The Wild Goose Poems By Kevin Gallagher

The Wild Goose

Poems

By Kevin Gallagher

Loom Press

www.loompress.com

67 Pages

$20.00

Review by Dennis Daly

No writer distills history utilizing the form of poetic narratives better than Kevin Gallagher. In his latest effort, The Wild Goose Poems, Gallagher delves into Irish Americana, its background, and its sources. He uses a first-person sequence of poems on the rebel Irishman, then iconic Bostonian, John Boyle O’Reilly as the centerpiece of his collection. The poet leads into that sequence with a retelling of Celtic myth and finishes the book with a combination of classical myth and both local (Southie) and family lore. Think beginning, middle, and end. And that’s the way it reads.

Gallagher initiates his saga gently with a piece he entitles Birth of a Nation. Chock full of one damsel confined to a tower, one greed-filled king, the mysterious De Danaan tribe, one lovely princess, one white witch (or, in this case, a she-druid), one charming prince, and the bane of Celtic life, a stolen cow, this piece gives necessary foundation and entrances the reader in with its dreamlike sexuality. Consider these alluring and delicate lines,

As Cian stared at her

Eithlinn’s whole body went warm.

She now saw what she only heard.

She now had what she only dreamed of.

They each declared their love

for each other in the same breath

then gently took off the other’s clothes

before they could breathe another.

He buried his face in her breasts

As she put him between her thighs

and sang a long slow psalm

of love up to the skies.

Cian wanted to live with her forever

Fenian to his core, John Boyle O’Reilly was sentenced for treasonous activities by a British tribunal to imprisonment in Australia. He escaped and as a poet, espouser of Irish causes, and editor of the Boston-based national newspaper The Pilot, earned regard and fame in America. In the poem 1867 Gallagher chronicles O’Reilly’s prison ship experience. The poet captures the below-deck claustrophobia this way,

There were three hundred of us without shadows

cast by lamps under the forward hold.

We welcomed each other with loud

Laughter curses of the most evil fear.

A warm stranger gripped my arm and whispered

come O’Reilly we are waiting for you.

He led me through a small door amidships

to the space where we waited to be slaves.

After O’Reilly’s escape and raucous welcome to Boston by two thousand cheering Irishmen, he faced the reality of his political circumstances. These opening lines from Gallagher’s poem Help Wanted explain,

Positively No Irish need apply?

We were half-starved and penniless

farmers without any tools for the city.

Most of us went working on the wharfs.

Women made factory shoes or sewed from home.

We had our will, our music, and our God,

but many wondered why we traveled here.

Like most Irish immigrants O’Reilly melted into the stew of multi-ethnic America. He left his Irish grudges behind (mostly) and became more American than the Americans. Writing for the Pilot he railed against the old insular hatreds carried as baggage into his new country. When Irish Orangemen marched in the streets of New York demeaning Catholics, they were attacked and four of them gunned down by Fenians. In Gallagher’s poem, Boston Pilot, O’Reilly laments the outrage,

Why must we carry our cursed island feuds

to disturb the peace of these citizens?

We are all aliens from a petty island

in the eyes of our fellow Americans. Here

the Orange have as much right to parade

as a Fenian regiment in green.

Both parties are to be blamed and condemned,

yes both Fenians and the Orangemen.

The fishing vessel, The Valhalla, moored in Gloucester and for awhile in the Saugus River has become part of Boston Irish lore. Even Whitey Bulger, the notorious gangster, reportedly played a tangential part in this mythological drama. This reviewer, in a past life, met the Valhalla’s captain and off-loaded its cargo on the docks of Gloucester. It carried squid at the time. Later the same ship, tracked by satellite during the Reagan administration, was intercepted, carrying guns, off the coast of Ireland. Gallagher details the arms-running preparation in his poem entitled The Valhalla,

We had close to seven tons of mail-order

Weapons delivered by UPS.

We purchased them through ads in Shotgun News

by calling the 1-800 number.

We ordered ammunition cans, weapons,

training manuals, nylon rifle clips,

piles of M-16 magazines,

and rifle bags to hide them in the bogs.

We bought rocket warheads, anti-aircraft,

and 20,000 rounds home delivery special.

But the handguns, the rifles, and shotguns,

we stole those the old-fashioned way.

We packed all this in a couple of U-Hauls,

Then drove the trucks up to Gloucester Harbor.

My favorite poem in this collection, The Rose in the Elysian Fields, describes a classically based visit between the poet and his deceased father in the underworld. Mostly written in blank verse the piece, eleven pages long, conjures up an affecting blend of passion, wit, wisdom, and hope. Eight pages in, Gallagher inserts a lovely villanelle. Here’s the heart of it,

You can’t be dead for the rest of my life.

I’m so afraid that I will run out of time

but I don’t have any time to lose.

I cannot wait to see you until I die.

When you aren’t with me my life is a lie

and there is no such thing as the truth.

You can’t be dead for the rest of my life.

The rest of my life is too long a line

and I wouldn’t have anything to prove.

