The Brazen Serpent

by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

In The Brazen Serpent, among other preoccupations, poems explore how the most basic legends—family stories—fragment and alter in each individual’s memory. Ní Chuilleanáin’s language is supple and acute enough to undertake its most difficult subject, how we perceive and understand the world, and how we share our worlds in mystery and love. The Brazen Serpent marks yet another advance in the work of a major poet.

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Born in Cork, Irish poet, translator, and editor Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin is the daughter of a writer and a professor who fought in the Irish War of Independence. She earned a BA and MA at University College Cork and also studied at Oxford University.

Ní Chuilleanáin uses transformative, sweeping metaphor to invert the structures of interior, natural, and spiritual realms. In a 2009 interview for Wake Forest University Press, Ní Chuilleanáin states, “The question I ask myself constantly is ‘is this real? Do I really believe this, do I really feel this?’ But that is a question I cannot answer except by trying again in a poem.” Awarding Ní Chuilleanáin the 2010 Griffin Prize, the judges noted, "She is a truly imaginative poet, whose imagination is authoritative and transformative. She leads us into altered or emptied landscapes. […] Each poem is a world complete, and often they move between worlds, as in the beautiful ‘A Bridge between Two Counties.’ These are potent poems, with dense, captivating sound and a certain magic that proves not only to be believable but necessary, in fact, to our understanding of the world around us."

Ní Chuilleanáin is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Acts and Monuments (1966), which won the Patrick Kavanagh Award; The Magdalene Sermon (1989), which was selected as one of the three best poetry volumes of the year by the Irish Times/Aer Lingus Poetry Book Prize Committee; Selected Poems (2009); and The Sun-fish (2010). She translated Ileana Malancioiu’s After the Raising of Lazarus (2005) and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s The Water Horse (2001, co-translated with Medbh McGuckian). Ní Chuilleanáin’s work has been featured in several anthologies, including The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women's Poetry, 1967-2000 (1999, edited by Peggy O’Brien).

Since 1975 she has edited the literary magazine Cyphers, and she has also edited Poetry Ireland Review. She has taught at Trinity College Dublin since 1966. With her husband, poet Macdara Woods, she divides her time between Ireland and Italy.

Reviews

[Edward Rathke · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are relatively traditional in form but very playful in language. They're boldly written but very subdued in content.

Simple poems about simple lives given with an interesting cadence.

I enjoyed it, and it's a very short collection. About fifty pages.

[Amanda Bryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very Irish, filled with Catholic Nuns, descriptions of rural life, metapoetry, ancient relics, etc. mostly free verse

[Donal · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's not everyone who's seen the Ascension.

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Following her coffin in a dream
In the country of bells, his heart
Waits for the signal to beat
As the cramped forearm feels for the scythe.

A herd of old men shrinks to a file
In thick coats climbing singly.
The flexed ankle turns at the top of the stile,
The foot spreads to match the weathered flagstone,

The dry throat remembers thirst
At the fasting hour, the dizzy stomach of prayer.
The hair above his collar itches,
He looks down at the cap in his fingers.

The air's profile parting waves of grass
Cuts a path to the voices behind the yews;
The skin on the back of his hands tells him the way to go
Like the tide returning threading the mazes of sand.

[Eleanor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ahhhh I loved this poetry collection. Some references/cultural bits/history bits/general stuff I definitely did not get, but isn't that often (if not always) the way with poetry collections? Ní Chuilleanáin is a master of language, painting these vivid and tangible images with such simple words. I particularly loved The Pastoral Life. Like when I finished it I just had to sit there and hold back tears. What a beautiful collection.

My favourites (to come back to later) were:
Hair
La Corona
All For You
A Glass House
Saint Margaret of Cortona
The Bee and the Rapeseed
A Note
Home Town
Woman Shoeing a Horse
Daniel Grose
The Pastoral Life
That Summer
A Hand, A Wood

[Robert Alicea · Rating 3 out of 5]

A healthy mix of religious themes set in a secular vernacular as well as the everyday minutia elevated to a spiritual realm. The Irish-Catholic influences throughout the poems are powerful. The voice and style of the poems were good. The context of what you may read into will determine how much you enjoy the collection.

It's a short read, but plenty of poems are gripping and will make you want to re-read them at various points in your life as you learn the layers of the poems.