Hi All Pleased with this extraordinarily positive critique of ME ME and Not Me in Summer issue of Stride Magazine. Modern Romanticism by Philip Clement Me, Me and Not Me, Tony Frisby (94pp, £10, Waterloo Press) Forgive me for I do not know who I am Thus Tony Frisby lays down his lyrical mandate as he prepares his poetry to rationalise the uninvited occupants of that space I once thought my own constructing an elaborate underworld populated with spectral doppelgangers, one-eyed bulls, nuns, the fearful MacFirbisig (inspired by Frisbys own ancestral clan) and a flock of crows with which to do so. Frisby bounds through this philosophical minefield at a speed and grace which is invigorating, the poem is presented as a single long-narrative which intrigued me; though, initially I worried whether the poem would be able to contain the pace that it exhibits in the early pages. Happily, this early scepticism was soon supressed. With effortless lyrical dialogue, Frisby lends a life to the occupants of his mind that, it seems from his for ward, he cannot afford himself and increasingly the poet appears to be trapped in a self-inflicted prison that is reminiscent of other such allegorical narratives as the Divine Comedy and Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The sections featuring the poets interactions with his family are captured with an emotional sensitivity and honesty that is bracing. Exchanges with his uncle in particular rear above the narrative and cast a dark shadow over Frisbys search for his true self, but this is tempered by a tender reconstruction of a memory from his childhood. The poet sits ears / cocked to the music on Radio Éireann beside his mother: Once again by the fire, sewing basket by your side, last years jumper reduced to memory, balled and ready to be fashioned anew. Im at the kitchen table, my penny exercise book open and as I chant my nine times table, you begin your sinless litany: knit one, purl one, slip a stitch, knit one, purl one, slip a stitch. Gob-smacked I watch the miracle, the past becoming present, and my future warmed by the exchange. Such sustained self-introspection could, in lesser hands, be construed as an act of vanity - and undoubtedly, in some respects the quest for personal understanding is an act of narcissism - but Frisby treats his subject with such stable poetic exploration thathe himself barely features within the narrative. Rather than being the domain of the poet, Me, Me and Not Me constructs living area for the former occupants of his mind; a place for them to understand themselves by the Lacanian standard with which Frisby has judged his self. A biography in poetry, Me, Me and Not Me is a fascinating experimentation with the contemporary self, Frisby interrogates his past with an inquisitorial intensity that leads the reader in an affectionate attempt to understand and re-evaluate the place of the solitary poet in the contemporary social age.
Posted on: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 08:47:53 +0000
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