Dear Life
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Book Overview
Introduction by Seamus Heaney
"Dennis O'Driscoll's long devotion to the stripped-down idiom of Eastern European poets such as Miroslav Holub and Wislawa Szymborska and an American like Marianne Moore encouraged a style that opted for the plain before the elevated, the colloquial before the eloquent. Which is not to say that his work lacked seriousness: in its total alertness to the present moment, the cultural, social and economic life of contemporary Ireland, it was a unique phenomenon. If it was satirical - as it often is in Dear Life - it was not contemptuous. It registered the great spiritual changes that occurred during his lifetime, as the country moved from being a rural, religious, mainly agricultural place to an urban, suburban, secular destination for multinationals."--Seamus Heaney, from the Introduction"Dennis O'Driscoll has produced an extraordinary body of work. . . . Some of his poems have already achieved the status of classics."--Poetry Ireland Review
" One] of the most interesting poets now writing in English. O'Driscoll's poetry has the rare virtue of making us feel that most other poets are forcing things a little, striving for effect. He writes directly, naturally, about the emotions that are closest to us and, for that very reason, go unobserved: how we actually feel about work and possessions and aging."--Slate
Irish poet Dennis O'Driscoll's new poems engage with contemporary issues--the internet era, the compensation culture, global warming--as well as the timeless topics of working and aging, loving and dying, God and Mammon. His poems give voice to twenty-first century Western attitudes towards religion, while the ambitious title-sequence attempts a rigorous exploration of the purpose of human life.
From "Valentine"
Back in hospital on this fateful date, but to no complications for once, I am discharged in good time to lighta candle on the kitchen table, decantyour Valentine's glass of sparkling wine, sear the steak, saut eacute; the onions, bakepotatoes till their paunchy waistcoats loosen, launch the gravy boat on its salt voyage, let mushrooms set sail on melting butter . . .
Dennis O'Driscoll (1954-2012) died suddenly on Christmas Eve, 2012. He was the author of nine collections of poetry as well as a book of interviews with Seamus Heaney, Stepping Stones. Poetry Review famously--and deservedly--called O'Driscoll "one of the best-read men in the Western world."
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