You can’t be dead for the rest of my life.

Poets who breathe in the rarefied air of Elysium, I’m told, change forever. Here’s hoping that Kevin Gallagher remains Kevin Gallagher, at least long enough to write his next book of extraordinary poems.

Millrat Poems By Michael Casey

 

Millrat

Poems By Michael Casey

25th Anniversary Edition

Loom Press

Amesbury, Massachusetts www.loompress.com

ISBN: 978-1-7351689-7-5

Review by Dennis Daly

Once upon a time multileveled manufacturing plants with attached smokestacks, called mills or factories grew like mushrooms around waterfalls and river bends. They attracted the able-bodied, both men and women, who sought financial independence and dignity. What these seekers found instead in this soot-filled urban culture was a rite of passage for some, a technological trap for others, and a graveyard or graveyard road for the unlucky remainder.

Humor often got one through the interminable repetitions and the real dangers of modern machinery and toxic chemicals. Michael Casey knows this and nails the details of mill culture in his classic collection of poetic narratives entitled Millrat, which is being republished this year as a 25th Anniversary Edition by Loom Press.

Casey sets the mid-twentieth century atmosphere perfectly by opening with driving while under the influence, a poetic vignette on drunk driving, a common experience, regrettably, for many teenagers of that era. His first-person protagonist is a know-it-all snot-nosed kid, cruising with his friends in what is probably his first car. The car slams into a blinking yellow light, as cars do when driven by snot-nosed kids, who believe they have the grownup world figured out. Casey concludes the poem with just the right amount of irony and gritty dialect,

I get out and hide behind but

by this time I can see the flashing lights

and it was really something

the police cruiser goes around the rotary

takes the exit I took

and comes right to me

I was alone all my friends split

and they get me for leaving the scene

driving under the influence

and being a minor in possession

all kinds of stuff right?

I asked the guy found me

How’d you catch me?

He said he followed the leaking radiator

It leaked after the crash right?

fifty million dumb cops in the world

and this guy

has to be a genius

Throughout the collection Casey positions poems based on company posters intended to boost employee morale and promote work ethics. They effectively deliver their pop psychologies with unintended wry humor. Some are just laugh-out-loud funny. The first of these the poet titles “Positivity Poster.” Here is the heart of the piece,

…just some old fashioned ideas

avoiding waste

pride of craftsmen

work as a team

the worth of experience

all these add to the unequalled quality

at wholesale value

that make our patrons love us so

the new old fashioned

textile business

everyone in the mill

the dye house anyway

reading this stuff

would think of only one word bullshit

you can guess

what wall these posters were on

and without any effort at all

you memorize them

and with some creativity and even art

you write crude phrases

and drawings on them

it was a lot like a team effort

Respect for authority did not jump out at one upon entering the mill culture, and veterans of this work force were even less likely to defer to the demands of a foreman or manager type, at least immediately. Everyone, except new hires, had figured out their place in this society and defined it by the time it took for them to comply with any despotic order conveyed from above. Casey explains this phenomenon in his poem foreman,

Walter walked over to Alfred

and asked him

to mix up the soap

when he got the chance

and Alfred said

sure he’d do it

when he got the chance

but he never did it

so Walter walked over to Ronald

Ron why don’t ya make the soap up

when ya through what ya doin

and Ronald said

fuck you Walter

of course

Ronald went and mixed up the soap

when he got a chance

Between the mill and the neighborhoods that surrounded the mill no clear demarcation existed. Both of these rough-and-tumble inner-city zones fed into each other. Some factories doing government work had hard security to separate the two, like the General Electric in Lynn. Others, like Casey’s mill in Lowell allowed a freer interchange. The poet details a result of this overlap in his poem, the night the fight with Bill happened. The piece opens this way,

that same night

after they beat up Bill

they came back

don’t you know

shithead was mad

because Ray broke up the fight

and so he brought back his gang

a bunch of them

clean out the mill

that’s what he said

I’m gonna clean out the mill

the second shift upstairs

and the dye house

hears all the noise

ands runs down and runs up

and those assholes left fast enough

through the doors

out the windows

Forklifts are not complicated to drive. In any case most company bigwigs assume that their employees have certain basic skills and need not be bothered by training. Of course, postulations like this are terribly wrong and monumental accidents follow. In his poem, forklift driver, Casey laments the havoc that one driver, who guns his vehicle into the elevator door, can do. He says,

do you know how important

that fuckin elevator is?

Gus is up there yelling all over

for yarn and this is holdin up the knitting room

the napping room and the whole place

gonna be backed up now

they tell me Gus is pissin and moanin up there

like he was pissin razor blades

Very few poets chronicle this essential part of our culture’s history, which many of us, or our parents, or our grandparents participated in. Poets who choose mill/factory life and that type of work experience as their subjects are very few indeed. Casey’s wry verse compositions delving into this blue-collar bastion enlighten and exhilarate. His use of local language is spot on. What Casey does, he does very, very well.