The Quick of It: Poems

by Eamon Grennan

The latest collection by Irish poet Eamon Grennan, winner of the 2003 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize

we have to be at home here no matter what no matter what the shivering belly says or the dry-salted larynx no matter the frantic pulse no matter what happens
―from "[because the body stops here . . . ]"

The poems in Eamon Grennan's The Quick of It―each one without title and compacted into ten taut lines―are rendered with exquisite detail and reverence for the everyday elements of weather, landscape, family, art, questions. Grennan's poems are persistent amplified acts of attention, proving with every detail―light glancing off stone, an orange stem framing a Chardin still life, the contours of the body trapping the mind―that we are our best selves when we are most alert.

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Eamon Grennan is an Irish poet. He has lived in the United States, except for brief periods, since 1964. He was the Professor of English at Vassar College until his retirement in 2004.

Reviews

[Donna · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book seemed more like an experiment or exercise than top quality poetry. Although there were definitely some excellent lines and imagery in some poems, there seemed no rhyme or reason to this
10 line poems. Some were in single lines, some were in tercets, some were in paragraphs, without any hint of why? Perhaps an "artist's statement" in the introduction as to what the poet was intending to accomplish would have been helpful.

Unfortunately, on the whole I found the nature poem after nature poem tedious and unremarkable.

[Kasandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Re-read in September/October 2016. Grennan is a genius. Below review is my original one.

I've been in love with Grennan's poetry since first coming across one of his in The New Yorker and ripping it out to tape in my writing journal. I'd previously read "So It Goes", which was wonderful (lost in Katrina, I have yet to re-buy, unfortunately). This volume is another keeper that I'll have to buy, checking it out from the library just frustrated me because I wanted to keep it to re-read and refer to.

Grennan, an Irish poet who now lives in the U.S., is a keen observer of the natural world, and can make even dust interesting (Yes! His poem "See what the dust does when the sun..." is amazing.) This book is a series of 10-line poems without titles, and each one is a vignette that mostly uses the natural world to muse on our shared humanity, as well as nature's promise and mysteries. Nearly every poem invites the reader in and gives food for thought, the poems resonating long after they're finished. His work is accessible, something I appreciate, while still being luminous and magical and open -- that is, though his vocabulary is understandable and his imagery is clear, these aren't simple portraits or snapshots in time that lend themselves to only one reading. Grennan encourages all of us to look harder, listen closer, question more, and pay attention to all the small details of the world that can go unnoticed.

Note that the couple of these poems that appeared in The New Yorker were given titles, although in this book, these same poems do not have titles assigned to them, so I used first lines below.

Some of my favorites (hard to pick only a few!):

"because the body stops here"
(scroll down the page about 2/3rds of the way)

"While you're gazing in the mirror all the names change"
(might need a subscription to The New Yorker to see this one)

"It must be a particular kind of grace"

"See what the dust does when the sun"
(another one in The New Yorker)

[Edward · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a touchstone for me, setting the standard for what lyric poetry can achieve. Each poem is in Grennan's invented form, a 10 line meditation. But the lines, as well as the heart, of the poems are capacious. In each he weaves a fine music, phrases I love to repeat, often whispering them aloud to feel their texture when voiced. He also offers observation of the natural world that make me alert to my own surroundings, attention renewed, senses retuned. And the philosophical insights make me muse and wonder. When describing bees he says, "Back they sputter like the fires of love." This poem is a great example of what I admire in this book and Grennan's poems more generally. Later in that poem he writes,
All day their brisk shadows zigzag and flicker

Along a whitewashed gable, trafficking in and out of a hair-crack
Under wooden eaves, where they make a life for themselves that knows
No let-up through hours of exploration and return, their thighs golden
With pollen, their multitudinous eyes stapled to a single purpose:

To make winter safe for their likes, stack-packing the queen's chambers
With sweetness. Later, listen: one warm humming note, their night music.

[Patrice · Rating 5 out of 5]

All poems in this collection are 10 lines. No titles. The varied stanza structure and enjambments in these poems add beauty to the already gorgeous images. This man is an artist. I am learning more than I expected. The Tacoma Public Library will have to wait a little longer to get this book back.

[Stephanie]

Most people should be spending more time in nature. I think Grennan should spend less. The poems are closely observed and finely wrought, blah de blah, but I have no real interest in cormorants. I knew I was the wrong reader for this book when I realized it was making me adverse to both poetry and nature.

[Scott Pomfret · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid collection from Eamon Grennan, largely pastoral, more often in New York than Ireland, all untitled and not formal poems. The best had a tumbling raucous quality like stones in a river swollen with spring run-off.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

prose poems, nature-based. quiet and still. beautiful.