The latest collection by Irish poet Eamon Grennan, winner of the 2003 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize 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 taut lines--are rendered with exquisite detail and reverence...
When I first heard Eamon Grennan read his poetry and speak on Lannan Literary videos, I was stunned by his intensity and brilliance. I longed to see the poems on the page, and am not disappointed to see his workings of the 10-line, no-title form he's created. Nature and humanity are interdependent in Grennan's poetry. Nature illuminates, soothes, counsels, and guides the way. Opening "The Quick of It" at random, I find a...
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The Quick of It is an absolutely beautiful book. Eamon Grennan has found a striking balance between sonics, imagery and narrative. So that his poems "take us there," and in our reading of his work we forget ourselves. It's a struggle to type an excerpt considering how well the poems work in their wholeness. Readers finds themselves reacting not to a single line or phrase but to the poems in their entirety -- I can't...
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The Quick Of It is an anthology of poems by poet, essayist, translator, and Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize winner Eamon Grennan. Each poem is without a title and stretches precisely ten lines; explores its subject with acute, alert attention to detail. Creatures of nature are a recurring theme in this reflective, sometimes dark, sometimes wistful, always moving verse. So I keep saving the bees taken unawares by glass, / Shrouding...
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