Masterpieces

by Craig Moon Hannaway

“How the ruins of me adore the ruins of you”. Here are 24 Masterpieces collected for the first time. The title of this book of incredibly wide-ranging poems is not as arrogant as it seems. A masterpiece was originally the work submitted by a journeyman craftsman to qualify as a master, and Hannaway is nothing if not a craftsman of verse. The poet is also an actor, once reviewed as “just as hilarious as anything you would see at the Royal Shakespeare Company” - and the cast of characters here is a clue to this. Here comes Lot’s wife, arguing with her husband that she has a perfect right to look back at the city of Sodom if she wants to; an insomniac stallholder in a pre-dawn market of one, the tribal ritual in every Main Street ear-piercing shop; people in the desert desperately hauling giant statues of themselves; Daedalus getting his idea for making wings from a suicide jumping from a bridge; a father listening to his daughter's music practice and travelling through the sounds to his own less-civilised childhood; Soviet youths addicted to jazz records printed on old X-rays, and Daniel colluding with the lion not to stick to the script. Hannaway has a respectful disrespect for tradition - villanelle, ballad form, free verse, the lot. His mind is a gallimaufry in a pantechnicon, and that's just how he likes it. Warning: this book has not been tamed; it comes from a mind and a heart, not from a campus writing course. Approach at your own risk.

50 pages, Paperback

First published January 23, 2020