The Cost of Living, Collected Poems, Rob Buchanan - a short much belated review

                                                   


                                    Rob Buchanan (left) with Lambo, to whom the book is dedicated,
                                                   both recently married, I believe. Happy days!

The Cost of Living

Rob Buchanan

Collected Poems

Five Nothing Press

( 102 pages )

We like to delude ourselves in Ireland that we live still in a  classless society, of course the lie is that since independence was finally granted in 1922, hard won through bitter war of attrition when actual unity for a time, uniting against a common oppressor, did perhaps exist. But, of course with the handing over of power, as with all revolutions, the old power was replaced by a new. In the case of the Irish Republic, as it became known as, or the Free State, the new powers, solidified after horrendous civil war, went into communion with the church and so the new so- called Ireland was born, of a lie, and a betrayal; women, for example, were simply denied all access to power, after having played their part for so many centuries, and with their lives. The new patriarchal state was born where God, President and Prime minster/Taoseach were all male. This then the lie, when back in the house, as in all  patriarchies, the woman was the real boss. It is the tragedy of patriarchy. You see it in France, patrie a derivative of Patriarch, meaning fatherland and which the term patriot also, very tellingly, springs! In Italy and Spain, it is more of the same, what one could choose to define as Heraclitus Syndrome, when the apparent opposing forces align in apparent flagrant dichotomy there is generated a rather curious unity. This phenomenon could be perceived quite simple in the Ireland that I grew up in, for example, during the nineteen eighties, in the physical distinction that women would generally keep to lounges, in pubs, and bars then were typically the reserve of “men”; I deliberately write the appellation in the diminutive.

The curious comedy that we all witness today, in the Republic, is that the skeletal structure or vertebrae of what I have initially sketched out above is all so grotesquely visible today. Alcohol and inebriation, in some form or another, are still the chosen means for any ‘self-respecting’ Irish person to behave, on a given day. It is of course true that society has indeed been superficially, at least, a little shaken up since the eighties, due to the rise of feminism, and the gradual acceptance of sexual differentiation, mainly thanks to the gay and lesbian communities, in part no doubt brought about by education. The amount of young people attending universities would have drastically increased since the sixties, and of course the media too would have had its role to play. The influence of television and the proliferation of popular cultural phenomenon, such as pop music, would have played a huge role in the changing and more accepted social norms over time. While, today, we have the internet, and corporate culture.

The later probably having replaced the church, to a large degree. As a recently developing secular state, brought about by the twin forces of globalisation and the sprawling mass of public access to information on the new superhighways of the world wide web, with the almost total collapse in part of the Catholic church’s grip on public consciousness, due mainly to the systematic revelations of clerical abuse covered up by the state, the majority of Irish people, seeing no apparent rival in sight, completely swallowed the neo-liberal bull of hyper-capitalism. The evidence is everywhere, from the ongoing housing crisis, created by bubble-economics, which: banks, property developers and builders exploit -the great divine triad in Irish society. You see parallels in the Táin , the gilded chariots of local tribal Kings and their Queens being replaced by SUVs. The same excessive desire for riches and power all self-evident in flagrant, vulgar, chronic exhibition. All this preamble then to herald a bard caught up right in the middle of it – Rob Buchanan.

I am not exactly sure when Rob was born, but reading through the poems of this massively impressive first collection, which has almost passed the reading public (does anyone really read poetry books these days?) by, I can ascertain where; the wrong side of the city and if not exactly geographically, then the wrong side of the right side. Dublin, more so than any other city in Ireland, is a hugely divided city, socially. I am just a blow in from Cork, so perhaps I can see it more self-evidentially than the flora and fauna which surrounds me. I will always remember being asked by a company CEO to dismiss one of my most loyal and dedicated teachers (I was the Director of Studies of an English department, at the time) because of her accent. Such is the stuff of Rob Buchanan’s poetry; social exclusion! It blows like a whirl wind through the entire collection.

Take the poem Breach of the Peace written to commemorate Thom McGinty, otherwise known to the denizens of the dark pool as the Diceman.

You’re still there. Planted sideways to the wind,

Nude Pygmalion spirit, saucily winking at Grafton Street.

Stillness artist, mysterious Scots orphan. The X in the algebra of coincidence.

An alien’s confidence as blushing Gardaí begrudgingly move you along

In slow motion, dreamy deliberately. So slow you’re still

Haunting shop windows and paving stones decades later.

For Buchanan, the Diceman, a fellow gay artist, is an avatar of hope, through the sublime artifice of art and its possible impact on the immediate world around it. That is to say, the cold almost inhospitable world of the eighties and nineties in pre-boom Ireland when to admit to being gay was still tantamount to being a pariah socially. Aids, which the Diceman died from, was rife in the community, decimating it, and for many still a possible sign of their God’s retribution on the sexually outcast. ‘Humans are the Ships of Fear.’ As Buchanan states emphatically in the poem of the same title.

There is real anger too, as in the poem Hiber/Nation, a title which throws me as I am working on a novel with the same title. The poem is dedicated to the statues of O’Connell Street, I am intrigued as I have written a number of poems about the street myself.

Tricolour, my distant mother.

Taxidermy soul, embalmed in anarchy.

From underground they cannot see,

Was never green,

Was never white, that tattered green rippling paracosm

Was never free.

The lie of patriarchy beautifully signaled in the opening, disconcertingly accurate collocation. Buchanan, as you would hope to expect in a poet, has a beautiful eye for detail, and an equally impressive lexicon to give complete expression to it. In Bedrock, a poem written to commemorate International Women’s Day 2016, the poet speaks about his mother as only a real poet could.

This is my nature, she says to me.

I worship man, I do not believe in his innate good,

Only his innate perfection.

I live amongst gods; I am speechless with wonder and gratitude.

I need to believe his accidental overdose of divinity.

To see them walk around their client king as if

They weren’t the miracles they are.

Buchanan’s subject matter is epic, dealing as it does with life and death. This is a wholly unfashionable thing to be attempting in the superficial world of iPhones, memes, and apparently ‘selfless’ selfies. Indeed, I am reminded, while reading these poems, of the incredibly bland marketing plush of the unapologetically middle-class website I was looking at yesterday, with all the polish of a corporate business, and about as much soul, the so called poems ‘showcased’ as trite and bland as the website. Marketing, I thought, and spin. This is what we have been reduced to. When people can no longer differentiate between art and advertising, folks, we have a serious problem.

Fortunately, Rob Buchanan is still amongst us. Look out for him, as he’ll appear, like some bald-headed chameleon, yet when he stands up from out of his mouth will pour forth the oracles and the demons.

1/12/2019