Wild, Wild Erie: Poems Inspired by Works of Art in the Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio by Paul Durcan (review)

In Wild, Wild Erie, Paul Durcan takes as his subject the holdings of the Toledo Museum of Art in Toledo, Ohio. The poems in this collection are ekphrastic in nature. They are thematically inextricable from the works to which they respond; each poem's title derives from its respective subject. Durcan, a contemporary Irish poet whose recent books include The Laughter of Mothers (2007) and Praise in Which I Live and Move and Have My Being (2012), writes from the perspective of the audience, or sometimes from inside the world of the painting. Sometimes, he takes the perspective of the artwork's subject(s). The poems—and poet—meander through the halls of the museum, responding to, or departing from, what is hanging on the walls.

Durcan's poems are speculative and lively (The Irish Times once dubbed him "The most playful poet in Ireland"). He approaches even the most serious works of art with a sense of lighthearted humor; his poem on The Adoration of the Magi, Bartolome-Esteban Murillo's Baroque-era treatment of the Christ Child, Madonna, and Magi, begins: "I'm a bonny wee boy and my name it is Jesus" (29). And he does not shy from the sensual—as in Still Life with Grapes, Chestnuts, Melons, and a Marble Cube (Antoine Berjon, circa 1800), in which he writes: "I would like you to allow my melons / To crawl around your study / Analyse their Gravitational Waves" (42). Neither does he shy from the sublime, especially as it pertains to landscapes such as Auvers, Landscape with Plough (Charles-François Daubigny, 1872–1877). Lines from Durcan's poem read: "What you are holding in your porcelain hand / Is all of life, past, present and to come, / All of the earth, all of the earth" (75).

In the last few poems of the volume, Durcan's attention moves to art that takes as its subject the landscape of the Midwest itself. Silver Erie, a response to Maya Lin's 2012 sculpture (an outline of the lake and its tributary the Maumee River, cast in reclaimed silver), Durcan asks and answers: "Where am I? With whom am I? / Lake Erie!" (185). And in the ultimate poem, A Hammock, Durcan finally leaves the confines of the museum building to sit on a glass hammock next to Toledo's Monroe Street. His literary skill is evident in the rhythm of the language and ease of metaphor:

Here I am reposing like a stag tilting in full flight,Swaying in the breeze under oak tree and maple,My carefree dangled fingers wine-tasting uncut grassIn urban parkland, watching the auto-traffic—

(195)

Together, these two poems represent the thin sliver of the book in which the Midwest and its landscape are the explicit subject of the art.

Yet the Midwest is present throughout Wild, Wild Erie. Ohio, Ohioans, and the landscape and other features of the state make regular appearances. For example, Durcan sees in A Dutch Road (Anton Mauve, circa 1880) "A Dutch Road in Ohio—/The north road to Erie—/Which should be a tow-path—" (83). The Toledo Museum of Art itself is a constant presence. In the aforementioned still life, the speaker eludes "the Toledo Art Museum Gallery Guard" to touch the world of the painting (43). In "Ulysses and Penelope," a sixteenth-century painting by the Italian artist Francesco Primaticcio, he takes the voice of the museum curator, who, upon hearing of the painting's existence, immediately dispatches the funds to retrieve it, noting, "We could do with a touch of Ticcio in Toledo" (23).

The world of Wild, Wild Erie is multifaceted and transnational. In the final poem of the book, sitting on the glass hammock near Toledo's "main drag," Durcan styles himself "A connoisseur of public seating … From Paris, France, to Paris, Texas; / From...