Ms Cotter's Class

Brief overview:

Themes: Love/marriage, family, relationships, communication, society 

Style: narrative, free verse, conversational, repetition, absurdism, surrealism, humour 

Notes:

Paul Durcan writes about subject matter that is as often gloomy as it is absurd and humorous. His main focus is on personal relationships: his troubled relationship with his wife, in particular, but also his strained relationship with his father and his wider relationship with Ireland. Although his poetry is often written in a personal, narrative style, it has wider appeal and significance; Durcan touches on subject matter ranging from Ireland and Irishness to the marginalized position of women in society. Though Durcan often describes situations that are characterized by conflict and tension, there is relief found in his satirical approach. His poetry flows freely, devoid of strict form or structure, and reads like a conversation from speaker to reader.

The poem ‘Nessa’ describes Durcan’s first encounter with the woman who would later become his wife. He remembers precisely the day he met her at a wedding in Dalkey, Co. Dublin. Nessa is characterized as a spontaneous young woman, who leads the poet away from the wedding by taking his ‘index finger.’ Although cautious, the poet finds his attraction to Nessa uncontrollable noting that she ‘dropped (him) in (her) well.’ Indeed, this water imagery continues throughout the poem and conveys the poet’s overwhelming feelings, as he compares the encounter to a ‘whirlpool’ in which he ‘very nearly drowned.’
Nessa and the poet travel to the seaside, where she orders him to take off his pants. He concedes that he ‘very nearly didn’t’ but joins Nessa in the Irish Sea. Again, the contrast between the cautious Durcan and the carefree Nessa is evident.
Durcan recalls how he ‘fell in the field and she fell down beside (him)’. This is perhaps a euphemism for sexual intercourse and serves to reinforce the whirlwind romance that they have embarked upon.
The last stanza is different from the preceding stanzas. The poet’s tone changes from one of awed caution to one of desperation and longing. It seems that time has passed and it is now the poet asking Nessa to partake in the activities of their first date, perhaps trying to rekindle a failing relationship. He asks Nessa ‘will you stay with me on the rocks?’ He asks her to ‘come…into the Irish Sea and let (her) red hair down’. It is possible that Nessa has grown weary of the poet and he is desperately trying to recall their early days of fun and spontaneity.

Indeed, their struggles are further explored in Father’s Day, June 21 1992. In this narrative piece, Durcan recalls a trip to Cork on the train from Dublin. As he is about to leave the house, clearly in a rush and rather flustered(he uses the word ‘dashing’ twice), his wife tells him that her sister in Cork needs a loan of their axe and expects Durcan to bring it with him on the train. Despite his hesitance, he feels it is easier for him to acquiesce to her rather odd request. Durcan seems troubled by the fact that his wife has not taken the time to wrap the axe in anything, noting ‘She handed the axe to me just as it was, As neat as a newborn babe, All in the bare buff.’ The simile he uses here is interesting, and he continues using infant imagery in the next lines, providing us with the words ‘swaddled’ and ‘blanket’. On the surface, this comparison seems odd and inappropriate. Durcan will soon note, however, that the couple’s daughters have grown up and moved out. There seems to be nothing significant binding the couple together, and their stifled and awkward conversation in the first stanza demonstrates their marital struggles. The axe, therefore, signifies a connection, no matter how tenuous, between man and wife.
Durcan muses on their marriage as he travels by train to Cork. He admits feelings of guilt, which appears to be an odd confession, as he is aware of his wife’s relief at having him out of their home for a while. Durcan is only too aware of his wife’s indifference towards him, noting that she was ‘glad at the prospect of having two weeks on her own.’ It is his actions that seem to irritate his wife, from his ‘coarse advances’ to the way he eats his spaghetti ‘with a knife and fork.’ Perhaps his guilt stems from the fact that he feels inadequate as a husband and regrets that he can’t be better for his wife. Indeed, Durcan, lost in thought, verbalizes this aloud, asking the passenger opposite him ‘I am feeling guilty because she does not love me As much as she used to, can you explain that?’ Taken aback, the passenger’s eyes are drawn to the axe seated beside Durcan, who feels the need to explain the presence of the axe. He seems to compound an already awkward situation by announcing the train’s arrival at Portarlington in Irish, at which point the passenger moves seats. We are left with an image of a lonesome Durcan sitting on a train with an axe. Although the poem is quite sad, Durcan imbues it with moments of humour. The image of him carrying an unconcealed axe on a train is absurd, as is his attempt to explain the axe to a fellow passenger.

