There Now

by Eamon Grennan

"Few poets are as generous as Eamon Grennan in the sheer volume of delight his poems convey." --Billy Collins

. . . there goes the sudden shriek
of the blackbird . . . all alive inside the inhuman
breath-pattern of the wind trawling every last leaf
and blade of grass and flinging rain like velvet pebbles
onto the skylight: nothing but parables in every bristling inch
of the out-of-sight unspoken never-to-be-known pure
sense-startling untranslatable there of the world as we find it.

--from "World Word"


In these short poems full of patient listening, looking, and responding, Eamon Grennan presents a world of brilliantly excavated moments: watching a flight of oystercatchers off a Connemara strand or the laden stall of a fish market in Manhattan; listening to the silence in an empty room or the beat of his partner's heart; pondering violence in the Middle East or the tenuous, endangered nature of even "the fairest / order in the world." Grennan's philosophic gaze manages to allow the ordinary facts of life to take on their own luminous glow. It is the sort of light he finds in some of his favorite painters--Cézanne, Bonnard, Renoir, the Dutch masters--light that is inside things and drawn out to our attention. There Now is a celebration of the momentary recognition of transcendence, all the more precious for being momentary.

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2015

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

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poetry is not really my thing, so I feel that I can not give this book a fair review. I don't really have much experience reading in this genre. I can say that some of the writing was quite beautiful, but I didn't have the easiest time falling along.

[Kasandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grennan is a master of not only close observation, detail and description, but also bringing the natural world into focus within each of us human animals. He paints with words, delicate tenderness alongside bright splashes of color and sound. I love when his language surprises, as in "oystercatchers in flight", where he uses the word "veronica" so that I had to look up this meaning (one of others): "(in bullfighting) a slow movement of the cape away from a charging bull by the matador, who stands in place." That sort of unexpected word illuminates an already crisp poem. He makes you look, and look again, and look once more, seeing something new and fresh and timeless every time. I dog-ear poems I like, and all my books by Grennan sit on the shelves at twice their original width because I mark so many pages! Amazing.

[Ed Emig · Rating 3 out of 5]

The poems in this collection are very dense; it appears the author is trying to cram the fullness of experiencing a single moment into each poem, as if the words are meant to be understood simultaneously. Sometimes it works, and when it does, the poems are magnificent. But this seems to be the way of all books of poetry . . . there are moments of greatness and then there's the rest. Ultimately, this collection is largely satisfying, although I might have wished for an exhibition catalogue to accompany all the poems inspired by specific paintings.

[Dorothy Mahoney · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Overflowing with life" starts Grennan's poem "fullness", a quote from Socrates, and this best describes the wrens, sparrows and bird shadows that flit across the pages through 'lichen-lit twisted limbs." He is a great fan of the hyphen which further infuses his descriptions: "wide-shining", "whistle-cry", "lake-glimmer", "ever-thickening", and "cow-minutes" (just a few from the first poem "listen"). The poem "to sit" ends "fullness will for the moment be as it's always been enough."
"There now" is a collection that calms and asks you to ponder.

[Tom Romig · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know many people are enthralled by Eamon Grennan's poetry, and rightfully so. But given that taste is often inexplicable, I don't happen to be one of them. I'll grant right off that endless descriptions of the natural world--sun glinting on water, clouds forming, hues of fall leaves, that sort of thing--soon begin to bore me. Further, Grennan's style in this collection grated: each poem is one unpunctuated sentence, relentlessly uninflected and thus, to me, lacking nuance and devoid of drama.

[Anna · Rating 1 out of 5]

some of the most disagreeable poetry i've ever read. unlike my taste for Milkman, my views of this have not changed over time

[Ix · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wouldn't necessarily call it perfect poetry but I definitely could not call this "the worse poetry" I've read.
Eamon writes, sometimes, about common situations that we might not find beautiful anymore.
We definitely find some gorgeous poems in here and it's worth the read.

[Jenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won a copy of this book.

I enjoyed the poems in this book. Grennan paints pictures with his words in his poems.