Review: Songs from the Shooting Gallery

Whatchoo need.



The books that I treasure most are the ones that have been recommended to me. A 'review' always conjures images of teachers removing the soul of a book for points to include in an exam essay. This is not a review. This is a recommendation.

After touring with Marc Almond at age eighteen and a successful stint as Kenickie's keyboardist, O'Neill crash landed in LA with more than a weekend interest in drugs and the participant of a Las Vegas quickie marriage. A less than successful collaboration with The Brian Jonestown Massacre signalled O'Neill's departure from the music arena and his participation in full time heroin and cocaine use.

Changing his lifestyle and returning to writing with a successful novel and short story/poem collection have some filing O'Neill beside Burroughs, Jim Carroll and Dan Fante, but I'm sure he's as interested in placements and accolades as I am in giving them. What he is passionate about, and dedicated to, is his writing.

In Songs From The Shooting Gallery, his first full poetry collection, there are no sacred places, nowhere O'Neill will not gladly bring you with him. He knows his subject matter intimately and makes this work for him. The blood pools between each word, some of which feel like blunt force trauma yet always with enough human heat which warms you to the fact that something important is being communicated. O'Neill reveals himself and in doing so clicks into place a few more pieces of the puzzle to reveal how some of us live and allows us to keep our eyes open that bit longer when looking at the ragged facets of our world.

But it's not all needles and mayhem. Still remaining uncompromising in his descriptions, some moments are intensely moving and intimate, especially those centring around his wife and young daughter.

With Songs, O’Neill has dealt us an imaginative, intense and a hold on tight ride of a first collection.


[Brian McGettrick]

Buy this book>>

Songs From The Shooting Gallery: Poems 1999-2006 by Tony O'Neill
Burning Shore Press
154 Pages

---

Further works by Tony O'Neill:



Digging the Vein, novel, Contemporary Press, USA / Wrecking Ball Press, UK [and reviewed in Dogmatika here]



Seizure Wet Dreams, poems/short stories, Social Disease, UK

Becoming More Like Jesus, broadside, Ten Point Press, Ireland

Hero of the Underground (TBC), novel, due Autumn 2008, St Martin's Press, USA