SOURCE: Bendall, Molly. “Flower Logic: The Poems of Medbh McGuckian.” Antioch Review 48, no. 3 (summer 1990): 367-71.

In the following essay, Bendall discusses the style and imagery of McGuckian's poems in relation to the subversion of phallocentric literary conventions.

In casual discussions of the Irish poet Medbh (pronounced like Queen Maeve) McGuckian's work, I've often heard the responses “flowery,” “irrational,” or “strange” used. Yet I think “sensual” and “intricate” are far better words to describe this poet's compellingly original poems. McGuckian's imagination does more than enhance a realistic sequence of events in the rendering of a poem. Her characteristic play with unexpected usages, quirky syntax, synesthesia, and even dazzling pathetic fallacies constantly confronts then abandons common narrative equations and structures.

This is true not only of the poems in On Ballycastle Beach, McGuckian's most recent collection, but also of the poems of her previous volumes, The Flower Master and Venus...