The Custom House
© 2012 Dennis
Daly
Ibbetson Street
Press
Somerville MA
ISBN 978-0-9846614-1-1
Sofbound, $12.95,
105 pages
Review by Zvi A. Sesling
Dennis Daly has been there, done that and the poetry in Custom House takes you there: ancient
foreign lands you have dreamed about, places of the heart where we all want to
be and the love-hate relationship with work place. Daly is a master artist
painting portraits of places and people, telling stories and in the end
revealing himself as a sensitive soul whose poetry we will not only enjoy, but
ultimately associate with and let enter our hearts.
That is what I
wrote for a blurb of Dennis Daly’s book of poetry and a second reading has not
changed my opinion. In fact, it may have reinforced my feelings about his
poetic prowess. This is a book one can
thoroughly enjoy for the images they conjure, for the imagination they ignite.
Take for example
the title poem which could be a movie scene, but is poetry that brings you to
the moment of action:
Another age: our
greed-governed ancestors
Venture forth,
significant super cargoes
Compelling the
twins: speed and economy
They bounded
oceans
We watch for
their return with telescope
Of brass:
pennants streaming, hull stowed with teas
And silks. We dream them into our harbors.
Long doldrumed –
their ships in need of repair:
Sails split and
rotting, spars sprung.
There is also The Dogs of Mazar-I-Sharif where you are
taken to a place where past and present converge in a picture of present into
modern horror in the last two stanzas:
…They ordered
blood-barbarity
Against Mongol
Hazareas. The outrage began
As door to door
they slaughtered them where they stood,
Dragging them
into the street like firewood
and there they
remained by decree. No Afghan
Could touch the
on pain of execution.
The starved
city-dogs came out and feasted.
The howling that
I’d heard was the cry of those cheated
Animals,
recalling their lost fortune
In The Violinist shows musical insight and
how music plays on the heart:
The action of our
hearts
In your
instrument’s fire,
Sounding in
soulful parts
Celestial: a
string choir
The examples
exhibit just a bit of Daly’s depth and breadth of observation, imagination and
poetic reportage. His book is well worth
a read, but be warned,
reading between
the lines or rereading lines or stanzas yields even more satisfaction. Highly recommended.
Zvi A. Sesling
Author, King of the Jungle and Across Stones of Bad Dreams
Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review
Editor, Bagel Bards Anthology 7
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