Questions? Comments? -K. E. Dennis
Poetry of Ireland (Irish poets writing in English)
She's brilliant, actually, savage & yes, passionate... & the author of one of the most devastating poems I've yet encountered - below.
It is incandescent w/grief & rage & yet meticulously structured, which IMO only magnifies its impact. & it's pinned into place w/ words that strike echoes of other well known poems of loss & lament that others have posted here lately.
Look - if you can bear it - at how her words pick up the famous repetitions of an Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire : [ The Lament for Arthur O'Leary; see also Child Of Our Time]
my lamb, my calf, my eaglet,...tho here the litany of affectionate images, pet names, is spoken by a mother, rather than the widow mourning her husband or the sister, her brother.
my cub, my kid, my nestling,
my suckling, my colt.
& note too (in a coincidence of timing that I've seen more than once in this strangely bewitched space called s.c.i.) echoes of MacDonogh's images [She Walked Unaware] - tho in reverse time: - wild birds & other creatures - October - months of promise - images of a love-bed & fields - bright flames & low fires & desolation...
But as you've said in another thread, Laura - everyone's encounter w/ a poem is unique & personal, tho we can try to grapple w/ & share the the experience .... so now I'll step back out of the way of this one.
Child Burial
Paula Meehan
The Man Who Was Marked By Winter
The Gallery Press, 1991