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Conamara Blues: Poems Posters
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John O'Donahue wrote poetry with the grace and passion of a waterfall -- a grand IRISH waterfall. He was wonderfully Irish in the musicality of his work. His poems are marked by whimsy, humanity, and spiritual power, but they are readily accessible too. I was driving when I first heard a recording of him reading a selection of his poems. Sadly, it was just after his untimely death. (Everyone says "untimely," but he was still in his fifties when he died. What glorious poems are we missing?!) I had to pull over to recover, to steady up. When I got home, I immediately went online to search for his books of poetry. This is the best I've found so far.
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The poems in this book are very prose like. You feel like there are a lot of simple observations from John and his surroundings. I had always wanted to meet him and walk with him in Conamara. He may be gone to the other side, but I'm sure he's still there in spirit.
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Celtic spirituality distilled into a language so rich it makes you swoon. John O'Donohue has synthesized his formidable intellect, the depth of mature spiritual experience and his love of the nature of his homeland into poems of great beauty and poignancy.
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At first glance, John O'Donohue's poetry appears simple. That deception is largely due to its brevity and form. Yet it is complex with tiered symbolism. As is frequently the case with poetry, the reader may not "get it" first time through but these verses are worth a second, third, even fourth read. Some, like "Decorum" are so short as to approach the level of Celtic haiku.
"Conamara Blues" is divided into three parts. Since O'Donohue is a Catholic scholar, this may or may not be an intentional acknowledgment of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Family, etc. The middle portion bears a distinctly religious slant, though not unpleasantly so.
The first and final sections are more secular in tone. They touch on diverse topics: nature, the attitudes of foreign tourists seeking the "true" Ireland, the emotional discomfiture of meeting an old flame (" . . . let nothing slip/ From the invisible ruin/ We carry between us"), even death ("you can almost hear the depth/ Of white silence, rising to deny everything.") As befits Irish literature, there are occasional moody, melancholic notes, threaded like quicksilver through an otherwise optimistic flow of imagery.
Americans are unlikely to have encountered old European customs like using the wide wings of a slaughtered goose to sweep the floor around a wood-burning kitchen stove. We hear O'Donohue's sad perspective in looking past human practicality to see those wings no longer ". . . being folded around . . . Embracing the warmth/ And urgency of a beating heart/ . . . Never again to be disturbed/ Every year by the call/ Of the wild geese overhead".
Few of the 54 pieces take the shape of traditional, rhymed verse. If you are in search of that, I suggest the Hallmark section of your local store. O'Donohue's poetry follows its own rhythm and internal rhyme. In so doing, it reminds us that it is the desire and duty of each writer to see beyond the obvious, to take less tangible connections and gently define them for the rest of us.
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