John Murphy's third collection of poems is like very little else on the 21st century poetry landscape. Zeppelin Vending Machine Manifesto
is a rewardingly complex book that confronts the hyper-technicity of
the early 21st century's devastating information-age assault on
language, meaning, and truth. Fearless in form and argument, there are
no cosy resting places here, none of the emollients of literary comfort.
And if the poems are confrontational and vitally demanding, they are
beautifully made and record sensitively, through echoes of his own
struggle and self-criticism, the physical and mental depletions of
living in radically uncertain times. If, as some have suggested, all of
the oxygen has been sucked out of the room by the overwhelming success
of recent dead giants of Irish poetry, then Murphy has achieved escape
velocity on his own rigorous terms. This is a book that rewards, even
demands, a creative response from the reader. Enjoy the riddles, jokes,
nods, codes, traps, and paradoxes of its language - this is a singular
collection.