The Ship of Birth
Greg Delanty, . . Louisiana State Univ., $45 (55pp) ISBN 978-0-8071-3219-7
Despite his long residence in Vermont, Delanty remains an Irish poet at heart; his compact, entertaining seventh collection, much of it built around the birth of his son, Daniel, draws on some of the virtues and mannerisms of Delanty's compatriot Paul Muldoon. Effusive, distractable, given to wit and to sonic patterns just this side of ostentation, Delanty's stanzas celebrate conception, gestation and early childhood without taking themselves overseriously: an opening poem hails "Our sprout// who art there inside the spacecraft/ of your Ma." The delivery itself gives rise to a profusion of consonant wordplay, since the poet envisions it as "A Circus": "juggling doctors; funambulist nurses;/ and all the farraginous farrago of this Earth." Soon after Daniel is born, Delanty's mother dies; her diagnosis, chemotherapy and expected demise provide a counterpoint to the birth, and Delanty (
Reviewed on: 03/19/2007
Genre: Fiction
Hardcover - 55 pages - 978-0-8071-3218-0