LIDIA VIANU

The Desperado Age

British Literature at the Start of the Third Millennium

MICHAEL DONAGHY (1954-2004), like most Desperadoes, has a good knowledge of prosody. He uses rhymed and unrhymed verse and in both the intensity is the same. He has a unique gift of making rhyme sound unconventional and natural (The Present). His poems have the diary-like quality most Desperado literature has, and confession is replaced by stories, which are supposed to render the text somewhat impersonal (Cadenza). The American world is present mainly in the conversational, informal aspect of his lines. He writes as he talks: staccato, elliptical at times, careless of verbal beauty. Beauty is replaced by life-like, photograph-like communication. Donaghy’s language is mainly true and only then poetic.

The technique Donaghy favours is an accumulation of incidents and details, and also an accumulation of informal words. It is the technique of American fiction writers, who connect authenticity with free speech and endless enumerations, unplanned lines of incidents. The key to Donaghy’s lines would be this deliberate lack of planning. The trick is to start and keep on talking till life gushes out and you are surrounded, engulfed. It is an effect by accretion.

by VIC (Cristina Ioana Vianu)