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"Kings
and Bicycles, Zen Masters in the Supermarket. The very titles of
Gerard Donovan's poems display his rich mixture of the lyrical and
the mundane. This collection of his poetry is full of music and
metaphor and the magic of language. It is a pleasure to read."
Linda Pastan
"The
poems are too various and good to categorise, but Gerard
Donovan's book kaleidoscopes the colours of death, loss, emigration,
love, praise and humour. He is a latter-day Columbus riding through
these colours:
Columbus refuses to act white.
He hangs around the alleys and smokes.
The Italian
smokes. He likes to wear suspenders and
play blues guitar
and push cues in the blue halls.
(from Columbus
Rides Again)"
Greg Delanty
Gerard
Donovan, who was born in Wexford and grew up in Galway, is
a graduate of Johns Hopkins University. The author of two other
collections, Columbus
Rides Again (Salmon, 1993) and The
LightHouse (Salmon, 2000), his poetry has appeared in
journals on both sides of the Atlantic, including The Sewanee
Review, New Statesman, Stand, and the Irish Times. After a career
playing classical guitar in the eighties, he currently works as
a professor in New York. In 1999 he completed the 140-mile Marathon
des Sables in North Africa with his two brothers, later the subject
of an award-winning documentary.
A
Poem from
Kings and Bicycles
by Gerard Donovan
On
Reading Darwin in Ireland
Now
I sit on Carraroe's coral strand, breathless after walking all
morning,
and the hot coralbells pinch the sun in themselves;
I want to take my boots off and sleep on these dreamy skeletons
that once scuttled on the ocean bed, and I squint
until water swims across the sky and the curlew fades with its
song;
then I am under the smooth turquoise,
watching a man lie on the coral beach,
stretching his bones on thin pink over bones;
and he slides down to me, asleep in the life of his shell.
(Copyright
Gerard Donovan 1995)
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