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The Blue Globe - Reviews The Irish Times Copyright 1998 May 16, 1998, CITY EDITION Things' thinginess The scorchingly personal quality of Catherine Phil MacCarthy's second collection, The Blue Globe (Blackstaff, (pounds) 6.99 in UK), is decidedly convincing. The volume is composed for the most part of beguiling short lyrics, executed with skilful economy and a painterly deftness. MacCarthy's eye for detail is both accurate and moving – your missal fat as a tick – and the mysterious spareness of poems such as "Acts of God" or "Marooned" is highly effective. There is a clear debt to the Heaney of North in "Lucy's Song": "Uncover my bones, long dead and clean,/ The moon of my skull that gleams in the mire ...", and there are echoes of Eavan Boland elsewhere. But MacCarthy's avoidance of the temptation to generalise works to her credit; these poems quietly convey a powerful sense of the value of experience, especially in the delicately erotic "Thirst", and in "Fires." Few of the poems are longer than a page, and their lineation is similarly tight; lines containing only two or three words are commonplace. One feels that MacCarthy could easily stretch herself to longer, more ambitious forms without compromising her poise and control, and that future collections would benefit from this variety.
WEEKEND; POETRY NOW; Pg. 68
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