Kathleen O’Toole: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Those Reels

 

skip from Billy's accordion

skim the polished floorboards ’til

they land up under your heels

 

then swell into a pulse

that tips the scales of reticence

holding you fast.

 

Into a circle of arms

now twining, now reaching by,

the notes come skittering

 

alive in the glistening of flushed

faces, arched along flexed

calf muscles, legs

 

that spring against the gravity

of measured days. So out of place

in the city, these tunes

 

when they spill out

over the urgent bass

of sidewalk rap, above

 

the din of tin cans

and scrap in a pushcart, from the window

of a smoky bar—a stream

 

of flute, soft and absurd

as sheep would be, grazing in Bayview Park.

Yet there's more beneath

 

this breath. Under

the taut-stringed fiddle's a fire: grief

pressed to oil, to wine

 

to a dance

on the exile's grave.

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Kathleen O’Toole is the author of four poetry collections, most recently This Far (Paraclete Press, 2019). Her poems have received numerous honors and prizes, and have appeared in such publications as  America, Christian Century, Notre Dame Review, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and Spiritus. The former Poet Laureate of Takoma Park, Maryland, O’Toole is a longtime community organizer who finds joy in birding, biking, sailing the Chesapeake, and in Irish music and dancing.

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                                                                     Tomas O'Maoldomhnaigh, Fleadh Ceili Ennis, 2018.

 

Comments

[Mary Rieser]

I love Kathleen’s poetry. I can hear the tunes and see them dancing now!

[Bill Nevins]

a stream
Ah yes!

"of flute, soft and absurd

as sheep would be, grazing in Bayview Park.

Yet there's more beneath"

LOVE this poem!

[Don Berger]

Beautiful sound in this poem as Terence says, rolling for a good length and changing along the way.

[Michael Whelsn]

I enjoyed the remarkable word power here creating an intensity of inside experience. A kind of dance in the head.

[Emily Fragos]

I am a great fan of Irish dancing. It is exhilarating and "there's more beneath." (There are videos on youtube of little Irish children dancing at recitals and it is so endearing and fun to watch.)

[Geoffrey Himes]

Yes, that was what it was like.

[Grace Cavalieri]

I AM IN!

[Christine Higgins]

What a fabulous poem. You can hear the music!

[Eileen]

Wonderful poem and terrific artwork. I love it

[lally]

indeed!!

[Clarinda]

I love how the music swells to deep sorrow

[Clarinda]

Oops I was typing in the dark. I love how the music swells to a deep sorrow.

[Cindy Hochman]

I love the lyrical cadence of this poem and the way it unfolds stanza by stanza. I also like the form; it fits the subject. A lovely poem, Kathleen—I enjoyed reading it.

[Dr. Earle Hitchner]

It’s no easy feat to capture convincingly in two-dimensional prose all the multi-sensory, kinetic power of great music inspiring and sustaining spirited dance. But Kathleen O’Toole’s “Those Reels” does exactly that. Her two-word title serves as an exhalation of pinch-me pleasure and even perplexity over the miracle unfolding on the dance floor. She describes that miracle in stanzas serving as movements in the dance and what those movements elicit from the dancers themselves. “Billy’s accordion” (that is, Billy McComiskey, the Brooklyn-born, Baltimore resident, All-Ireland senior button accordion champion of 1986) sets everything into motion. The rhythm of the accordion dovetails with the rhythm of the dancers, and vice versa, each dependent on the other and together forming a single, swaying, exciting, holistic motion: “a circle of arms / now twining” amid “the glistening of flushed / faces.” But O’Toole is not just limning the joys of Irish traditional music and dance. She acknowledges how “So out of place / in the city, these tunes / when they spill out / over the urgent bass / of sidewalk rap, above / the din of tin cans / and scrap in a pushcart.” Yes, the music and dance in her poem evoke far more pastoral than urban sensations. Yet she does not flinch from stating that even the sounds of flute (“there’s more beneath / this breath”) and fiddle (“a fire: grief”) can culminate in “a dance / on the exile’s grave.” In nine triplets and a concluding couplet, O’Toole distills and delivers with stunning immediacy and skill an Irish-American cultural past and present conjured by “Those Reels.”

By the way, the juxtaposition of Tomas O’Maoldomhnaigh’s artwork could not be better.

Now click on--or copy and paste into your browser--the link below to hear “Billy’s accordion” on “The Collier’s / Miss Thornton’s / The Concert” reels from his 2008 album OUTSIDE THE BOX:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3llQLy029gY&ab_channel=BillyMcComiskey-Topic