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Eye of the Hare

John F. Deane

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Categories: 21st Century, Christianity, Irish
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry
Publisher: Carcanet Press
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(Pub. Aug 2011)
9781847778338
£9.95 £8.96
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(Pub. Jun 2011)
9781847770929
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  • Description
  • Excerpt
  • Author
  • Contents
  • Awards
  • Reviews
  • I stood awhile
    between land and ocean and found

    a small stone polished sheer by sea-breaking;
    cold-white as a winter moon
    it dried quickly into dullness. I kept it,

    touching at times on a small heart of creation
    the way perhaps a poem
    can hold all of our story within its core.

                                  from ‘World, Flesh and Devil’
    Eye of the Hare affirms a spirituality for healing a shattered world. In a richly textured collection, layered with Biblical echoes and the music of the Psalms, John F. Deane explores the possibilities of poetry to redress the failures of care towards the planet and the needs of society. Deane revives the language of sacrament and celebration with raw and tender grace; in sonnets, narratives and lyrics Eye of the Hare advances towards redemption. In the book’s final section, Deane honours the places and landscapes of Achill, that beautiful, demanding island off the west coast of Ireland.


    Contents

    One
    Travelling Man
    Public House
    Shelf Life
    The Marble Rail
    The Tombs
    On the Edge
    Still Life
    Bats
    Eye of the Hare
    Cedar
    The Disappointed
    Who Have Gone Before
    Song of the Suffering Servant
    Chewing on Stones
    Lives of the Minor Poets
    Abundance


    Two
    Edge of the Known World
    Paris
    The Colours
    The Colliers
    The Colliery
    Words of the Unknown Soldier
    Down to the Shore
    Sissie
    Roots
    Shoemaker
    Almost
    The Garden, Waiting
    Shorewards
    The Hare
    Birds, Beasts and Buttercups
    World, Flesh and Devil

    Three
    Between Worlds
    Mayo Theology
    The Great Skellig
    Sheets
    Riddle
    Weeds and Wilderness
    Piano
    Well-Tempered Clavier
    Bikes
    Ever This Night
    Footfalls
    Midsummer Poem
    Mimizan Plage
    More
    Body Parts
    In the Dark Wood
    Sketch for the Statue of a Slave
    Body Parts
    The Caves
    Wings
    Snow
    Dusk


    Four
    Achill: The Island
    Gob an Choire: The Sound
    The Major
    Sraheens: na Sraithníní: Small Holms
    Derreens: Small Woods
    Cloghmore: Big Stone
    Bunafahy: Lower Grassland
    Bunnacurry
    The Monastery
    Purteen Harbour
    Inishgalloon
    Trawmore: Big Strand
    An Caol: Keel
    Slievemore: Big Mountain
    The Heinrich Böll Cottage
    John F. Deane was born on Achill Island, Co Mayo, Ireland. He is the founder of Poetry Ireland, the National Poetry Society, and The Poetry Ireland Review . He is founder of the Dedalus Press, of which he was editor from 1985 until 2006. In 2006 he was visiting scholar in ... read more
    Awards won by John F. Deane Short-listed, 2016 Irish Times Poetry Now Award  (Semibreve) Winner, 2011 Golden Key of Smederevo award

    Praise for John F. Deane 'Regular readers of this Irish poet have come to expect such brilliant phrasemaking - and the risks that accompany it. For the poems collected here are indeed an "edgy festival", as full of unexpected plunges into the metaphysical as of glittering physical detail, "written... in the on-going love-affair between self and world".'
    Fiona Sampson, The Guardian
    'In Naming of the Bones, Deane has assembled poetry of the most sublime beauty, arising out of thought processes that are profoundly Catholic in their early formation, yet now embracing the widest possible Christian earthliness. He is unceasing, relentless, in his thinking quest for the incomprehensible heavens, for that sense of godliness between saffron light and full moon.'

    Thomas McCarthy, The Irish Catholic

    'The highest levels of poetic craft and persuasion... Naming of the Bones is not just a spiritual journey; it is a lyrical one, filled with sonic texturing at the level of song and original figurative language that is never ornamental but always essential.'

    Fred Dings, World Literature Today

     'Deane is a skilled observer-of-things and he has the gift of a silvery tongue, the true poet's flair with words...All this is the assured writing of someone who has spent a lifetime in the contemplation of such things.'

    Stuart Henson, London Grip

    'It is a long, grave, sober, deep-grounding book, as elegant and eloquent as it is fragile.'

    Michael Glover, The Tablet

    'Deane finds the embedded music of particular moments - the inscape of them - and understands their cosmic vitality... [he] draws us into deeper listening and invites us into sacred, transcendent encounter.'

    Michael P. Murphy, Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry 2019


    'John Deane invites all human beings, or pilgrims, whether Christian or not, to partake in his revelatory, redemptive collection... a true cosmic poetry for all of us, in all time.'

    Patricia McCarthy, Agenda: Ekphrastic Issue


    'Master-sonneteer, the Teilhard de Chardin of Irish poetry, Achill chronicler and gazer at the heavens, John F. Deane has created a real beauty of a collection in Dear Pilgrims.'

    Thomas McCarthy, Poetry Ireland Review  

      'These are words of a poet who lives history, who breathes at one with the world around him. Deane reminds the reader that we live only for a short while on this rock in space but that that time is precious and profound. We are all dear pilgrims - whether we realise it or not.'
    Dublin Review of Books
     'These poems are rich, evocative, replete with natural imagery, searching to know and express the unknowable.'
    Niamh Pattwell, The Furrow
    'Deane's work has always been distinguished by the wholeness of it's vision, and the poems of Dear Pilgrims are no exception: the joy and compassion of his responses to the natural world are of a piece with his spiritual preoccupations, and gesture towards his poetic forebears, in particular Hopkins and Kavanagh.'
    Caitriona O'Reilly, The Irish Times
      'Both these collections (Dear Pilgrims & The White Silhouette by James Harpur) give the lie to the idea that it is no longer possible to think and write creatively and freshly about religion in modern poetry: both Deane and Harpur look back for some of their insights, especially biographically, but their poetry remains conspicuously watching, tasting and touching today's world.'
    Stride Magazine

      'There is light and muscularity in these poems that sometimes unexpectedly recalls Ted Hughes'
    Stride Magazine
    'On a simple level, the poems in John F Deane's Semibreve (Carcanet) are elegies for the past and specifically for a lost brother. More profoundly, they teach us how bereavement, touched by a poet's tongue, can become a shared gift: "wonders of the flesh and spirit, a road-map for a shattered faith"'.
    The Guardian
      'Music, a stony, damp and deeply alive landscape (both Ireland and the Holy Land), a passionate and searching engagement with God -  specifically with the local and physical God that is the central figure of the gospels - these are poems with all of John Deane's familiar richness. A deeply welcome collection.'
    Rowan Williams
    'Deane is a true poet. I have not space here to do him justice'
    Helena Nelson, Ambit
    'Deane is an exemplary poet.'
    Gerard Smyth, Warwick Review
    'The power of Toccata and Fugue lies in its beautiful rendering of unbeautiful things. Deane takes as his subjects what might ordinarily make one turn away: road kill, snared vermin, kittens in a sack weighed with stones for drowning, a seal washed ashore to die, lambs taken for slaughter, worms hooked for fishing and snails tortured by a child. Yet there is nothing pathological about it. Compassion not cruelty motivates the speakers in his poems whose unwavering gaze attests to their engagement with these subjects.'
    Georgia Scott, Poetry Salzburg Review Autumn 2002
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