The latest collection by Irish poet Eamon Grennan, winner of the 2003 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize
The Quick of It
Poems
- “Whether he is describing the flight of swifts over Dublin, the sight of his children in yellow macs climbing over cliff rocks, or his passage through ‘a bright bead-curtain of rain,’ Grennan is a writer of plainspoken reverence. [Relations] presents fifteen years of his poetry, whose effect is like afternoon light hitting ordinary objects: it illuminates, clarifies, and directs our gaze toward what it is we love but often overlook.”—The New Yorker
—we have to be at home here no matter what, no matter what the shivering
Belly says, or the dry-salted larynx; no matter the frantic pulse, no matter what happens.
—from "[Because the body stops here. . . ]"
The poems in Eamon Grennan's The Quick of It—each one without title and compacted into ten taught lines—are rendered with exquisite detail and reverence for the everyday elements of weather, landscape, family, art, questions. Grennan's poems are persistent, amplified acts of attention, proving with every detail-light glancing off stone, an orange stem framing a Chardin still life, the contours of the body trapping the mind-that we are our best selves when we are most alert.
Belly says, or the dry-salted larynx; no matter the frantic pulse, no matter what happens.
—from "[Because the body stops here. . . ]"
The poems in Eamon Grennan's The Quick of It—each one without title and compacted into ten taught lines—are rendered with exquisite detail and reverence for the everyday elements of weather, landscape, family, art, questions. Grennan's poems are persistent, amplified acts of attention, proving with every detail-light glancing off stone, an orange stem framing a Chardin still life, the contours of the body trapping the mind-that we are our best selves when we are most alert.
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About the Author
Credit: Don J. Usner
Praise
- “Highly recommended…”—Library Journal, starred review
- “Eamon Grennan presents an explicit elucidation of the art of poetry at work in this highly satisfying volume.”—Harvard Review
- “The world around us throbs with life, and these poems urge the reader to attend that life.”—Magill Book Reviews
