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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A rare masterpiece from a great poet, 13 Mar 2001
By A Customer
Conjure is an exquisite collection by a poet who more than any other writing today sings to us. His poems contain an enchanting music which sometimes marries simplicity and beauty together in a way reminiscent of Mozart. But it is not just the song with Donaghy, it is what he makes music about. The lovely little poem Tears, which is short enough to quote in full, gives us a flavour of the world of Conjure:Tears are shed, and every day workers recover the bloated cadavers of lovers or lover who drown in cars this way. / And they crowbar the door and ordinary stories pour, furl, crash, and spill downhill - as water will - not orient, nor sparkling, but still There is a lot of pain in this book, a lot of loss. There is his father, there is the child - looking in wonder and without sadness, and there are signs of a Catholicism lived and left behind. There are terrible facts from history, in 'Where is it written that I must die here' there is a scene so horrible that it gave me a nightmare and haunts the edge of my imaginings, but that is the poet's job - lest we forget and such facts drown in such seas as the Guinness Book of Records. Against the pain and loss there is humour and tenderness and metaphysical fancy. In both the music that he makes and the stories he tells there are beats and images that make us laugh. There is also laughter and delight as he magics words into giving us pictures of mysterious realms. The love in his poetry is everywhere: it is in the gentle melancholy he displays as what is lost is paid homage, it is there in the sympathy he gives for (nearly) all who appear in his poems, and it is there for his son who possesses this book in a deeper way than a normal dedication would give - the last poem in the book Haunts concerns the poet and his son haunting each other across time. In Proust, time is transcended when some sensation now so mirrors some sensation from our past that we are lifted above time and taken back to our being as it was then; in Haunts three times are brought together, not into a moment above time, but by a magic in which across the years father and son say the words 'Don't be afraid' to each other. In a paradoxical triangle of causality this simple and beautiful sentiment ties together the three times - Conjure shows us many terrifying and distressing things, but this is its true message: Don't be afraid. Choosing his books of the year for the Observer, Melvyn Bragg said "Conjure contains poems which are as deeply structured, as lucid, moving and witty as Auden at his best". I agree, but there is also something reminiscent of Yeats in Donaghy, both in the music of the words and the astonishing vividness of the pictures he creates. More than anything, tho', he is his own man building a vast and wonderful world for us to delight in and learn from. This is an essential work of poetry of our time and it is a profound pleasure.
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by Michael Donaghy
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