Of Friendship and Pain
Beautiful Veins
Mal Morgan
Five Islands Press 1999
ISBN 0 864186266
MAL
John West
SideWaLK [Poets] 1999
IBN 0957745109
Mal Morgan's ‘Beautiful Veins’ takes the reader to a
harrowing place. Mal Morgan has cancer, and the book begins with 'The Diagnosis'
and continues, with some sense of narrative unfolding, to develop the poet's
reactions to that fact. One can't help but be reminded of Philip Hodgins’
haunting poems about cancer in ‘Blood and Bone’; it is a tragic literary
genre to find yourself in, but what surprises and delights is the humour and
candour and courage that permeates this selection.
In fact, what these poems are about, as much as the fact of cancer,
is love and friendship. The book is full of dedications to musicians like Beethoven,
Dylan, Mozart, Mahler and Elgar and writers and friends such as Myron Lysenko,
John Forbes, Alex Skovron and Michael Sharkey. In what many might fear as a
lonely journey, Morgan’s poetry is full of life and love, witty and humorous
and bulging with connections, real and imaginary:
If Walt Whitman knocked on my sleep tonight
I’d tell him
he’s just another dreamer
from the old revolution. But I’d say
come in.
These aren’t recklessly
hopeful poems either; there is an understanding and fear of the unknown at the
edges always, but this is also a compassionate and hopeful voice. Mal Morgan
is famous in Melbourne poetry circles for his selfless encouragement of other
writers as much as his own distinctive poetic voice developed through a series
of books culminating in ‘Throwaway Moon - New and Selected Poems’
in 1995. This book develops that defiant rebelliousness even in the face of
death in poems like the clinically detailed ‘Radiotherapy’ which ends
with:
Home I open
A green can.
Keep breathing for me
trees! I’ve
got lung cancer.
What have you got?
In the preface Morgan writes ‘For
several difficult weeks I did not envisage writing again, or rediscovering the
sheer joy of the creative process. My life has been rich, filled at moments
with an intensity greater than every before.’ We can be thankful that Morgan was able
to grasp the courage and strength to find these new poems and moments like the
end of ‘Love Sleeps in Another Room’:
Last night I thought I heard love’s footsteps
Walking down my corridor.
It was my heart
Beating inside
its cage of bones
The book is full of such moments of lyricism and longing but it
is always funny and candid and honest. Morgan looks back over a life as poet
and parent and friend but the book is full to of the absolutely contemporary:
CNN, the death of John Forbes, CAT scans and Bob Dylan’s bootleg tapes.
This is not a man to retreat from the world; every day he ‘cheats death’
is another beautiful new time when poems may emerge.
If this book is different
from Morgan’s earlier work it is perhaps in the volume. The book has a
quietness about it at times, and a less exclamatory and ‘speechifying’
rhythm. It is not a book that is has the strong vocal sense of some of Morgan’s
early work; it is often calmer and more accepting, sadder too, as in ‘Death
in Shining Armour’:
You just don’t
hear it stop.
One day you’re in someone’s kitchen
then their life
and then you’re not.
Five Island Press should be commended on the production; the book
comes with a CD that features Mal reading a number of poems including some earlier
work from ‘Once Father and God’ and ‘Out of the Fast Lane’.
It is sombre stuff; Mal’s familiar voice clear and strong, reminding us
of some of those wonderful poems over the years.
There’s a self-deprecating
aspect to this collection too, a subtle farewell and a genuine humility which
might help explain Morgan’s legendary generosity to other poets.
In ‘I Clicked on Print Preview’ he speaks of ‘these hands
that have / scribbled so’
and in ‘I’ll Leave a Poem or Two’ he writes of ‘five
or six readers’ who may read this poem. This book certainly deserves much
more than that.
John West is one of these
poets who has found inspiration and support through his relationship with Mal
Morgan and West’s poetry chapbook ‘Mal’ explores something of
that relationship as it describes a series of visits to Mal in his illness.
The book is described as ‘poems for Mal Morgan’ but it’s one
poem really. Sometimes the subject is Mal, sometimes the poet himself, sometimes
the relationship with Mal as poetry mentor, almost father figure.
West’s background as
a nurse gives some of this an almost dispassionate edge at times; ‘we understand
what makes bones ache’, this is a man who’s seen dying people before:
You’ve chosen badly, Mal,
You should have gone for something cleaner,
A decent heart attack or stroke
When I saw the single word
title of this book ‘Mal’ and thought of Morgan’s illness, I half-expected
a kind of affectionate poetic tribute; a kind of future eulogy. But, as Morgan
says himself in ‘In a House Where Someone’s Dying’, ‘I know
you’re no sentimentalist’ and West is no stranger to ‘all the
sweaty little jigsaw bit of dying’. West finds himself here watching the
coming of death and, of course, thinking of his own. So the poem is as much
about the persona as the subject: ‘I’m just another / who feels cramped
/ in the dolls’ house / of someone’s else’s dying’.
The book has an almost unbearable
honesty and attention to detail that is unsettling; the paintings, the Solitaire
game on the computer, the coffee plunger, the corduroy shirt are all described
plainly as part of a world that is dissolving before the eyes of the writer.
Yet is, in the end, a tribute poem too, and a fitting one.
The day 'Beautiful Veins'
was launched at La Mama in September by Michael Sharkey the place was bursting
at the seams. As it should be. At the launch Alex Skovron and other poets read
from the book and people squeezed by to shake Mal Morgan’s hand; it was
as Melbourne an event as the footy down the road This is a book to be celebrated
and welcomed. It’s painful and sad too. That’s the way it is. Mal
Morgan knows that better than most.
[Mal Morgan died in November
1999 - This review first appeared in 'Famous Reporter' - December 1999]
Warrick Wynne