Dec 19 - ‘West’ Poetry Book Review
By Mark Montegriffo
The late English literary critic V.S. Pritchett, wrote in a review directed at the novelist Ford Madox Ford, that to be a great novel writer, one required the capacity of ‘determined stupor’. To be a good poet, however, quite the opposite traits come in handy. The poet is more engaged and active in his observation, reflecting society with a unique voice; playfully holding up the mirror (or selfie stick) to tradition, dogma and ritual. Giordano Durante’s debut poetry collection shows an intimate love of the poetical voice, as he carves his own in ‘West’.
Various works in the collection engage with themes of direction and location, others are memories of places and people, and the dialectic of age and youth. Running through most, however, is the distinct, the local, the sometimes witless charm of a routine or tradition, or a dram of good whisky. They effectively embrace the simple pleasures of life by finding beauty in comfort, indulgence and nostalgia.
The wartime British artist Paul Nash writes, “there are places…whose relationship of parts creates a mystery, an enchantment, which cannot be analysed.” Identification and reflection of that mystery and enchantment, not analysis, is the concern of the poet. This is perhaps the main distinction between the pure poet and the pure philosopher.
Durante studied philosophy in UCL and King’s College London, and there is no doubt that his background in the discipline informs his style to a degree. As Sartre said that “we are condemned to be free”, the activity of philosophy, liberating as it is, inoculates a lens against which no antibody exists.
In ‘West’, we find allusions to Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Nabokov among others scattered across the collection. This analytical training could provide a hurdle for some, but Durante, when ‘philosophising’ in his poetry, finds a synthesis between the critical and the aesthetic, the sophisticated and the vulgar, the sober and the daft. Equally, Durante’s experience as a father of a young child informs his poetry. Like the philosopher and the poet, the first mental faculty a child develops is curiosity - be it of how a particular phrase sounds like -and conveys - the processes of growth and aging, or the smell of horse manure in the streets of Seville.
But ‘West’ also features an array of perspectives to whet one’s poetical appetite. ‘Katie’, for instance, is based on Durante’s aforementioned daughter, and centres on the opening chapter of life. It is reminiscent of Jacques’ monologue in Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’:
“At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.”
Durante, though, takes a personal and less melancholic angle. This angle takes a sharp turn in the next poem in the section, ‘Meat’, which reflects on the absurdity of mortality and our ritualistic reactions to such an event. The intentional departure from the alpha to the omega takes us from the start to finish of Shakespeare’s ‘seven stages’ monologue for Jacques:
“Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”
Mere oblivion it may be, but Durante challenges the solemnity and arbitrary grandeur to pull us all down a peg:
“Sparrows, scattering now
(their dusty, half-dead eyes
their nervous
animal innocence)
seem to know more about this”.
If the collection had one basic following to heed, it would be that of Hardy’s maxim as quoted in ‘West’: ‘The business of the poet and the novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things.’ Through ‘Meat’, ‘Alameda Interlude’, ‘Eastern Beach Man’, ‘e-love’, all the way to ‘One’ (the final poem), Giordano Durante heeds the advice of the Victorian poet, making for a stimulating, provoking, and witty debut collection.
The book is now on sale at the Heritage Trust Shop, The Gibraltar Bookshop, Sacarello’s Newsagents, Sacarello’s Coffee Shop and via Amazon.
The author will be signing books this coming Thursday 21st December as from 10am at Sacarello’s Coffee Shop in Irish Town.
Pic shows the author (left) with Mark Montegriffo.
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