Overview
Featuring the best poems of one of Ireland’s most popular modern poets, this new work explores John F. Deane’s perennial themes of love—both religious and human. The title sequence traces the development of a Christian life, beginning with expectation and birth and proceeding through youth, experience, death, and rebirth. Each of the collection's 12 poems presents a movement of the spirit, from the author’s childhood in the west of Ireland, through the death of a wife, to the birth of a grandchild in Holland. Arranged in the manner of an orchestral symphony, each section focuses on a different piece of music, from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony to Mozart's Laudate Dominum. The new poems are accompanied by pieces from Deane’s earlier work, selected and edited by Irish poetry scholar, Thomas Dillon Redshaw.Reviews
"No poet writing today takes this spiritual task so seriously: nor achieves it with such exemplary, luminous grace." —Irish TimesAuthor Biography
John F. Deane is the founder of Poetry Ireland and The Poetry Ireland Review. He is the author of Eye of the Hare, Fugue: New and Selected Poems, and Toccata and the recipient of the O’Shaughnessy Award for Irish Poetry. In 1996, he was elected Secretary General of the European Academy of Poetry.
