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In her editorial to Issue 163 of Envoi<\/em> magazine, editor Jan Fortune confronts a question which even\u00a0 passionate poetry readers must sometimes ask:\u00a0 why read poetry?\u00a0 In answer, she argues a position which seems to me not only self-evidently true, but also apposite to a consideration of Work Horses<\/em>, David Cooke\u2019s new collection, his third after Breughel\u2019s Dancers<\/em> (1984) and the retrospective In The Distance<\/em> (2011).\u00a0 Reading poetry, she says, makes a difference not only to the ways we respond to the world, but to how we negotiate it as well:\u00a0 \u201c… poetry assists us to pay attention to our perceptions and expectations so that the quotidian does not simply remain ordinary and familiar, but becomes the context for moments of epiphany … when we step beyond the familiar to gain new insights.\u00a0 At its best poetry allows us to experience the deep connections between language and seeing.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019d add memory, a form of seeing, to this definition, as I think Cooke might also, although the point remains well made.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The collection is prefaced by two epigraphs, one being Irish language poet Se\u00e1n \u00d3 R\u00edord\u00e1in\u2019s \u201cT\u00e1 T\u00edr na n\u00d3g ar ch\u00fal an t\u00ed\u201d, \u201cThe land of eternal youth is just behind the house \u2013 a beautiful land, fluent within itself\u201d, a perception of the value of the past, the place we come from, clearly central to Cooke\u2019s thinking also.\u00a0 In \u201cStereogram\u201d, for example, his memory of the sideboard-sized wooden cabinets containing turntables on which shellac and later vinyl records used to be played sits alongside his discovery of the songs of Bob Dylan.\u00a0 In one sense, it\u2019s a simple poem remembering the music of half a century ago as he first heard it;\u00a0 in another, it\u2019s a meditation on the passing of time and of the poet\u2019s own life:\u00a0 \u201cI was listening to Dylan\u2019s Time Out of Mind<\/em>, \/ … When he sang about death \/ he ripped through hokum. \/ We had all our lives before us.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Work Horses <\/em>delves deeply into Cooke\u2019s preoccupation with these themes.\u00a0 In one way or another, all the poems touch on them.\u00a0 In the title poem, for example, he recalls \u201csomewhere in the hinterland \/ of just remembered childhood\u201d watching not only \u201ca drayman \/ as he guides heraldic horses \/ through a time-thinned stream of traffic\u201d, but also his father in \u201cThe clanking compound of the brewery, \/ where my dad did shifts when work \/ was slack on the buildings\u201d.\u00a0 In other poems, there are other memories, of 1963, the year he became ten and \u201cthe Beatles invented \/ the good times\u201d, of time at school spent earning gold stars and chanting \u201ctables daily – \/ our paean to the god of rote learning\u201d, of family house-moves, \u201cthe years of thrift and children\u201d, of boyish mischief, \u201cmy jackdaw eyes twitching \/ at a glint of silver between the floorboards and, finally, in a moving poem entitled \u201cEmpty Nests\u201d and dedicated to his wife, an acceptance of the extent to which history repeats itself:\u00a0 as he grew up and away, so have his own children, as his Irish background once made him a stranger in a strange land, so now, on a journey south, to \u201cpolyglot streets in Holloway\u201d, he and his wife are met at a motorway service station, \u201cby Polish girls, \/ whose English has a lilt \/ they\u2019ve brought from Krak\u00f3w, \/ Warszawa, or a place in the sticks \/ they\u2019d tell me if I asked.\u201d\u00a0 Everything changes, everything stays the same.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The jazz singer, Ella Fitzgerald, was once criticized for sounding \u201ctoo sunny\u201d, paying so much attention to musicality that all her songs sounded the same and so lost dramatic power.\u00a0 Her reply was simple:\u00a0 being clear doesn\u2019t mean lacking soul.\u00a0 It\u2019s a view I share both in regard to music and poetry, where sloppiness and obscurity sometimes masquerade as profundity, when in fact they represent inability to write clearly.\u00a0 In this respect, one of the pleasures of Cooke\u2019s poems is the quality of their craftsmanship, their respect for language and its music.\u00a0 These skills are manifest throughout the collection, although \u201cAt Varykino\u201d must serve here.\u00a0 Economic in expression, tightly structured, but far-reaching in thought and content, the poem, one of a group derived from a family journey to Russia to visit Cooke\u2019s son and his Russian wife, evokes memories and images from David Lean\u2019s film of Boris Pasternak\u2019s great novel \u201cDoctor Zhivago\u201d. \u00a0At the same time, it broods over the 1917 Revolution and, by implication, everything that followed from it.\u00a0 The narrator addresses Lara, played unforgettably in the film by Julie Christie:\u00a0 \u201c… like a ghost reborn, Strelnikov \/ told you the private life is dead<\/em>; \/ his rectitude a new kind of purity \/ whose thought is doctrinaire, \/ his speech a bridled mob \/ that makes you seek your chances \/ beyond the margin of events. \/ Arriving at Varykino, you find a house \/ that is wrecked in snow, a past\u2019s discredited \/ chattels forgotten beneath its sheets … \/ its new growth pushing beneath untrodden snow.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Elsewhere in the collection, poems about his daughter\u2019s conversion to Islam, her subsequent marriage, his and his wife\u2019s first visit to Sri Lanka to meet their new son-in-law\u2019s family, \u201cas far from home \/ as we\u2019ve ever been\u201d, rub shoulders with memories of visits to Irish relatives, attempts to learn Irish, not wanting to be the boxer his father thought he had the \u201cstyle and the stamp\u201d to become and admiration for the legendary Blues singer Robert Johnson, who is supposed to have sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for the gift of making \u201c… open chords \/ slide down frets \/ like a freight train\u2019s \/ thunder on tracks.\u201d\u00a0 What binds these elements, gives them a convincing unity, is the clarity of the poet\u2019s focus, his sharpness of observation and his understanding that attentiveness to life is important, because \u201ceach day light forsakes us\u201d.\u00a0 Enjoyable, thought-provoking and honest.\u00a0 Definitely one for the bookshelf.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Work Horses <\/strong><\/em>by David Cooke is published by\u00a0Ward Wood Publishing ISBN:\u00a0 978-1-908742-00-1, \u00a38.99 (\u00a35.99 on publisher\u2019s website)\u00a0 Order your copy here <\/a><\/p>\n \u00a92013:\u00a0 Ken Head<\/a> <\/strong><\/p>\n