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    Conamara Blues: Poems
    Conamara Blues: Poems
    Conamara Blues: Poems
    Ebook90 pages40 minutes

    Conamara Blues: Poems

    By John O'Donohue

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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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMay 26, 2009
    ISBN9780061935763
    Conamara Blues: Poems
    Author

    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

    3/5

    13 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Excellent writer: the soul characterizes one's destiny. A basic way to describe his insight. Much recommended.
    • 4/5
      I love John O'Donahue and everything he writes. I so wish not knowing him when he was with us.
    • 2/5
      John 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,

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