July
2012 - Vol. 61
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The
Miraculous Insistence of Life
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poem
by Sean O'Neill
While the sad flat atoms of carbon and calx
Crow up their dreary prose in black tar,
A tulip burns through the hardcore of the alley
And bloods its secret heart with inky sap and melody.
As fragmentary ceiling plaster and dirt
Waste over the the plate silver of drawing rooms,
A stout and terrible ash flames up from the dew
And seizes the loud harmonic of the lawn's dominion.
When the bitter files of the cobble and the coping stone
March their biting patterns down each intersected byway,
Brute green life boils below the severality of sight
And surges out of every careless pore of earth.
Men cannot quench love,
Nor smother it with feeble block or brick above.
And street and town and tar and turning strife
Are swallowed in the symphonies of life.
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See other poems in Living Bulwark by Sean
O'Neill
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With this new collection
of poems Sean O’Neill explores the relationship between the child, the
youth and the adult. What are the key moments that have contributed to
the construction of a fully-formed human being? Here a number of poems
masquerade as memoir but have a deeper message, sometimes wistful, sometimes
humorous. Here, too, he draws on his Celtic upbringing and the questions
of identity that it raises. Some of the nature poems are a new departure
and celebrate the complexity and beauty of animals, insects and the weather.
This book of poems is more playful than O’Neill’s first book “this stage
of life”, and uses a more accessible idiom to convey mood, but nevertheless
offers a coherent voice full of color and depth.
Book available at Amazon. |
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This collection of Sean
O’Neill’s poems is his first. The poems cover periods when the poet lived
or worked in London, England; Milan, Italy; Drummore, a small fishing village
on the West Coast of Scotland; and St. Paul, USA. The subject matter of
the poems therefore varies from the grittily descriptive ‘Bridges’ and
‘Sweet Thames’, which are set in London, to the pastoral ‘The Hill’ and
‘in this atlas of headland’ set in the South Rhins peninsula. The poems
cover several years and a multitude of situations and yet a consistent
voice emerges finding meaning in apparently insignificant details, and
clothing mundane events in a tapestry of rich wordplay. Several poetic
sequences are contained in this collection including the four-part ‘this
stage of life’ a wry commentary on modern life and ‘Winter 2011’ which
centers on the view from a window during the harsh weather conditions of
that year. Some of the poems are satirical; others celebrate the joy of
simple things. Some are dark while others are full of hope. Whatever the
reader’s disposition he or she will find something valuable in this volume
that echoes the mood of the moment or the season of life. Book available
at Amazon. |
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