Drunken sailor /
John Montague. - Oldcastle (Co. Meath) : The Gallery press,
2004. - 80 p. ; 22 cm.
ISBN 1-85235-360-0
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DESCRIPTION : At seventy-five, John Montague, the
doyen of Ulster poetry, is as vigorous and creative as ever.
Drunken Sailor opens at the mouth of Cork Harbour, then
journeys across the county to West Cork before embracing matters
of his Northern past. Mortality and the power of myth are among
his subjects, and there is an underlying dialogue with Yeats,
from the ruined towers at Roche's Point, to the glimpse of Ben
Bulben in the ambitious longer poem, The Plain of Blood,
with which the book culminates. But Montague's vision is both
more pagan and more Catholic. In his second volume of lyrics
since Collected Poems (1995), John Montague combines the
energy and ardour of a young poet with the wisdom and rue of
a sage.
John Montague was born in Brooklyn,
New York, in 1929 and reared on the family farm in Co. Tyrone.
He divides his time between France and Co. Cork. His Collected
Poems appeared in 1995, the year he received the America
Ireland Fund Literary Award. In 1998 he became the first Ireland
Professor of Poetry.
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| EXTRAIT |
Mary Kate's Kitchen
The gate scringes upon its hollowed
stone.
I feel I have stumbled back into
my own :
old men brooding before a metal hearth,
women bustling between pantry and oilcloth,
a moon-faced wall clock and display of delph,
the girlish gravitas of the Virgin on her shelf.
A long way round to curve near
home again,
kindling embers of a long-smoored self.
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COMPLÉMENT
BIBLIOGRAPHIQUE
- « Amours, marées »,
Bordeaux : William Blake and Co., 1988
- « The
figure in the cave, and other essays », Dublin :
The Lilliput press, 1989
- « Collected poems »,
Oldcastle (Co. Meath) : The Gallery press, 1995
- « La langue greffée »,
Paris : Belin, 2000
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| mise-à-jour : 27 décembre 2005 |
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