Lesson 2 Poets

The Alien

by Greg Delanty

I'm back again scrutinizing the Milky Way
of your ultrasound, scanning the dark
matter, the nothingness, that now the heads say
is chockablock with quarks & squarks,
gravitons & gravitini, photons & photinos. Our sprout,

who art there inside the spacecraft
of your Ma, the time capsule of this printout,
hurling & whirling towards us, it's all dafton this earth.
Our alien who art in the heavens,
our Martian, our little green man, we're anxious

to make contact, to ask divers questions
about the heavendom you hail from, to discuss
the whole shebang of the beginning&end,
the pre–big bang untime before you forget the why
and lie of thy first place. And, our friend,

to say Welcome, that we mean no harm, we'd die
for you even, that we pray you’re not here
to subdue us, that we’d put awayour ray guns, missiles, attitude and share
our world with you, little big head, if only you stay.


“Delanty has catalogued an entire generation and its relationship to exile. He is the laureate of those who have gone.” Was how Colum McCann described Greg Delanty.

Greg Delanty is a noted contemporary Irish poet who was born in Cork, Ireland and had won the National Poetry Competition in 1999. He was awarded the Austin Clarke Centenary Poetry prize in 1996 and also many other various prizes. In fact, he has a bibliography of 7 books of poets and peoms. Namely:
Cast in the Fire (1986)
Southward (1992)
American Wake (1995)
The Hellbox (1998)
The Blind Stitch (2002)
Collected Poems 1986-2006 (2006)
The Ship of Birth (2007)

I chose this poet of his because its title seemed rather interesting as it was about something which we have yet to discover. His descriptions of the aliens were also typical of what we would think of aliens, green with big heads. He also starts with what we humans are trying to do, scanning the dark matter of nothingness. He also makes it that we are wanting to become friends with the aliens and not turn against them. This shows his deep thoughts and fascination about what people has not discovered.

This poet show that he is wanting peace in this world and probably feels that since we are able to make friends with aliens, why not make friends with other countries and stop causing hurt to our own people.

Delanty is the son of a printer, and his fourth collection, The Hellbox, is based on the printing idiom he learnt from his father. The Blind Stitch was set in Ireland, America and India. This shows that he respects his father a lot and remembers what his father has taught him. But what I do not quite understand is the title of his collection, The Hellbox. Why does he name it in such a brutal name when it is about idioms he had learn from his father?

In his collected poets and poems, most relate to women, especially his mother and his wife. He likes to record and reflect upon the stages of his wife’s pregnancy, and then the birth and infancy of their son Dan. He also records and reflects upon the stages of his mother’s final illness and death. Delanty negotiates between and ultimately reconciles these two elemental experiences. In this collection, you can see how he looks at life. In his recordings and reflections, he talks about both the birth and death of life. Ironically, in collected poets and poems, he writes about two opposite things, life and death, but joins them together to show the cycle of life.

Sources:
Poets.org Wikipedia.com http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.unf.edu/coas/irishstudies/images/GregDelanty.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.unf.edu/coas/irishstudies/events/gregdelanty.html&usg=__laV_3YFiZefMIsbget9vH5rgAEs=&h=303&w=226&sz=20&hl=en&start=1&tbnid=KVeNc-6MYZ8qNM:&tbnh=116&tbnw=87&prev=/images%3Fq%3DGreg%2BDelanty%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG