Nuda Veritas by Eugene Platt (Revival Press 2020)

Eugene Platt, an octogenarian, was born in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, a region that tends to engender in writers a strong sense of place and which continues to inform much of his work. After serving in the Army (11th Airborne and 24th Infantry Divisions, 1957-1960), he earned a BA in political science at the University of South Carolina, an MA in English (with creative thesis) at Clarion University of Pennsylvania, and a  Diploma in Anglo-Irish Literature at Trinity College Dublin. As a young poet, he was active on the reading circuit, giving over 100 public readings of his work at colleges, universities, and libraries across the nation. Nuda Veritas has been published by Revival Press (Limerick Writers Centre) and is available on the publisher's website. He lives in Charleston with his main muses: Montreal-born wife Judith, corgi Henry, and cat Keats. (Poets and Writers Directory).

Nuda Veritas is an attrctive collection. In the preface Platt explains the choice of Klimt's painting for the cover. In the painting Eve holds an outward facing hand mirror urging the onlooker to consider the naked truth about themselves rather than ogling her naked body. As a young man the poet studied at Trinity College (1969 - 1970) and while there he found appreciation for the works of Patrick Kavanagh. Kavanagh had written that "only in verse can one confess with dignity" (Self Portrait). Platt concludes that it is only through his poetry that he can convey his own truth. 

The collection opens with Folly Beach Hotdogs which is a lament for "Youth's gone now", and a seeking of something to satisfy the soul by the ocean, a place between the "fragile Edge of America" and "fabled America". Something of the exoticness of South Carolina and its neighbouring "Atlantic Coast Line" states, is described in Listen, Melontime, Ashley and Main Crops, South Carolina. I've never wanted strawberry shortbread more than now after reading Eat Strawberries and Seize the Day, "...on Summer Sundays...my salvation...was coming home...to feast on fried chicken...and my mother's renowned strawberry shortcake". Platt describes with sensitivity and honesty the death of his father in a series of poems, acknowledging "the fortune of having been his son" in Pennies from Heaven. 

Towards the end of the book the poet explores a love of Ireland. In Destination Dublin he is excited to be travelling "Eastward eastward..." and in At Trinity College he recalls "dreaming of Deirdres, Maeves,/and a Nuala I may never know" while realising he should have been "in the library reading the works of Kavanagh, Kennelly,". Platt visits the grave of Kavanagh in After Inniskeen and he explores Irish history in Great Britain (quoting Sean O'Casey's "...the fools, the fools, the fools! - They have left us our Fenian dead...") and in Waiting for the Train at Ballybrophy Junction.  These poems demonstrate Platt's awareness of Irish cultural motivations being rooted in the tragedy of the Great Famine and the painful quest for independence. 

Nuda Veritas is an ample read and it is peppered with many fine poems offering insight into man as son, student, poet, soldier, father, husband and citizen of the United States striving to "come home to the spirit/ which soars within me" (The Eagle Within). One piece that stands out is Musing at the Music Barn which the late Eavan Boland published in Poetry Ireland Review. In this Platt describes his attendance at a concert where a band (I'm assuming The Beatles) played. The poet vows to write some fan mail to the musicians and he uses John Donne's line, "more than kisses, letters mingle souls" to conclude the work. This is just one example of the erudition and attention to detail Eugene displays throughout the collection. 

Nuda Veritas is a big, bold, beautiful book full of heart. It is weighty with quality and information. The title poem is perhaps the magnum opus if Eve is the self we would, or should become, if Eve is the higher self, the self love we ought to give ourselves, or a spiritual attainment our souls long for in considering 

...the naked truth about myself,

the prototypical Adam inside each of us,

making excuses eternally for shortcomings

we know we can never disown. 

Drawn to the Light Press Poetry Magazine

 

Aurora Deirdre McKernan

My new online magazine of poetry Drawn to the Light Press has just published its first issue. It can be accessed here. Submissions for Issue 2 will open in December. 

Heart of Goodness / Du coeur à l'âme: The Life of Marguerite Bourgeoys in 30 Poems

Carolyne Van Der Meer has worked in corporate communications and public relations for most of her career. She has been a journalist, a university lecturer, an independent scholar and an author. Her journalistic and creative work has been featured in magazines and journals internationally. She has three published books, Motherlode: A Mosaic of Dutch Wartime Experience (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2014), Journeywoman (Inanna, 2017) and Heart of Goodness: The Life of Marguerite Bourgeoys in 30 Poems | Du coeur à l’âme : La vie de Marguerite Bourgeoys en 30 poèmes (Guernica Editions, 2020). She is from Canada. 

Coming to Van Der Meer's subject (Marguerite Bourgeoys) a complete novice (pardon the pun) it was a pleasant surprise to find the collection unputdownable. Each poem leads seamlessly to the next and a rich tapestry of the French nun's life is woven. The intricacies of Bourgeoys' steadfast faith, the challenges she faced as a missionary and the moments of doubt she experienced are all explored. The book is a wonderful channel to what life was like in the mid seventeenth century. 

