Book Review: Thirst; The Man Made of Rain; Unlegendary Heroes;

David Wheatley, Thirst. Loughcrew, Co. Meath: Gallery Books, £12.95(Hardback), 6.95 (Paperback). Brendan. The Man Made of Rain. Newcastle - upon - Tyne: Books, 1998. £7.95 (Paperback). y Heroes. Cliffsof Moher, Co. Clare: Salmon Press,1998. (Paperback). It is disconcerting to finda poem about the onset of grey hair in a first collection, but David Wheatley has been around for quite some time now. His name is familiar from frequent appearance of his poems in periodicals (including winningprizes, being a writer in residence, editingand reviewing. Hehasserved a longapprenticeship. Thirst is the only first collection among the three books under consideration here,but it is themost assured in itshandlingof form. For those of us whosubscribe to theidea that there is no such thing as a free verse, it is gratifying to come across a poet prepared to try his hand at sestinas, sonnets, octosyllabics,translationsandversionsfrom varioussources, epigrams, a prose poem, a long poem, meditations in rhymingcouplets, etc. Attimes, the strain involved insearching forsuch versatility becomes apparent. For instance, a good test of any sestina is to look at the six words chosen for the repeated line endings - how much ingenuity will they demand on the part of the poet? Four of Wheatley'swords in " BrayHead " are " scene " , " air " , " shadow " and " sea " rathergeneralised and nondescript forapoemwhich islittlemore than a verbal postcard from theWicklowcoast.A much moresuccessful, and more knowing, " postcard poem " is " Lithuania: BOOK REVIEWS A long briny Baltic slapsagainst the dyke, comes apart in hundreds - and - thousands you and soaks you through: Briest weather. thecoal - eyed old Jewstares into a pointed camcorder While a guanoed Lenin doffs his cap, propped rigid in cast - iron,epochalsleep. Thirst has about it somethingof theair of a book of samples, inviting readers to choose what we would like next; really, Wheatley should up his own mind as to how to proceed from here. At the same there is a retrospective quality to his book, because reading is like reading Derek Mahon - the Mahon of the1970s and 980s. He haschosen his model well; arguably, hecould not have chosen better. Wheatley writes well; when he can bring the formal dexterity fully in line with his own material, as he showssignsof doingin a ,umber of the poems here, such as " Visiting Hours " , " Alba " and his endering of Baudelaire's " Spleen " , he will be a considerable poet. Man Made of Rain is a thank - offering for survival, and a poem out of compulsion. Brendan Kennelly is known as a poet of xuberance and excess, and has made his reputation latterly with The of Judas and The Man Made is very different. Itis a poem in 43 or 44 parts (the last is unnumbered), giving an account f experience of recovery from a quadruple heart bypass. Iisguidethroughtherecovery - and wearetounderstand this recovery being more than simply a physicaland medical one - isa visionary ompanion, a man made of rain. In an introduction clearing the space his poem, insists on the presenceof this figure, and argues his acceptance intoour range of language and experience. As a poetic device - think of Dante's Berryman's Mr Bones, in Irish poetry - it serves well enough. For however, is more than a poetic expedient; one gets the sense of his creating or a necessary angel to bring him back in the direction of the articular life he had lived before the immense experience of the peration.Asa result, isapoetryof therapyand rehabilitation.When is good, the reader feels a little like Coleridge's wedding guest being by the ancient mariner, and compelled to attend. And, would have us understand, this is the sort of compulsion he imself experienced before the man made of rain. 'When you walk through my tongue you're in a land of no language,' hesaid. He openshis mouth, I walk in, I wander through the tongue of rain. I don'texpect to meet such innocence again, innocencethat is, as I understood it then. WSH UNIVERSITY As with somuchof work, the poetry is uneven. Buthis never had, or even aspired to, the genteel and well - crafted evenness the finished product. A reader soon learns to react to a poor section saying " Never mind, there should be a better one along ina third collection, y Heroes, is very asbefore.Herpoems find it hard to resist narrative, asifshebelieves essenceof the poetry lies in the recording of what once happened; aresomeopening lines, from different Thefirst time I saw sunflowers. In the New Year, we drove away. Sadie's brother was a priest in Hong Kong. The awkwardly named " Unlegendary Heroes " is a collection of beginnings modelled on a folkloresurvey of 1938. this mining material similar to that which has been used her namesake Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, but where Dhomhnaill is attracted to marvellous in the folk tales, what offers is the incidental dry record oflivescaught in twoor threelines. Her invention resides in where the original material seems to have recorded only men, inscribes women into the landscape: Marita Foxhole, whosespongecakes won First Prize at CloncawShow. Miss Harper,Corley, female problems rarely ceased, pleasant in ill - health. Patricia Curley, Corlett, whose joints ached and swelled though she was young, who bore three children. The cumulative list of fifteen such entries works, in so far as it makesa point, butdoes it make a poem?Perhaps it amounts to " FifteenWays of Looking at a Landscape " . Elsewhere there is another cluster of shorf poems: ten haikus, an ill - advised form for they nearly always end up as notesfor poems rather than the real thing. Given the achievement of Mary in her earlier collections, Reading the in September and Third Avenue Rhapsody, she appears to be only to be marking time in this book. The realstrengthof thiscollectionis to be found in its final few poems,among them three about Emilia, Duchess of Leinster in the eighteenth century, oneentitled " Bees and Saint and " TheBog - Witch's Daughter, One Summer " . These are written with some power, without the self - consciousness which characterises too many of her other poems. More like these, please. PETER