Summary
Of course, invention is also something we take pride in, and [Greg Delanty] isn't shy about exhibiting ingenuity in his verse. For all their topical themes and slang, these poems also hark back to the English Metaphysical poets of the 16th century, who experimented with unusual stanza forms and elaborate metaphorical conceits. Each of the poems addressed to the unborn child finds and explores a new metaphor, some drawn from world folklore and some from Delanty's imagination. The fetus becomes a space alien, a dead soul awaiting rebirth, a snowflake, a mummy, a sea horse, a king wearing the "Pelvic Crown." In "The Fetal Monitor Day," he's "our star, train, love wave, treasure and pony" - five metaphors for the price of one.
Formally speaking, many of these poems rhyme. But Delanty uses metrical variations and incomplete or assonant rhymes to make this effect subtle, sometimes almost subliminal, with none of the "jingle-jangle" many people associate with traditional verse. Perhaps the most "jangly" poem here is "The Language of Crying," a droll take on that old French form the villanelle, in which repetition drives home what it's like to be a parent whose cherished offspring won't shut up.What and where is the soul? Delanty asks repeatedly in The Ship of Birth. How and when does the life force come to us? In "The Shutterbug,"-the expectant father tries to capture his child's "soulflake, the forecasted simplicity below / the whole show." Unable to do so, he settles for hoping the child is "a fur-flake,'snug and at home as a fur-coated Eskimo." Good wishes, Delanty suggests, may be the only sure things we can put in the "ship of birth" - or in the fragile bark that ferries us toward our collective future.See the full content of this document
Extract
Dad's Day
Dad's Day Book review: The Ship of Birth: Poems by Greg Delanty The Ship of Birth: Poems by Greg Delanty, Louisiana State University Press, 55 pages. $16.95.
Gestating or newly minted offspring are subjects that sorely tempt poets to get cute, particularly when those progeny are their own. You...See the full content of this document
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