Reading down the bones. A Contrary review by Grace Wells  “Gaps in the whitethorn admit me to this once and once only sunset,” Patrick Deeley tells us, and we slip in behind him through his cherished branches to share a beloved and luminous world. Without doubt Deeley is a man of the earth, happiest when he’s down in the details of nature, where clay and marl juices seep and the one-minded school of minnow turn, “land aspiring to be water, water to be land.” He’s also a refreshing, wonderful, much-overlooked poet whose greatest offering is his ability to stand humble and observant before the Irish landscape. Deeley receives and records “the bonus of close-ups:/ a furry face, a frittered acorn,/a loose feather gone/dithering airily onto another/level,” but still he tells us we “must lean down further in”. Through lucid, elegant lyrics he takes us deep down into the marrow of Ireland, generous both with its details and its expanses, no matter that “nature happens/too hugely for any containment.” Deeley is content to disappear in his poems—“let the limelight be on fox/or badger answering to your stillness.” He’s aware of his own limitations, and he knows how far he’s allowed to go before he becomes a trespasser in this resonant, spirit-laden country, where night is “otherwise hushed/huge, full of potency that forbade.” His work abounds with the inhabitants of this rural wetland, human and animal, but his depictions of characters are never laboured or nostalgic; rather his stanzas respectfully photograph and give dignity to those who have lived their days in a place where “all was/winter yesterday, was stone the day before.” Deeley draws from the deep pool of Irish myth but doesn’t drown us in unfamiliar references or berate us with sentiment; instead his light touch reconnects us to the urgent, forgotten matter of the psyche. Deeley knows this deep material is as threatened as his beloved landscape, “enlightenment as/soon breaks on our minds,/burning superstition out, clearing swamps/of their legends. And we are/ certain no secret’s held beyond explication.” The poems mourn the “hearth-song/we will scarcely recognise/as having belonged to us”, and the ‘Bones of Creation’ opens out beyond Deeley’s gorgeous descriptions of place to challenge the upheavals brought on by Ireland’s terrific progress during the last decade—it’s a progress that in ‘Piecework,’ Deeley lays bare when he asks of his former schoolmates, maybe you’d as soon forget this land forced to sump and mulch, its wet meadows drained, its people shifting out from back field to main road, its menial undercoat hidden, the long tunnels where the Polish and Latvian women move, pale-skinned in semi-darkness, pushing through piecework with their baskets of button mushrooms. Though a number of Irish poets have written about the great changes in Ireland during the last ten to fifteen years, none have done it as beautifully, as potently as Deeley. While so many contemporary-Ireland poems have been all knees and elbows in the face, angular and displaced, Deeley has assimilated the changes deep into his sense of lyrical order. While some poets have fired back at us bullet words of what they see, “cement” and “developers” and “Celtic Tiger,” until we run for cover both from the changes and the poetry about the changes, Deeley has at a deep level, a bone level, made sense of Ireland’s extreme make-over. He’s sewn its new challenges into his poems with the same subtlety and elegance he uses when word by word, detail by detail, he builds a bog pool. Deeley writes of Dublin, his new home, with the same attention that Michael Coady gives to Carrick-on-Suir, both poets honouring the unremarked, but while Coady focuses on the minute grammar of human action, Deeley diverges to look for the essential matter beneath it all. He finds what he is looking for in things like the trouble-boast of a rooster, flung from the hollow heaped full of tyres and junk metal. There, with flames blazoned on his breast, he raises himself, rattles his wattles in defiance of our conveyed progress. And for a moment I credit the earth is breaking at my heels afresh, as a horse, a rooster, a capercaillie—all fabulous, indefatigable creatures restored. Deeley always ends poems beautifully and satisfyingly; there’s no ghastly open-ended ambiguity to leave us unsettled and empty-handed. If he wants to provoke us, he doesn’t do it with tricks, he does it with ideas, always standing over his opinions, unapologetic for his emotional responses, always leaving us at the last line with a full harvest. Like ‘The Badger on Orwell Bridge,’ Deeley has come up from an older world, and though he might want to “haul between his forepaws/these parked cars, maul them into one/cacophonous, rending rejoinder to the traffic/that outside him flows,” he doesn’t. Both badger and poet accept they “must fall in love with the slick pelt/of the road.” They are both, after all, “gentle.” For all his lyricism, Deeley stays grounded in reality. Rather than remain with the pain of what he sees, he pushes deeper beneath it all to see darkness’ place in the scheme of things. He does not allow himself—or us—to be ground down entirely—“there was no cure but raise/dust, let dust inform, dust inspire us.” There is always some form of resolution somewhere—most usually one supplied by nature. For all his wisdom and talent Deeley remains charmingly modest and self-effacing, “What does it matter if all was better said and done/before? Now you are leased the wonder” he tells us. And his sense of wonder—realistic, earth-bound wonder—rises again and again, so we can never forget that “life’s/ a frittering minute, beauty/ the breaking nature of everything.” Ultimately the collection is well named, Deeley has found the Bones of Creation. He’s turned them in his hands, read their messages, and passed them on. If you only buy one book of poetry this year, make it this one. These are good, good poems; they don’t get much better than this. Grace Wells is an English poet living in Ireland and a regular contributor to Contrary. In February she published a children’s book for Irish Aid called “One World, Our World.” Index of Reviews...>http://www.irishaid.gov.ie/article.asp?article=1420Reviews.htmlhttp://astore.amazon.com/contrary-20/detail/1904556914shapeimage_1_link_0shapeimage_1_link_1

