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She Alone |
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| John Menaghan |
ISBN: 1 903392 56 X Page Count: 88 Publication Date: Saturday, April 01, 2006 Cover Artwork: Peter Voorn |
About this Book
Humorous, ironic, erotic, neurotic, and tender both by turns & often simultaneously... Menaghan's verse is quite wonderful. Kirkus Reviews
She Alone, a book-length poetic sequence, traces the life of an imaginary woman from birth to death and beyond, employing a wide range of forms from free verse to heroic couplets and a broad array of poetic devices, all designed to capture the changing moods and circumstances of this enigmatic, nameless woman and her lifelong struggle to find fulfillment, connection, and a stable sense of her own place and identity in a rapidly changing world. |
Author Biography
John Menaghan, born in New Jersey to Irish-American parents, has lived in Boston, Berkeley, Vancouver, Syracuse, London, Dublin, Belfast, Galway, Gortahork, and Dingle, & presently makes his home in Venice, CA. Winner of an Academy of American Poets Prize and other awards, he has published poems and articles in Irish, American, and Canadian journals and given readings in Ireland, Hungary, and the U.S. Menaghan teaches literature and creative writing at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, where he also serves as Director of both the Irish Studies and Summer in Ireland programs and runs the annual LMU Irish Cultural Festival. |
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Reviews
Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) A unique experience in epic poetry and enthusiastically recommended... Prize-winning poet John Menaghan presents "She Alone", a sequence of poetry in book form that follows the life of a woman from birth to death and beyond. Changing forms from free verse to heroic couplets and other poetic devices as suits the story, She Alone encapsulates its nameless protagonist's struggle to find her own sense of place and identity in a rapidly evolving world. Alternately passionate, tender, ironic, and erotic, She Alone is a unique experience in epic poetry and enthusiastically recommended. David Mason , "The Poetry Circus," The Hudson Review, Volume LX, Number 1 (Spring 2007) One of the best books of 2006. "She Alone" is a sort of novel in verse or fictional biography, but neither of those terms quite does it justice. It evokes the life of a woman artist in fifty-odd lyrics, each in a different form, each handled with unobtrusive panache. Here is a book in which style and substance harmonize. It is refreshingly devoted not to the poet's career but to another life-and an eloquent one at that. Some poems are expansive, others minimalist, but the book comes closer to the tone and tenor of Beckett (with its unsettling reverberations) than anything by Mark Strand. The following lyric, "What She Wanted," arrives late in the book: She wanted to paint
and she has painted but too little. She wanted to wander and she has wandered but too little. She wanted to dream and she has dreamed but too little. She wanted to love & be loved and she has loved & been loved but too little.
She wanted to live
and she has lived but too little. She never wanted to die yet she has died little by little. Published by Salmon Poetry in Ireland and available from Dufour Editions, "She Alone" is poetry with a human center, as smart and affecting as anything else under review here, utterly original without special pleading on behalf of the poet. John Menaghan is the real thing. |
