2 review for Rasputin and His Children

1. 

   4 out of 5

   Joe – Nov 28, 2015

   I read how there are girls in this city who, for money, will lie in a cold bathtub till their pulse shrinks in their blue wrists like a seed in winter. Who'll play dead and let themselves be made love to by grown men who will pay good money for this. Like Hamlet consummating with Ophelia at last [...]. From 'Whites' This is the first collection of Martin Mooney's that I've read, but already I can discern that he is one of the best, and underrated, Northern Irish poets. Rasputin and His Children covers I read how there are girls in this city who, for money, will lie in a cold bathtub till their pulse shrinks in their blue wrists like a seed in winter. Who'll play dead and let themselves be made love to by grown men who will pay good money for this. Like Hamlet consummating with Ophelia at last [...]. From 'Whites' This is the first collection of Martin Mooney's that I've read, but already I can discern that he is one of the best, and underrated, Northern Irish poets. Rasputin and His Children covers a variety of themes including urban life in Belfast, sectarianism, turbulent father-son relationships, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Rasputin the Mad Monk, child abusers and developing a connection between him as a child and Mooney and his peers. My favourite poems in the collection: 'The Vans', 'Painting the Angel', 'The Lost Apprentice', 'Dwarves', 'Child Killers in Heaven', 'Decline and Fall', 'Two Pages from a Travel Diary' and 'Dimitri Gregorievich Rasputin' from which comes this fantastic piece: You might be my own/freckled and tight-lipped/ten-year-old self, brooding/run-of-the-mill patricide,/or any kid acting the maggot/in the infinite regress/of fish-and-chip shop mirrors -/as if drifting backwards/into uncountable futures/of brawls and kickabouts,/of shoplifting sprees, and cider-/fuelled, aimless truancies,/of the dole or the factory/where a right arm can be gulped/to the shoulder and wrenched/into the stern machinery.

2. 

   5 out of 5

   Paul Maddern –