Dear Life - Softcover

Dennis O'Driscoll

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0856464465 ISBN 13: 9780856464461

Publisher: Anvil Press Poetry, 2001

Synopsis

A collection of poetry and works dedicated to Allah.

About this title

About the Author:

Dennis O'Driscoll: Dennis O’Driscoll (1954 2012), a former editor of Poetry Ireland Review, was the author of nine collections of poetry as well as book of interviews with Seamus Heaney, Stepping Stones. Poetry Review famously (and deservedly) called O’Driscoll one of the best-read men in the Western world.”

From Publishers Weekly:

O' Driscoll's conversational, trustworthy style, wry attention to contemporary life, and work on behalf of other poets, made him a widely beloved figure in Ireland before his death in 2012. This ninth book retains his affable, inviting virtues (reminiscent at times of Louis MacNeice) while focusing on topics that most conversations avoid: the untrustworthiness, or indeed the falsity, of organized Christian belief, and the imminence of death. €œGod gets nothing right these days,/ our ways no longer his ways,€ O'Driscoll (Reality Check) decides, calling the deity €œthis mystifying no-show€ ; €œDeath is the very spit/ of life, its flip side,€ he says elsewhere, adapting The Epic of Gilgamesh. A briskly rueful four-part poem contemplates the poet's retirement from his (real) job at the Irish equivalent of the IRS; a witty meditation on hospitals, doctors, €œTests€ imagines dying as a way to €œfill my parents' shoes,/ follow in a family tradition that/ goes back as far as can be traced.€ O'Driscoll's signature effects, sad and chatty at once, resemble nothing in American poetry, and might prove delightful—or alien—to U.S. ears; his association with Seamus Heaney (who contributes an introduction) might help his reception, though what will help most are the strongest lines here, near the end of the book, where O' Driscoll tells himself not to €œdo down life,€ to €œrecall how glorious it seemed,€ with €œjust enough room on the thin-skinned/ page to set the record straight.€ (Sept.)

About this edition

• Publisher: Anvil Press Poetry
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0856464465
• ISBN 13: 9780856464461
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 112