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Salmon books by James Simmons: |
Mainstream
(Salmon 1995) |
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'The
enfant terrible of Irish poetry is still at large, still eternally
young at heart. Irish high-priest prestigious, joyous celebrant
of sex, his mature voice has acquired neither cynicism nor guile.
The searing honesty of his poems on marital break-up, for instance,
established a stylistic bench mark by which all others on this
theme must be measured. His present strength as a poet stems from
the breadth of stylistic forms he manipulates with ease: classical
and romantic measure, the popular ballad, cabaret forms and the
sung lyric. A sometime jarrer of the nerves of critics, he very
early made for a marriage of form and colloquialism. One of the
most technically accomplished of Irish poets, he is now at the
threshold of his greatest work.'
John Ennis in Poetry Ireland Review
James
Simmons was born in Londonderry in 1933. He published volumes
of poems regularly since his first book came out from The Bodley
Head in 1967 with a welcome from Graham Greene on the cover.
He won the Gregory and Cholmondeley Awards for poetry. He was
founder editor of The Honest Ulsterman. Four collections
of his songs have been issued, much praised by Paul Durcan.
His critical biography of Sean O'Casey (Macmillan) is
a standard text. He read and sang all over the world from Tokyo
to Los Angeles to Belfast. He was co-director of The Poets'
House, which was situated in its formative years in County
Antrim and is now in Donegal. He was a member of Aosdana. He
was writer in residence at Queens University Belfast. He lectured
from 1968 to 1984 at The University of Ulster.
James Simmons passed away on June 20th, 2001.
A
Poem from---
The Company of Children
by JAMES SIMMONS
The
Island Again
The
season slid from Winter to the next,
snowdrop and crocus to hawthorn blossom, the hum
of bees, then pansy, rose, chrysanthemum.
The whole happy gamut hardly vexed
by
touches of blight, of failure in leaf or root.
Gooseberry followed strawberry, the few we rear,
on till we watched the blackberries appear,
wild in the hedges, we were gorged on fruit
making
our last surveys of our estate
before the snow. Oh the longevity
of the wild briars that never fade away,
but bloom, bear fruit, shrink back slowly and wait.
Our
lives seemed overtaken by one flower.
Night-scented stock was event after event
so huge and satisfying, a cloud of scent
enveloping everyone at the front door,
any
old life, its irritations and pride,
frozen, melted, raised up in a flower-smelling.
The two of us at the dark door of our dwelling
looking at nothing, that imminence outside.
©
Copyright James Simmons, 1999
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