As mentioned in a recent post, I
don’t feel it’s ethical for me to review books which wear my endorsement on
their back cover or which include me in their list of acknowledgements and
thanks. The latter is true in the case of Richie McCaffery’s second full
collection, Passport (Nine Arches
Press, 2018), as I had the privilege of reading many of these poems in draft
form. I choose the word “privilege” because I feel fortunate to have witnessed
the clear development that these delicious new poems represent for one of my
favourite poets.
Richie has previously gained a
deserved reputation for being among the best in the business at writing poems
that take objects as their point of departure, and this new collection won’t
disappoint his fans. However, Passport
also sees him taking his work in new directions. As a consequence (and in the
light of not feeling able to write a review as such), I’m delighted to report
that his publisher, the top-notch Nine Arches Press, have granted me permission
to post the following poem from his book on Rogue
Strands today:
Present Tense
I drift around the village pubs
like a soldier on leave from
himself.
I’m fighting with the present tense
–
I’ve never felt as ease in it.
I see sparrow fledglings on a wall
flapping their little tambour wings
as if they’re trying to shake off
the life they’ve been shackled with.
I’ve selected this poem because it
combines many of Richie’s known virtues as a poet with a display of his freshly
extended range. First off, there are examples of successful poetic leaps via
his uses of “like” and “as if”. This is a typical McCaffery trait. He invokes a
comparison that starts off by seeming incongruous before becoming enlightening
and inevitable as in “like a soldier on leave from himself”.
For this reader, however, the poet’s
innovation in “Present Tense” is represented by the way he interweaves the
concrete and the abstract. McCaffery employs an immediacy and directness of
language in a colloquial tone - contracted verbs and a prepositions at the end
of a sentence – to reach out towards ambitious concepts. He begins by using a
concept as the title and axis of the poem, before anchoring it to the specifics
of sparrow fledglings and then finishing off by invoking “life” itself. That’s
the ambition of a poet who’s grown rightly confident in the effects he can
achieve in his writing.
Oh, and just one final point about
the metrics of “Present Tense”. Most of the lines in this poem hover between
eight and nine syllables, but the final line suddenly shifts to seven as
McCaffery abruptly comes to the core of his inspiration. This is a top-notch
example of how form can marry content, the whole thus greater than the sum of
its parts.
In other words and in conclusion,
this thoroughly biased blogger very much recommends Passport. It deserves to make several shortlists this year, though
I wouldn’t put money on that happening even if I were a betting man. To get
hold of a copy and see what I mean, why not follow this link to the Nine Arches
website?
