REVIEW

The Holy Passions

by Michael Fitzgerald (1998) Available from George Ronald Reviewed by Pete Hulme

It is a pleasure to find such a substantial collection of carefully crafted lyrics under one cover. Both the poet and George Ronald are to be congratulated. Even better from a Baha'i point of view, the lyrics are grappling with issues central to our concerns, sometimes explicitly, sometimes indirectly.

Fitzgerald is indeed a "carpenter of light" with a light touch and a deep sense of purpose. In the words "against the solid dark, we carve a refuge out of our own wood" (p287) he describes his own life as well as ours. He celebrates the insight that we "are a mortal being, touched with light" (p213). He seeks to "celebrate the ordinary" (p279) and how it "resonates to forever" (p52).

It did not take me long to wonder, as I read this book, whether the surname he shares with a gifted nineteenth century translator of quatrains was simply a coincidence! In an important light-hearted and brave way The Holy Passions is written by the new Khayyam of the coffee shop and fast food restaurant. The 354 pages of his text are strewn with examples. Here's one:

I sit at the pizza place and visit my blues I hunker down in my chair and listen to Stevie Ray Vaughan, . . .

a pitcher of diet coke and I carve a lace in the evening the girl behind the counter shows me her new nails

From Pizza Parlor Tune, p128

Though the nineteenth century FitzGerald, just as a reminder, sings in a different style, the parallels are striking:

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough, A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness And Wilderness is Paradise now.

Quatrain Eleven, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, the first translation by Edward FitzGerald, UBS Publishers, New Delhi: 1996

However, the differences are as revealing as the echoes. In "The Holy Passions" there are very few rhymes, and those that there are seldom come at the ends of lines. There are even fewer references to wine, and when they come they are usually preceded by the word "non-alcoholic"! A bold attempt is beingmade to extend a long tradition of mystical poetry, in part by using caffeine instead of alcohol and a tight free verse form instead of quatrains. Each reader will have to decide whether Fitzgerald pulls it off, whether his wit and understated grace can carry the same freight as Khayyam/FitzGerald's intensity.

Whether or not he carries the whole thing off, I feel his attempt was well worth it. There are many good things in this book moments of lyric grace, delicate humour, painful realism or mystical intensity. In the end we feel the rightness of his own description:

.... this bit of reportage comes to you from a happy man, broken enough to feel the rightness of being broken angry enough to keep going

From A Bit of Reportage, p280

In "To Honor a Titan" (p259) he has produced a brief lyric of great power on the subject of Baha'u'llah. The Dharma Cafee (p61) uses a laconic throwaway style to brilliant comic effect. Section VI, "Fibres of Light" is, I think, the strongest of the nine sections in the book: it has the highest concentration of completely achieved poems of any section. In it his echoes of Hopkins, Dickinson and Whitman weave a delicate counter- point with an authentic tenderness whose finest expression, for me, comes in "Mercy-Blankets" (p215). The closing group of poems is intensely moving as it shakes off the restraints of diet coke and the coffee bar to rise into a divine intoxication reminiscent of Rumi(1) and Emily Dickinson.

My only real reservation is that he seems to work against the grain of his own gift sometimes. In this long book there is hardly a poem longer than one page. Perhaps he is stretching a natural lyric grace beyond its capacity. I feel that including fewer poems to make a shorter book would have served him better. Some poems would have been even better shorter. The setting, though never less than workmanlike, all too often threatens to bury the gems embedded in it.

Even so, those who love words well used and relish the sound of a good song on the page will be well pleased with this book which delivers new, if sometimes difficult (2) pleasures as you re-read it.

For those who want to savour the comparison, a good place to start is "Whoever brought me here will have to take me home", a selection of Rumi's poems, translated by Coleman Barks 1998: Arkana - Penguin. For a compelling analysis of the difficult pleasures of great literature, which our culture is increasingly avoiding, see "The Western Canon: the books and school of the ages", by Harold Bloom (1994: Papermac).