the world strange to us.^15 As McGuckianís poem undermines
conventional formulations of meaning, it is difficult to contain what is
written within a single interpretative frame. This is a style of writing
that is nomadic rather than monadic or allusive rather than seeking
fixture. As Paul Muldoon (who could well be McGuckianís ideal
ëcache-cacheí partner) suggests: ëWe all know that if we try to nail a
thing down it can pull the nail out and walk away.í^16
Bodily Borders
The way in which the ability to interpret and mean within
McGuckianís poetry is called into question can be explored in relation
to the notion of disidentification. Moreover, the issues of liminality,
subjectivity and fluid identity can be considered in McGuckianís
poem ëThe Over Motherí from Captain Lavender (1994) so as to
develop the concept of disidentification further.^17 Stanza one begins in
a hotel that is described as being ësealed.í This has connotations of
security, containment, secrecy and the building of barriers:
In the sealed hotel men are handled
as if they were furniture, and passion
exhausts itself at the mouth. Play kisses
stir the circuits of the underloved body
to an ever-resurrection, a never-had tenderness
that dies inside me.The sealed room could be a safe house in which men are moved
around like furniture and the poem itself becomes a kind of safe house
as it secretly covers where exactly it is located. As is usual in
McGuckianís poetry, the poem could well be covering the context of
15 Cf. HÈlËne Cixous, ëFiction and Its Phantoms: A Reading of Freudís Das
Unheimlicheí, New Literary History, Vol.7, No.3, Spring 1976, p.543.
16 Paul Muldoon, Viewpoints: Poets in Conversation, John Haffenden (London:
Faber, 1981), p.135.
17 McGuckian, ëThe Over Motherí, Captain Lavender (Meath: Gallery, 1994),
p.64.