Photo poems and bathroom abstractions: in The Book of Falling, David McCooey offers a series of psychological snapshots
In David McCooey’s The Book of Falling, much is made of the titular theme as the cohesive element.
- In David McCooey’s The Book of Falling, much is made of the titular theme as the cohesive element.
- In the section and poem titles, and in the poems themselves, we encounter the grand themes of phenomenology and time scales.
- Review: The Book of Falling – David McCooey (Upswell) The best poems in The Book of Falling, and its most original and purposeful reason, are the three “photo poems” at its centre.
- I want to focus on these before considering the less compelling poems that flank the heart of the book.
- Although McCooey makes no source attribution for these, as a fellow academic I feel confident they are from university communications.
Domestic spaces
- Crossing your hands over your chest and applying pressure, like the nursing staff told you.
- You think about the bathroom you made your way to after your bypass operation.
- The Book of Falling dwells in the domestic spaces where these sorts of vulnerabilities tend to occur (and to be hidden).
- They round out the palette of The Book of Falling, but they seem an odd choice as an opening sequence.
Resonant phrases
- McCooey is capable of resonant phrases.
- He has a penchant for oxymoronic images like “Honey and maggots” or “the brief duration of abysmal sleep”.
- He is also capable of some clangers:
Meanwhile the bats in the ironbark treeare taking to the sky.
- Are the wings themselves “breathtaking” or would that adjective more aptly describe the sound they make?
- But McCooey is a mature poet and Upswell is a vital publisher; together they could have punched this up into something more robust.