Angela Alaimo O'Donnell
Autor von Flannery O'Connor: Fiction Fired by Faith (People of God)
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Andalusian Hours: Poems from the Porch of Flannery… von Angela Alaimo O'Donnell
When I picked this book off the store shelf, I thought, "I didn't know Flannery O'Connor wrote poetry as well as stories." But here's the thing: (a) O'Connor did not write these poems, but an O'Connor scholar did. The poems (sonnets!) all assume the mind and viewpoint of Flannery. But here's the other thing: I've never read any of O'Connor's fiction, nor knew much about her life. So this book constitutes my entire comprehension of O'Connor and and her oeuvre.
A stunning collection of poetry inspired by Flannery O'Connor's own biography and her own reflections. O'Donnell channels the hidden life of one of America's most beloved authors, who died all too young. This collection is full of startling insight into the life of Flannery O'Connor. It's almost like O'Donnell was of one mind with O'Connor.
Rare and beautiful, witty and sublime, this is an amazing poetry collection.
Rare and beautiful, witty and sublime, this is an amazing poetry collection.
Summary: A collection of poems written over the first year of the pandemic exploring the pilgrimage of those confined to their homes, exploring the ways we come to terms with endless days, the small gifts of love, and moment of hope amid the horror.
We all remember those days of 2020 when we discovered how an invisible virus changed our world–all the precautions, the lockdowns, the empty streets, and rising infections. Angela Alaimo O’Donnell lives in New York, which became the epicenter of horror last spring, with morgue trucks outside of hospital. Like most, the scope of her and her husband’s life narrowed down to the confines of an apartment. With the lockdown, she began a pilgrimage in words to chronicle her experience.
She takes us through the seasons of the first year of the pandemic: lockdown and rising cases, illness, recovery and relapse, staring at an unworn wardrobe, and finding herself oddly touched by the thank you’s of students on Zoom. The growing realization that this is not going away quickly, the relief of a contemporary lull, injuring oneself exercising in one’s apartment, Advent and the advent of a new wave of cases, standing in line for vaccines and the tentative steps of emerging into the world. We trace the church year from Easter to Advent, unchanging hope of resurrection and Christ’s coming in a changed and dying world.
The poems, nearly sixty, are written more or less in the form of sonnets. The songs capture both the small things of daily life and the horror of mass graves on Hart Island. The changing of the seasons reminds us of the resurgence of life as does the resurgence of wildlife in a world temporarily devoid of people. There is love. The lost love of the aged who have died too soon. There is the love for children one cannot visit, for students on a screen, for the small kindnesses of delivery. All this is dwarfed by the love in the ICU: “The old man who gave up his/breathing machine to the young man beside/him. The nurse who grieved him as he died./The EMT who knelt beside the body/long after the heart had ceased to beat.”
This collection captures the deep passion we have to live, to love, and to hope in the face of the most daunting challenge we have collectively faced in our lifetimes. We grieve, we tremble, we sicken, and hopefully recover. Then we enjoy the beauties we see in a simple walk. As the author concludes, “The virus can’t destroy/this urge to bless our life & praise/even these pandemic days.”
What is striking though is that this collection reflects a particular posture, a particular response to the pandemic. One that allows the pandemic to deepen and transform, a metamorphosis of sorts. Instead of clamoring and contending, there is a kind of quiet acceptance that the pandemic is what it is, but the things that truly make life worth living, goodness, truth, beauty, and faith, hope, and love only shine more brightly when the distracting noise of our pre-pandemic normal is silenced.
If we look back over the last year, and have second thoughts about our own responses, a new variant and another wave offer fresh chances to lean into the lessons of the pandemic. Someday our grandchildren will ask us about this time. Will we change the subject or share a glimpse of the depths we cultivated in these years? These poems give words to what all of us have experienced. We still have time, it appears, to be formed for better, or for worse. These poems invite us into the better. Will we follow?
____________________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.… (mehr)
We all remember those days of 2020 when we discovered how an invisible virus changed our world–all the precautions, the lockdowns, the empty streets, and rising infections. Angela Alaimo O’Donnell lives in New York, which became the epicenter of horror last spring, with morgue trucks outside of hospital. Like most, the scope of her and her husband’s life narrowed down to the confines of an apartment. With the lockdown, she began a pilgrimage in words to chronicle her experience.
She takes us through the seasons of the first year of the pandemic: lockdown and rising cases, illness, recovery and relapse, staring at an unworn wardrobe, and finding herself oddly touched by the thank you’s of students on Zoom. The growing realization that this is not going away quickly, the relief of a contemporary lull, injuring oneself exercising in one’s apartment, Advent and the advent of a new wave of cases, standing in line for vaccines and the tentative steps of emerging into the world. We trace the church year from Easter to Advent, unchanging hope of resurrection and Christ’s coming in a changed and dying world.