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The Bones of Creation

Patrick Deeley

2008, Dedalus Press

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SPRING 2009 COVER GIRLS ON BIKES TRACY OLIVER TALES OF THE DEVIL’S WIFE CARMEN LAU SILENT LAMBS D.E. FREDD EPITHALAMIUM KARA CANDITO CITY OF THE MILLION LIGHTS RE’LYNN HANSEN SALUMAIO PAUL REDMAN WHEN I SAY LOVE MEREDITH MARTINEZ PREPARE TO BELIEVE DANE CERVINE PART OF THE MOON GREGORY LAWLESS ON GOYA STREET EDWARD MC WHINNEY FROM THE EDITOR REVIEWS ROBYN SCHIFF PATRICK DEELEY ELIZABETH DIAMOND DANIYAL MUEENUDDIN LAUREN GROFF ACHY OBEJAS JIM HARRISON JOHN ADAMS LAURA MILLER V.M. YEATES WILHELMINA COLE HOLLADAY THOMAS RAY CROWELSpring-2009.htmlBikes.htmlBikes.htmlDevils.htmlDevils.htmlLambs.htmlLambs.htmlEpithalamium.htmlEpithalamium.htmlLights.htmlLights.htmlSalumaio.htmlSalumaio.htmlLove.htmlLove.htmlBelieve.htmlBelieve.htmlMoon.htmlMoon.htmlGoya.htmlGoya.htmlBrandie.htmlReviews.htmlSchiff.htmlDiamond.htmlMueenuddin.htmlGroff.htmlObejas.htmlHarrison.htmlAdams.htmlMIller.htmlYeates.htmlHolladay.htmlBrandie.htmlshapeimage_5_link_0shapeimage_5_link_1shapeimage_5_link_2shapeimage_5_link_3shapeimage_5_link_4shapeimage_5_link_5shapeimage_5_link_6shapeimage_5_link_7shapeimage_5_link_8shapeimage_5_link_9shapeimage_5_link_10shapeimage_5_link_11shapeimage_5_link_12shapeimage_5_link_13shapeimage_5_link_14shapeimage_5_link_15shapeimage_5_link_16shapeimage_5_link_17shapeimage_5_link_18shapeimage_5_link_19shapeimage_5_link_20shapeimage_5_link_21shapeimage_5_link_22shapeimage_5_link_23shapeimage_5_link_24shapeimage_5_link_25shapeimage_5_link_26shapeimage_5_link_27shapeimage_5_link_28shapeimage_5_link_29shapeimage_5_link_30shapeimage_5_link_31shapeimage_5_link_32shapeimage_5_link_33shapeimage_5_link_34