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A new collection of expert lyric poems from Bernard O'Donoghue, which movingly animates the characters of his childhood in County Cork.
Poetry, arguably, has a greater range of conceptual meaning than perhaps any other term in English. At the most basic level everyone can recognise it--it is a kind of literature that uses special linguistic devices of organization and expression for aesthetic effect. However, far grander claims have been made for poetry than this--such as Shelley's that the poets 'are the unacknowledged legislators of the world', and that poetry is 'a higher truth'. In this Very Short Introduction, Bernard O'Donoghue provides a fascinating look at the many different forms of writing which have been called 'poetry'--from the Greeks to the present day. As well as questioning what poetry is, he asks what poetry...
An up-to-date overview of Heaney's career thus far, with detailed readings of all his major publications.
Bernard O'Donoghue's third collection of poetry is about the middle ground--being in between two places, being neither here nor there. Again he mines the memories of his rural upbringing in County Cork, weaving a series of tender elegies for the characters and places of his youth.
Being a doctor is a privilege; it is also very demanding and can be stressful, and to be able to look after others, we need to look after ourselves. We offer you this little book of poetry, Tools of the Trade, as a friend to provide inspiration, comfort and support as you begin work. Tools of the Trade includes poems by poet-doctors Iain Bamforth, Rafael Campo, Glenn Colquhoun, Martin MacIntryre and Gael Turnbull.
Cover -- Half Title -- Dedication -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction: 'An art that knows its mind' -- 1 English or Irish Lyric? (1960s Heaney) -- 2 Phonetics and Feeling: Wintering Out, North and Field Work (1970s Heaney) -- 3 'The limbo of lost words': The Sweeney Complex -- 4 Beyond the Alphabet: The Haw Lantern and Seeing Things -- 5 Heaney's ars poetica: Mandelstam, Dante and The Government of the Tongue -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
"Bernard O'Donoghue's magnificent fourth collection of poetry explores its title in a series of beautifully wrought poems whose simple elegance belie their complexity. There are moving elegies for people the poet has outlived. There are poems too about living outside the poet's original environment and the inclination to return there for stories and feelings: the MacNeicean 'tourist in his own country', perpetually restive and perpetually homesick. But most important there is 'outliving' as in 'outdoing', or living a life of higher quality: the drinking of 'red wine outside in the sunlit squares' that is accorded to the less privileged - to building site workers or young soldiers who are cannon-fodder in the world's trouble-spots."
Derek Mahon is one of the leading poets of his time, both in Ireland and beyond, famously offering a perspective that is displaced from as much as grounded in his native country. From prodigious beginnings to prolific maturity, he has been, through thick and thin, through troubled times and other, a writer profoundly committed to the art of poetry and the craft of making verse. He has also been no-less a committed reviser of his work, believing the poem to be more than a record in verse, but a work of art never finished. This virtuoso study by Hugh Haughton provides the most comprehensive account imaginable of Mahon's oeuvre. Haughton's brilliant writing always serves and illuminates the poetry, yielding extraordinary insights on almost every page. The poetry, its revisions and reception, are the subject here, but so thorough is the approach that what is offered also amounts indirectly to an intellectual biography of the poet and with it an account of Northern Irish poetry vital to our understanding of the times.
A collection of stories, centering mainly on characters from rural Ireland.
The inspiration for the major motion picture The Green Knight starring Dev Patel, an early English poem of magic, chivalry and seduction. Composed during the fourteenth century in the English Midlands, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight describes the events that follow when a mysterious green-coloured knight rides into King Arthur's Camelot in deep mid-winter. The mighty knight presents a challenge to the court: he will allow himself to be struck by one blow, on the condition that he will be allowed to return the strike on the following New Year's Eve. Sir Gawain takes up the challenge, decapitating the stranger - only to see the Green Knight seize up his own severed head and ride away, leaving Gawain to seek him out and honour their pact. Blending Celtic myth and Christian faith, Gawain is among the greatest Middle English poems: a tale of magic, chivalry and seduction.