It is a great blessing and a mild curse that there is far more worth reading than any of us will ever get a chance to read. Kurt Vonnegut’s passing has brought to mind the spring day last year when I learned, well after the fact, of Michael Donaghy’s sudden death. I had nobody to share the news with; nobody around had heard of Michael Donaghy.
Donaghy was one of the best contemporary British poets, though he remained obscure in America. I’ve never seen a book of his for sale, except at his reading I attended. Usually I’d just shrug my shoulders and note that the American mainstream has a maximum of total interest; not every competent poet, or history of salt, can hit the radar.
The sort of merit exhibited in Dances Learned Last Night, however, makes it uniquely unfortunate that we’re missing out. Donaghy is not a Stevens-level visionary — Harold Bloom would likely say that he has talent but not genius — but few can match his tack-sharp diction or modulation of tone. His poems are usually short but achieve a communicative fullness: to read one is to be expertly navigated through some human tempest. “Machines” is a typical sure-footed delight, and begins:
Dearest, note how these two are alike:
This harpsichord pavane by Purcell
And the racer’s twelve-speed bike.The machinery of grace is always simple.
This chrome trapezoid, one wheel connected
To another of concentric gears,
Which Ptolemy dreamt of and Schwinn perfected,
Is gone. The cyclist, not the cycle, steers.
And in the playing, Purcell’s chords are played away.
Dances Learned Last Night is a pleasant compilation: the selections are faithful to the scope of Donaghy’s output yet form a coherent volume. Some of the shortest poems lack the substance of his best work, and in some of his more prosaic efforts we find a poet less at ease in the form, but there is much here to enjoy. Nobody hits my nerves quite the way Donaghy does; my library would be, as the world is, distinctly poorer without him.
