The Yellow Book

by Derek Mahon

In The Yellow Book, the home-seeking traveler—”a decadent who lived to tell the story”—finds lodgings in our fierce fin de siècle under the roof of his Dublin attic flat. Amid echoes from dead writers, “clouds of unknowing” from his “last Camel,” and ghosts from his own life, the poet muses wisely and wittily on our wound-down decade and expiring double millennium. These twenty-one absorbing, sometimes mordantly funny, and always delightful meditations offer us both the distinctive details of our shared lives and a theoptic view from "windows flung wide on briny balconies/above an ocean of roofs and lighthouse beams;/like a storm lantern the wintry planet swings." (“Night Thought”)

Genres: Poetry

57 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Derek Mahon was born in Belfast in 1941, studied at Trinity College, Dublin, and the Sorbonne, and has held journalistic and academic appointments in London and New York. A member of Aosdána, he has received numerous awards including the Irish Academy of Letters Award, the Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize, and Lannan and Guggenheim Fellowships. - See more at: http://www.gallerypress.com/authors/m...

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not for me.