NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

There is something youthful, almost raw about the energy which flows through this poetry collection — apparently the first one by Begnal, born in the US but now resident in Ireland. As a poet he writes in English; as a journalist, however, he has used Irish. Begnal says in an introductory note that he thinks of THE LAKES OF COMA as his "American" collection, so that it's possible that an "Irish" one will follow.

Most of the poems are set in modern cityscapes, often not too attractive, and offering a jungle or jumble of sense impressions. These metropolises are not always realistically described. Rather, the big city in Begnal tends to become a state of mind, a little like Updike's suburb, with its mixture of sadness, sensuality, and despair.

Begnal's poetry could be seen as an equivalent of pop, punk, rap, rock — But I'm not thinking of the lyrics as much as the music and mood.

So what we have here is a nice guy, a kind of flâneur, mostly on his own in a tough, urban, alienating environment. Some scenes are brutal or ugly, with glimpses of racist violence. A dreary office is remembered by an ex-employee the way an ex-convict may think about jail.

Surrounded by aggression and vulgarity, the speaker is sensitive enough to preserve his humanity. He experiences feelings of menace, doom and decay:

	American cities
	inhabited by the beast and grotesques
	of drooping flesh
	who ogle me from doorways, 
	their guns are trained on me
	as I walk by rotten wooden archways

Though Begnal couldn't be regarded as a "literary" or academic poet, also Dante puts in an appearance. A modern basement becomes a version of his Inferno. But a fairly harmless one, or so it seems, with its washing machines and copper pipes.

The bleakness of this updated, slightly trivialized waste land is relieved only by music

	you listen in appalled expectation,
	waiting
	for the beauty

	and it comes,

	we are mammals,
	wrestling our bodies together in sleep
	lying in soft beds,
	your mammal words,
	without you I am cold

	a cat at home waiting to be fed.

	defying my medium,
	I state: I am sincere

	This will get published for sure.

	I can write a poem about any subject.

	A speeding car, out of control, loose on dark city streets

	the air smells like wax,
	like it's November

MERCURY, THE DIME is a long narrative poem, originally written in 1992/93 and published in 2005 and reads as a recorded inner and outer poetic travelogue. The poem has seven divisions, and as the reader moves through the first part, the overall impression comes together as a seeing eye that looks down on North America, as far south as Mexico and north towards the Canadian borders, from above, moving closer to earth as the narrator moves towards the end of part two.

The main thrust of the first two parts gives a sense of history to the reader of a country that is regarded by some as having relatively little history, only in comparison with the Eurocentric view of past histories. It is as though the narrative voice is regarding a physical map of North America, tracing out the lost tribes and ancestors, giving back a sense of cultural inheritance, long before the immigrant invasions. The language used, nods towards a shamanistic type of overview using vivid colours and reflecting older traditions, by using their languages: for example, The Shorn Ones, (cuahchiqeh), and by imagining their:

	causeways over Lake Texcoco
	arcades,
		statues,
			multitudinous deities,
				feathered priests,
					racks of skulls,
						blood pouring down

The first two parts of the poem blend these elements together. As the focus is pulled closer to the continent, nominal details further the history of names. Borrowed from the cultures predating the present, these names are the sometime remnants, their origins forgotten or passed over as folklore or emblems, as the title of the poem implies.

The third section sharpens the spotlight as the detail of an area code alerts the reader about the area being dialled. A pan-American phone call brings the reader right into the narrative voice's inner thoughts. In this section the detail concentrates on the minutiae associated with actual travel, through imagined and real territories, and this is where Begnal's real strength lies, in conveying the run down "city of projects" that make up Memphis, combining this with the air of the incidental tourist. This section records the inner blues of the narrative voice, together with a roll-call of blues legends. This can be related by the reader to the previous sections, through the changes in attitude portrayed by lines like:

Before Elvis, it was "race music"

	before Elvis,
	it was the young Elvis
	the kid
	who sang at hops

The fourth section brings the reader closer in focus again to the cities of the west coast of the US and to the side story of the nomadic narrative: the working out of a relationship that is too short to work out. The mystery muse comes into view, in passing almost, behind all the place names, allusions and images evoked. The bus journey from LA to San Francisco suggests the beginning of the closing movement as the poem moves forward.

Section five moves between the inner voice of the narrator and the outward motion of movement through a city that is known well. The brief snapshots of the outer eye are mixed with the inner musings to paint an overall vision bringing San Francisco to life in all its rich mixed cultural guises, whilst still retaining the backing idea of anonymity amongst the backdrop. The wry remarks in parentheses alert the reader to the inner considerations and connections being made as the section shifts into the sixth one:

	The building is pale
		(the hotel?)
	yellow green
		(what do they call that?)
		(chartreuse)
	with dark green trim
		(maybe only dark in contrast)

The last section is a perambulatory crescendo of images as the narrator plays with focus: first the streetscape of 17th St. hill as the view stretches away towards the Bay and the view:

	disappears,
	replaced by the scene
	behind the eyelids —

Overall, there is a very strong filmic quality to the narrative, strong use of imagery, colour and juxtaposition of ephemeral versus temporal places through the inner voice, all combining to create a strong literal landscape: the hyperreal montage of the later part supports the creative imagined earlier part. The narrative voice of relative youth carries the poem through the more abstract areas through the exploration of one view of a continent of the mind. The poem combines elements of the aural, oral, physical poetic form and the working out of the inner landscape, all through the metaphor of movement.

Man's best friend may be his dog but in Michael S. Begnal's case it's his ancestor.

The Irish-American Mike Begnal, as his blogspot calls him, has been rummaging around in his ancestry in various places including naturally in Ireland. Half a dozen of the poems in this publication are in the old tongue. And intriguingly the book's cover shows an ancient document listing the death of an abbot of Kells in the year 1128.

The place to start then would appear to be with the 14th poem in the book, the title poem, ANCESTOR WORSHIP. This one might provide an insight into what it's all about, this book of 70 or so pages containing "some of the poems" published in publications such as Poetry Scotland, Poetry Wales, Poetry Cornwall, Poetry Ireland Review, Electric Acorn, The Blue Canary and many more; some 3 dozen publications in all.

ANCESTOR WORSHIP is the basic starting point for it is, whatever your point of view:

	the only religion
	truly compatible
	with the fact
	of evolution.

		the faces look the same
	in rain 

	who burrows into your eye
	and says, "Who're you?"

	like Waterbury, Connecticut,
	where not I'm from
	but my father
	and all his fathers
	since famine time .

	like wave-battered Brendans
	and populated,
	planted the system within

	disseminated,
	the Go Nation

	think of all the bridges on the Seine
	that melancholy snake,
	men and women have jumped off,
	insignificants splash
	in the green murk,
	tempted

	cemetery toilets smell
	like fermenting forest piss,
	and flies congregate in gangs,
	waiting to eat your shit 

	blue sky envelopes Galway

This is an intriguing collection to discover, unearth, and to contemplate. The poems can safely be read in any order and it's probably a good idea to do so. I tried jumping about at random from one to the other building and demolishing connections. It was great fun if fun is the right word.

Like a favourite bone I suspect it's something that can be constantly returned to and chewed on with familial contemplation.

The only disappointment I felt was that Bagnall couldn't see his way to translating those half dozen Irish poems of his:

	agus Joyce bainte den tenner