of its ambition, the collection includes \u2018reworkings\u2019 of poems in six European languages. Connolly presents two new versions of each poem (except in the case of Rozhdestvensky\u2019s \u2018History\u2019). In each case, the second version departs from the original to a much greater extent than the first. In his second version of Christine de Pizan\u2019s \u2018Third Ballad\u2019, which tells the story of the drowned lovers Hero and Leander, the poet addresses de Pizan across the centuries: is just the blackest water, nothingy and unbreathable\u2019. And if poetry and translation weren\u2019t difficult enough, there are also the poet\u2019s \u2018financial\/ and romantic perplexities\u2019 (\u2018Why?\u2019), \u2018a stack\/ of unread books, the constant dull subpoena of alcohol\/ and tobacco\u2019 (\u2018Average Temperature at Surface Level\u2019). An unconsummated love affair is recounted in \u2018A Brief Glosa\u2019, having been foreshadowed in earlier poems: straggling Manchester\u2019s dive-bars until five for the pretext of drink<\/p>\n between the kitsch and neons as if there was no agony<\/p>\n keeping our bodies apart.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The poet stands at the edge of a city bridge in \u2018I am Positioned\u2019:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2018\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0thinking of the woman who has asked<\/p>\n for us to keep apart, for two months, while she<\/p>\n <\/p>\n works things out: the woman I love. Although<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t, I suppose, make that clear.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A defining feature of the collection is its willingness to engage with philosophical concepts. For example, \u2018to the materialist\u2019, Connolly says, \u2018if you can\u2019t ride two horses at once\/ you shouldn\u2019t be in the circus\u2019: \u2018Of Some Substance, Once\u2019. The book\u2019s centrepiece is \u2018Average Temperature at Surface Level\u2019, an extended meditation on information and human attention, and the relationship between seeing, describing and remembering. The \u2018tone veers uncontrollably\u2019 from abstraction \u2013 \u2018object\/ bleeds into type, the starvation-ration of quiddity\u2019 \u2013 to the helpfully concrete: \u2018new, still-wet permanent marker is the best plan\/ for erasing old permanent marker\u2019.<\/p>\n Connolly\u2019s work places more demands on the reader than straightforward lyric poetry \u2013 e.g. I found myself looking up words such as \u2018doxological\u2019, \u2018dialetheic\u2019 and \u2018ideolected\u2019. Any poetry that is intelligent is in danger of being perceived as overly clever but, for me, Long Pass<\/em> generally avoided this trap. Admittedly, the line may be crossed in \u2018Poem in Which Go I\u2019: \u2018There but for the goes of going walks our lord. There\/ but for the gauze of saying so goes all\u2019. Another risky moment comes in \u2018Fantasy of Manners\u2019, where the poet flagellates himself in Latin for being too intellectual, albeit with deflating mentions of \u2018bollocks\u2019 and \u2018shite\u2019.<\/p>\n The title of the collection can be linked to the reference, also in \u2018Fantasy of Manners\u2019, to the poet\u2019s \u2018own hailmary explanatory\u2019 \u2013 a \u2018Hail Mary\u2019 is a long pass in American football which is unlikely to find a receiver. The pessimism implicit in the title of Long Pass<\/em> is belied by the excellence of the work it contains. The collection is a substantial achievement, which repays repeated reading. Ultimately, as reflected in his concluding poem, \u2018Last Letter from the Frontier\u2019, Connolly\u2019s tenacity wins a strange victory over despair:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2018I know that we have years \u2013 perhaps forever \u2013 to wait<\/p>\n until the drawling missionaries and the thrill and the skin drums<\/p>\n of pirates. And until then, I am bricking myself in.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n John Mee<\/a> is a poet and academic from Cork in Ireland. He won the Patrick Kavanagh Award in 2015 and the Fool for Poetry International Chapbook Competition in 2016. His chapbook, From the Extinct<\/em><\/a>, is published by Southword Editions.\u00a0www.johnmeepoetry.com<\/a>\u00a0https:\/\/www.munsterlit.ie\/Bookstore Other Titles.html<\/a>\u00a0Twitter: @JohnMeeLaw<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 The author of this cerebral and assured debut is the joint editor of a magazine called Kaffeeklatsch. Its manifesto suggests (in the midst of a post-modern welter of interlocking footnotes) that the reader of poetry \u2018must be like the cat, flirt with everything\u2019. Long Pass offers a wide variety of attractions up to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16479"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16589,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16479\/revisions\/16589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u2018Listen, Frenchy: the gap between our tongues<\/p>\n
\nThe business of reworking is fraught since \u2018ideas have words\/ and words ideas and they get\/ everywhere, sand in sandwiches\/ at the beach\u2019: \u2018An Ocean,\u2019.<\/p>\n
\n\u2018Twenty-four days, really, all told,<\/p>\n