Frank Ormsby's seventh collection of poems reflects not only the
beauty of the Irish landscape and the sensuous and aesthetic impact
of the small farms among which he grew up, but also the continuing
violence of the 'Troubles'. Close to the surface of mountain and
bogland lie the hidden graves of the 'Disappeared'. Ormsby
continues to make vivid use of the short, resonant poems which were
a striking feature of Goat's Milk and The Darkness of Snow. Here
too the content is often delivered and reinforced through rich,
contrasting images within or between poems: the scarlet flowers
growing in a black kettle, the fuchsia that is both 'redolent of
old battles' or a 'peaceful tapestry in the annals of stone'. Among
the personae of the collection is the obliging father who
volunteers to be buried by his children up to the neck in sand
within sight of but some distance from the 'cold shadow of the
mountain'. The elegiac note that echoes through the poems rarely
darkens the mood. Ormsby's wit and humour, his sly sense of the
absurd and what might be called his affection for the living and
the dead draw the reader into considering the conviction that it is
sometimes 'possible to believe / that joy grows irresistibly at the
roots of everything'.
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