By Jim Murphy
Negative Capability Press, 2023
Paperback: $15
Genre: Poetry
Reviewed by Foster Dickson
It is always nice to see a new release from a poet whose good work is familiar, and the poems in Jim Murphy’s new collection, Versions of May, were a pleasure to read. In addition to a slew of appearances in literary magazines, Murphy’s three previous collections and his involvement in the Montevallo Literary Festival brought him to the attention of many readers and poetry lovers in Alabama, me among them. Additionally, seeing Negative Capability Press (out of Mobile) as the publisher doubly assured me that everything here would be just fine.
Versions of May contains three sections, each simply numbered rather than being headed by a title. The first and third sections are significantly shorter than the middle one, which has about as many poems as the other two sections combined. Reading poems is often enjoyable because of the uncertainty in the experience, and given the elusive meaning of book’s title and the untitled sections within it, the only way to know for sure what Murphy would be up to is to dive in.
The poems in section one are nicely crafted free verse, many organized into stanzaic forms. Murphy uses the two- and three-line stanza well to create that tiny bit of tension with each line break, while other poems with longer stanza lengths interweave imagery and narratives. Here, we see monks with their candle-lit manuscripts and allusions to Jack Kerouac, Columbia, Missouri, and (I think) Paul Westerberg (of The Replacements), and we read lines that defy grammar by isolating portions of sentences: “just who you are, or who I am, if I am true,” he writes as we hop along the poet’s thoughts like rocks across a stream.
Section two offers us eighteen single-stanza poems, blocky to look at and full of imagery and nuance. The subjects range from music to war, interspersing discussions of how Russian soldiers may have found a piece of Hitler’s skull to what it means to have a U2 bootleg tape in 1989—“a black cassette with nothing on the label.” In these verses, Murphy is somewhat playful but sometimes dark, throwing unusual ideas at us to ponder.
The third and final section mimics the first in its organizational patterns: some we find have those two- or three-line stanzas, while others roll out line upon line. By this time, the reader will see that the collection maintains its sensibility throughout, without lags, pitfalls, or weak spots. In Section 3, we are reading about jazzman Chet Baker and “Ruins Near Duy Phu” in Vietnam. Later, the poem “Supermarine Spitfire” speaks directly to an old airplane, while the final poem “Westerly” takes us to Oregon and California to tell us about the “lately lucky karma of America.”
It is not an easy task to take on such ephemeral subjects as music, war, place, and the past. But Jim Murphy handles these things well by remaining within the particular to bring us the abstract, while taking us on a trip that only figurative language can.
Foster Dickson is a writer, editor, and teacher in Montgomery, Alabama.