Durcan uses a similarly absurd approach to describe a rather sad event in the poem Sport. We are informed early on that Durcan is a patient in “Grangegorman mental hospital” on his twenty first birthday. He is playing in goals in a football match and his father has come to “observe” him. The word observe is interesting; it seems his father is there to merely watch and critique his playing rather than support him. It is also noteworthy that he has used the term “selected to play”, implying he felt a sense of pride at this. Durcan wryly notes that there weren’t many “fields” his father had hopes for him in and we are immediately made aware of their fraught relationship. Although the desperation of Durcan to impress his father while he is institutionalised evokes pity in the reader, the absurdity of the entire situation adds a surrealist humour to the poem. Durcan describes the opponents’ forward line as “over six foot tall/Fifteen stone in weight/ All three of them, I was informed,Cases of schizophrenia.” He informs us that there is a rumour that an “alcoholic solicitor” on the opposing team “castrated his best friend”. We are provided with more comical absurdity when Durcan informs us of the score line (14 Goals and 38 points to 3 goals and 10 points) which is rather farcical. The absurdist humour contrasts with the poet’s resignation that his victory was the pinnacle of his tense relationship with his father. With an emotional honesty that is typical of Durcan, he tells his father “More than anybody it was you I wanted to mesmerise”. He admits that he would never again “rise to these heights” in the eyes of his father. 

In Wife Who Smashed Television Gets Again, the poet explores the relationship between a man and woman and their children, although this time, it is not a personal account. Instead, Durcan writes this poem in the style of a newspaper article which describes a court case in which a man is providing evidence against his wife who has smashed the family television. The husband describes the event in great detail, stating that he and his children were ‘peaceably watching Kojack’, a popular detective series from the 1970s. His wife ‘marched’ into the living room and demanded that the family turn off the television. When her family ignores her, she smashes the television with her boot. Her husband quietly leaves the house, bringing the children with him to finish Kojack at his mother’s house. When he returns, his wife has thrown the remains of the television in the dustbin, telling her husband ‘I didn’t get married to a television And I don’t see why my kids or anybody else’s kids Should have a television for a father or a mother.’ She reasons that the family would be better off down in the local pub, having conversation and playing bar billiards. She then returns, alone, to the pub. The judge views her in a particularly negative light and sentences her to jail without the possibility of appeal. Although Durcan’s sense of humour is evident in the poem (the absurdity of the situation is typical of Durcan’s style) it is also a criticism of the position of women in Irish society. The woman is not given a chance to defend herself, and it is her husband who quotes her rather than her providing evidence directly. Indeed, even in her own home, she is not listened to by her own family, who leave the house rather than attempt to make amends with her. The judge’s sentence seems absurdly harsh also. It is also worth noting that Durcan is implicitly suggesting to us that the maltreatment of women in society is a reflection of generational behaviour (the father and his children watch a television show in which a woman is shot dead by the main character. The man’s mother also watches the show).

Durcan’s somewhat negative view of his homeland can also be found in The Girl With the Keys to Pearse’s Cottage. Here, Durcan describes his youthful infatuation with an exotic looking girl called Cáit Killann. In the opening stanza, he notes ‘her dark hair was darker because her smile was so bright.’ Cáit has in her possession the keys to the cottage of Irish patriot, Padraig Pearse. The young couple spend time hanging around the dilapidated cottage, with Durcan sitting ‘in the rushes with ledger-book and pencil compiling poems of passion for Cáit Killann.’ Durcan notes that Cáit is emigrating at summer’s end.
Durcan notes that Ireland ‘had no future’. This makes the inclusion of the cottage in the poem interesting. Padraig Pearse, like Durcan, was a poet. He was also passionate and romantic and wrote frequently about his hopes and dreams for the future of Ireland should it gain its independence from Britain. So committed was Pearse to Ireland’s future, he died fighting for it in 1916. Durcan does not explicitly state it, but the idealistic vision of Ireland imagined by Pearse has not come to fruition. Instead, the economy is struggling, forcing its youth to emigrate. Cáit and Durcan’s youth is reinforced to us through their actions: Durcan is sitting in the grass writing poetry and Cáit is sitting on the sill of a window ‘brown legs akimbo’. The death of Pearse’s vision and the current state of Ireland’s economy is best symbolized by the dilapidated cottage with its ‘wet thatch and peeling jambs.’

In Windfall, 8 Parnell Hill, Cork, Durcan once again explores his relationship with the concept of family and home in an intensely personal and evocative account. In this 137 line poem, Durcan takes the reader on a journey, beginning with his exaltation at finding a home with his family looking down upon Cork City and ending with him aimlessly wandering the streets of Dublin, homeless and alone. The intense feelings of blissful domesticity, comfort and security that are expressed for much of the poem serve to compound the sadness at the end of the poem as Durcan is essentially left homeless. 

-The word home is mentioned several times throughout the poem, gaining more significance with each meaning. 

-Allusions to art and artists give the poet’s view a sense of the extraordinary 

-The barrage of memories given to us reinforce the notion that Durcan and his family lived a very idyllic and happy life. They are well-travelled and share some very pleasant memories. 

-The extended metaphor used to compare the family home to a kind of sea is a wonderful way to reinforce how liberated and comfortable the family feel at home. The children are compared to a baby in the womb, but Durcan notes that the relationship between parents and children is symbiotic once more reinforcing the sense of unity and equality in the home. 

-Durcan notes that the family is the most subversive unit in society- the home is a sovereign place. 

-Durcan lists popular phrases that demonstrate how a sense of home is a source of comfort and security for many people. 

-The tone of the poem changes dramatically as Durcan informs us he was put out of his home by ‘a keen wind felled’. He is no longer jubilant and proud; now, he is aimless and lonely. 

-The distress call at the end of the poem is particularly poignant.