Book Information
- Publisher
- Wake Forest Univ Pr
- Published
- 2010-08-31
- Pages
- 65 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 15.75 x 1.27 x 22.1 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781930630536
- ISBN-10
- 1930630530
- Price
- 8497 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Poetry
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin&;s The Sun-fish deftly displays the poet&;s gift for the allegorical, verging at times on parable, yet always with a sense of lived experience and a strong acknowledgement of the everyday. From the dedicatory epithalamium to the concluding poem, Ní Chuilleanáin&;s enigmatic verse exudes deep but unpretentious wisdom, often asking simple questions that demand complex answers. In poems on nature, writing, folklore, religion, love and grief, and on many homes in different places, we are taught to &;see who is there / In the whirling dance&; so that we may trace the line between illusion and reality and grasp the &;moment thinning the curtain, / Real, like the tricks of light.&; Winner of the International Griffin Poetry Prize.
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin is a Fellow and Professor of English at Trinity College, Dublin, a member of Aosdána, and was a founding member of the literary journal Cyphers.
Reviews
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book of the year
This is the newest volume from one of the very top poets writing in the English language today. Eilean Ni Chuilleanain's poetry has long been widely known in Ireland, the US, and through translation in Italy, Spain, Poland ... Faber published a "Selected Poems" last year, to let the UK catch up on this great artist, and now her terrific latest book has brought about a nomination for the TS Eliot prize. Such publicity as there's been so far is a bit misleading, and suggests the book is about "Irish history". Well, yes, you probably can read it in that way if you wish, but it's nothing so narrow. Here there's variety, inventiveness, focus, and a huge range of resonances. Some titles are mini-poems in themselves - my favourite being "You never saw a bed-end in a Protestant fence", which turns out to be an urban pastoral (with some seediness) as well as a poem of friendship for another woman poet, the great Leland Bardwell. Opening lines draw you in, such as "How on earth did she manage / That journey on her own?" or "Yes. But you can have no idea / What she was running from, / Feared more than the convent with its high stairs ..." (and what she's running from are The Married Women). The poems develop in all sorts of ways, through delicate perceptions of light, and touch, for example, and searching and often unnerving analyses of relationships. And at each twist and turn, the words are alive ... bright, fresh, startling. This is truly beautiful contemporary writing, a book I for one keep coming back to, and back to. No home should be without it.