Conamara Blues: Poems
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About this ebook
Translating the beauty and splendor of his native Conamara into a language exquisitely attuned to the wonder of the everyday, John O'Donohue takes us on a moving journey through real and imagined worlds. Divided into three parts -- Approachings, Encounters, and Distances -- Conamara Blues at once reawakens a sense of intimacy with the natural world and a feeling of wonder at the mystery of our relationship to this world. Whether exploring the silent, eternal memory of Conamara or focusing on the power of language and the vagaries of human need and passion, O'Donohue tenderly reveals the fragile vulnerability of love and friendship. The result is a musical, transcendent, and deeply moving series of poems that exemplifies O'Donohue at his finest.
Written with penetrating insight and distilled transparence, Conamara Blues offers a singular and lasting imaginative vision of a landscape of hope and possibility -- powerfully exhibiting the mastery of a poet at the height of his lyric powers.
John O'Donohue
John O'Donohue (1956-2008) was a poet, philosopher, and scholar and a native Gaelic speaker from County Clare, Ireland. He was awarded a PhD in Philosophical Theology from the University of Tübingen, with post-doctoral study of Meister Eckhart. John's numerous international bestselling books include Anam Cara, Beauty, Eternal Echoes, and the beloved To Bless the Space Between Us (published as Benedictus in Europe), among many others, guiding readers through the landscape of the Irish imagination.
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Reviews for Conamara Blues
13 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Excellent writer: the soul characterizes one's destiny. A basic way to describe his insight. Much recommended.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I love John O'Donahue and everything he writes. I so wish not knowing him when he was with us.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5John O’Donohue’s second book of 82 poems follows the same format as his first, ‘Echoes of Memory’, this one having three sections, each introduced by poetic or philosophic thoughts authored by others.
Approachings and Distances artistically explore a variety of elemental life themes, while Encounters focuses on the full spectrum of Christ’s life from annunciation to coronation. A beautifully expressed journey for the spirit, there is much here for contemplative reflection.
‘The Nativity’ was one of many that spoke deeply to me as it exquisitely captures the life-giving intimacy of pregnancy and birth. And, of course, ‘Fluent’
“I would love to live
Like a river flows,
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.”
I Would recommend this one for poetry fans to experience the beauty of John's use of language..
Book preview
Conamara Blues - John O'Donohue
APPROACHINGS
I want to watch watching arrive.
I want to watch arrivances.
—HÉLÉNE CIXOUS
I think back gladly on the future.
—HANS MAGNUS ENZENSBENGER
Think of things that disappear.
Think of what you love best,
What brings tears to your eyes.
Something that said adios to you
Before you knew what it meant
Or how long it was for.
—NAOMI SHIHAB NYE
THOUGHT-WORK
In memory of Joe Pilkington
Off course from the frail music sought by words
And the path that always claims the journey,
In the pursuit of a more oblique rhythm,
Creating mostly its own geography,
The mind is an old crow
Who knows only to gather dead twigs,
Then take them back to the vacancy
Between the branches of the parent tree
And entwine them around the emptiness
With silence and unfailing patience
Until what was fallen, withered and lost
Is now set to fill with dreams as a nest.
FIRST WORDS
For Shane O’Donohue
Parents know not what they do
When they coax those first words
Out of you, start a trickle
Of saying that will not cease.
Long after they no longer hear
Your talk, the words they started
Continue to call out for someone
To come near enough to hear
The cadence of what has happened
Deep in the inevitable growing
Heavy and weary of heart
Under the layer of days
Where memory works cold fusions,
As if your voice could carry you
Out of the stillness to the warmth
Of someone who would linger with you
To search the frozen parts for tears
Until a forgotten line fires
Down through the word-hoard
To where your first silence was
Broken, and your rhythm born.
NEST
For J.
I awaken
To find your head
Loaded with sleep,
Branching my chest.
Feel the streams
Of your breathing
Dream through my heart.
From the new day,
Light glimpses
The nape of your neck.
Tender is the weight
Of your sleeping thought
And all the worlds
That will come back
When you raise your head
And look.
BLACK MUSIC IN CONAMARA
For John Barry
To travel through the trough
Of this Sunday afternoon,
As mist thickens into a screen
All over Conamara,
Holding the mountains back
From the clarity their stern solitude
Strives after,