The poems, nearly sixty, are written more or less in the form of sonnets. The songs capture both the small things of daily life and the horror of mass graves on Hart Island. The changing of the seasons reminds us of the resurgence of life as does the resurgence of wildlife in a world temporarily devoid of people. There is love. The lost love of the aged who have died too soon. There is the love for children one cannot visit, for students on a screen, for the small kindnesses of delivery. All this is dwarfed by the love in the ICU: “The old man who gave up his/breathing machine to the young man beside/him. The nurse who grieved him as he died./The EMT who knelt beside the body/long after the heart had ceased to beat.”
This collection captures the deep passion we have to live, to love, and to hope in the face of the most daunting challenge we have collectively faced in our lifetimes. We grieve, we tremble, we sicken, and hopefully recover. Then we enjoy the beauties we see in a simple walk. As the author concludes, “The virus can’t destroy/this urge to bless our life & praise/even these pandemic days.”
What is striking though is that this collection reflects a particular posture, a particular response to the pandemic. One that allows the pandemic to deepen and transform, a metamorphosis of sorts. Instead of clamoring and contending, there is a kind of quiet acceptance that the pandemic is what it is, but the things that truly make life worth living, goodness, truth, beauty, and faith, hope, and love only shine more brightly when the distracting noise of our pre-pandemic normal is silenced.
If we look back over the last year, and have second thoughts about our own responses, a new variant and another wave offer fresh chances to lean into the lessons of the pandemic. Someday our grandchildren will ask us about this time. Will we change the subject or share a glimpse of the depths we cultivated in these years? These poems give words to what all of us have experienced. We still have time, it appears, to be formed for better, or for worse. These poems invite us into the better. Will we follow?
____________________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.… (mehr)
Angela Alaimo O'Donnell teaches English at Fordham University and is the associate director of Fordham's Curran Center for American Catholic Studies. She has previously published seven poetry collections (in addition to publishing other books, articles, and essays).
The Still Pilgrim project was birthed after O'Donnell made a pilgrimage to Herman Melville's grave, a few miles from her home in the New York. Melville had written of the passion of men going off to sea, but his grave plot in Woodlawn cemetery in the Brox was in only one of 'New York's five boroughs not surrounded by water" (69). O'Donnell composed a poem, St. Melville, with these words, "Is this what you were called to still pilgrim,/to sleep beneath six small feet of earth?" (70). An old sailor interred in the earth, still but his work still lives on.
It is O'Donnell not Melville that dons the moniker Still Pilgrim in these poems. All but one of these poems have "Still Pilgrim" in their title. Here is a random sampling, thought: "The Still Pilgrim visits Ellis Island," "The Still Pilgrim Tells a Fish Story,""The Still Pilgrim Honors Her Mother," "The Still Pilgrim Sees a Healing, "The Still Pilgrim Hears a Diagnosis, "The Still Pilgrim Describes How Heaven is."
These poems are sonnets—metred with fourteen lines and a rhyme scheme—and are arranged fourteen poems in four sections, corresponding to the four seasons and roughly shaped by the liturgical calendar. There are also prologue and epilogue poems, introducing and concluding this collection. The structure of tradition is juxtaposed against a contemporary life, the Still Pilgrim. More than once we hear the heal strike of her size nine pumps against the cobblestone of the pilgrim way. There are encounters between old and new and all the heartbreak and joy which comes through life's journey. The tone is both serious and playful, at turns exuberant and sad. O'Donnell writes in her afterward:
The poems in this book aim to tell a story, albeit by means of glimpses and gleanings rather than continous narrative. (This, after all, is more akin to hwo we experience and remember our lives. Continous narrative is a form of fiction.) The Still Pilgrim's history consists of flashes of joy and visitations of sorrow, engagement with saints,and with artists (the Pilgrim's personal patron saints), epiphanies sparked by words and songs and stories, revelations triggered by encounters with beauty and terror. The gentle reader who perseveres through these poems is no longer merely a reader—he or she is a partner in pilgrimage and a friend. (74).
I had not read O'Donnell's work before and was caught off guard by these poems. The sustained character of the Still Pilgrim journeys through all life's seasons, still a pilgrim from beginning to end. This is the double entendre of "still." It is more than stationary, but it also means continual persistence. Like Melville in his grave, lying still but whose work still lives on, I hope to have much more encounters with the still pilgrim on the road ahead. I give this five stars. ★★★★★
Note: Many of these poems were previously published in various journals. Here is a link to five of these poems as they appeared in the Christian Century if you are curious what these poems are like: https://www.christiancentury.org/contributor/angela-odonnell
Notice of material connection: I received a copy of Still Pilgrim from Paraclete Press in exchange for my honest review… (mehr)
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