Dennis O\u2019Driscoll\u2019s death casts a shadow over this book and often seems to be anticipated within it. It\u2019s striking and admirable then that so many poems crackle with a wit that is mordant but full of life.<\/p>\n
Full of life partly because his language is so vigorously contemporary. This allows him to speak directly to the reader, including, I would imagine, the reader who rarely looks at a poem. It gives everything he writes what Thom Gunn called \u201cthe sniff of the real\u201d. But full of life also because O\u2019 Driscoll is steeped in learning, however lightly he wears it. Shining through his use of the clich\u00e9s of the pub, the newspaper article or the bureaucratic report there\u2019s a rich play of allusions and an immense sensitivity to the accumulated resonances of words.<\/p>\n
We can see how these opposite qualities complement and strengthen each other by looking at the beginning of \u201cFabrications\u201d:<\/p>\n
God is dead to the world.<\/p>\n
\u00a0But he still keeps up This uses one of O\u2019 Driscoll\u2019s favourite devices, that of exploding clich\u00e9s into fresh metaphor and multiple meanings. Pauses and spacing separate these meanings out to brilliant effect. For example, the flippant cynicism of the phrase \u201cdead to the world\u201d brings God down to earth with a comical bump. But in \u201cGod is dead\u201d we also hear the cry of the madman in Nietzsche\u2019s The Gay Science<\/i>, articulating the metaphysical crisis of the nineteenth century. The white space after \u201che still keeps up\u201d fills with thoughts of all the other things God might be said to keep up (the universe?) before they\u2019re reduced to \u201cappearances\u201d. \u201cKeeping up appearances\u201d suggests empty snobbery, but within it we feel the stirring both of the sense of ghostly appearances (another joke) and of the serious religious idea of an epiphany (\u201cappearance\u201d in the sense of a manifestation of God). Ideas go on spooling out. Within \u201csets out his stall\u201d lurks the stable of the Nativity. I don\u2019t know whether O\u2019 Driscoll believed in God or not, but if he did he subjects that belief to an extraordinarily stringent testing by doubt. If he didn\u2019t, he leaves us with sobering thoughts about the implications of disbelief. The point is not the conclusions he comes to but the questions he raises and the complex, conflicted feelings he displays in the process.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Even those poems that seem repetitious on the page, would, I think, go down a storm at readings, where having quickly got the main point the audience would relish the wit and skill with which O\u2019Driscoll spins out puns and metaphorical conceits.<\/p>\n His humour is haunted by darkness. Sombre intimations of mortality are everywhere \u2013 the \u2018I\u2019 of several poems contemplates the idea of his own death and the long title poem itself takes stock of a life under the shadow of a visit to Radiology. There\u2019s a very moving last poem (\u201cNocturne Op. 2\u201d) that looks death in the face, but I think O\u2019Driscoll\u2019s view of life and his moral honesty are best summed up by a stanza from (punning title) \u201cAdmissions\u201d:<\/p>\n Before you do down life again, I wrote this for The North<\/em> 50 and would like to thank Peter and Ann Sansom for permission to post it here.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dennis O\u2019Driscoll\u2019s death casts a shadow over this book and often seems to be anticipated within it. It\u2019s striking and admirable then that so many poems crackle with a wit that is mordant but full of life. Full of life partly because his language is so vigorously contemporary. This allows him to speak directly to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dennis-odriscoll"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1295"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1295"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1346,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1295\/revisions\/1346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u00a0……………..<\/span>appearances. Day after
\nday he sets out his stall.<\/p>\n
\nbadmouth a world that never lives up
\nto its billing, recall how glorious it seemed,
\nyour unwillingness to let go, that evening
\nyou were driven to Admissions.<\/p>\n