One is never disinterested or burdened in reading Heart of Goodness. While the poems explore the thinking of a woman who lived over four hundred years ago I found much to relate to in her struggles, which must be testament to the talent of Van Der Meer in bringing Bourgeoys' spirit to life. Not since learning of the trials of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz have I been so captivated by the whys and wherefores of such a calling to serve.

Rejected by several orders but determined to honour Our Lady, Bourgeoys left France and founded the Congregation of Notre Dame of Montreal in the Colony of New France, now Quebec. She reached Fort Ville-Marie (Montreal) in 1653 where she educated young girls and the poor while developing the convent. She is the first female saint of Canada, having been canonized in 1982 by the Catholic Church. 

Those Carmelites / didn't want me / I won't give up / my gift to God / my only mission / If it's not in the cloister / it'll be somewhere else / He'll take me / even if they won't (Poem #4)

Available from Guernica Editions Heart of Goodness is for anyone seeking a spiritual top up, or a quiet, yet enthralling read away from the headline busy world. It is of course for those interested in missionary life, the New World and History. The thirty poems appear in both English and French which is a great boon to students of language. Congratulation to Carolyne on a finely crafted and ecumenically valuable work. 

The Giant's Footsteps at the Rock of Dunamaise, by Arthur Broomfield

 

Dr Arthur Broomfield is a poet and Beckett scholar from County Laois. Among his publications are The Poetry Reading at Semple Stadium (Lapwing 2011), Mice at the Threshing (Lapwing 2015), Cold Coffee at Emo Court  (Revival Press 2016) and his critical study on the works of Samuel Beckett The Empty Too: Language and Philosophy in the Works of Samuel Beckett (Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2014). His poetry has been published in journals and anthologies in Ireland, the UK, the USA, and India. He holds a PhD degree in English literature from Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick.

Broomfield leads me down a rabbit hole of surrealism in The Giant's Footsteps... (Revival Press 2019) and therefore Alice's first task is to get a grasp of what surrealism is. And thank you Arthur for reminding me of Breton's Always for the First Time.

Surrealism was an artistic, intellectual, and literary movement led by poet André Breton from 1924 through World War II. The Surrealists sought to overthrow the oppressive rules of modern society by demolishing its backbone of rational thought. To do so, they attempted to tap into the “superior reality” of the subconscious mind. “Completely against the tide,” said Breton, “in a violent reaction against the impoverishment and sterility of thought processes that resulted from centuries of rationalism, we turned toward the marvellous and advocated it unconditionally. (MOMA Learning) 

Broomfield dedicates the book to the memory of André Breton who pictured the roses as “blue” and the wood as “glass” as he flitted between “living and ceasing to live” in the epigraph. The opening poem Bloom 2016 visits a prize-winning exhibition (Bridging the Gap) at the annual gardening festival in Dublin, and the poet might be walking this bridge himself between reality and fantasy, “The arch carries me from the escapable/to a notion of reality that mystifies the senses/I at first avert;”. 

The Bee Woman Works At Her Hive describes a scene in a painting by Mansfield in detail with language both rich and energetic. The Bee Woman maintains the hive as caretaker “During lulls in the natural order,/when the dead have been buried/and the laws of seed time and harvest/are reinstated,”. This omnipotent presence is much like the writer himself, in charge of his eclectic, wordy world. “I am here in the hum and whirr/of these zips and zooms,”. October Evening Clonreher is another beautiful piece, evoking the spirit of Kavanagh from A Christmas Childhood. Broomfield recalls “the silent moon”, the radio, “the beet train” and “a backdrop of glittered stars”. In Costa Coffee Shop is a light hearted re-enactment of an ordinary day's eavesdropping I imagine. 

I was taken with In The Beginning Was The Word, a poem written after Caravaggio’s The Taking of Christ. I have written a poem about this painting myself. Here Christ appears as an unwanted actor, a has been who has “lost the dressing room”. This delight in subversion and shock can be found throughout the collection, not least in Eamonn De Valera Had A Twenty-Four-Inch Cock and The Archbishop. The poet perhaps expresses his disdain for those two pillars of the formation of the Republic, Fianna Fáil and the Catholic Church.

Broomfield sees himself as an outsider in He Ponders His Own Reality. "It wasn't an easy decision/to fit in with the crowd," he says comparing the pressure to conform to an ant "navigating a block of margarine up the Rock of Dunamaise." This rock is an outcrop in Laois hosting the ruins of a castle built in the 12th c. Yet one is left with the awareness that the poet is no ant but the giant of the collection's title, saved and elevated by his art. 

The Giant's Footsteps at the Rock of Dunamaise can be purchased from Revival Press, Limerick and from Arthur himself.