The Sea of Disappointment: Thomas Kinsella's Pursuit of the Real

Considered to be one of the most inventive of the contemporary Irish poets, Thomas Kinsella is credited with bringing modernism to Irish verse. Despite such early successes, however, Kinsella seems to have faded into the background of the Irish poetic stage. In The Sea of Disappointment Andrew Fitzsimons offers us a chronological journey through the structural and thematic development of Kinsella's poetic writing. This well-researched and comprehensive book draws on illuminating manuscript sources and previously unpublished material as well as on Kinsella's own assistance.

Literature & Fiction

Fitzsimons, Andrew

History & Criticism

University College Dublin Press

<p>Considered to be one of the most inventive of the contemporary Irish poets, Thomas Kinsella is credited with bringing modernism to Irish verse. Despite such early successes, however, Kinsella seems to have faded into the background of the Irish poetic stage. In The Sea of Disappointment Andrew Fitzsimons offers us a chronological journey through the structural and thematic development of Kinsella's poetic writing. This well-researched and comprehensive book draws on illuminating manuscript sources and previously unpublished material as well as on Kinsella's own assistance.</p>

The Tsurezuregusa is a collection of wise, witty, compassionate and, occasionally, cranky ruminations on the business of living by the monk, Kenko (c1283-c1350). The poems in What the Sky Arranges speak in a voice and tell of things derived from Kenko: reading, travel, good and bad taste, exile, art, art bores, technophobia, scandal, sex, gardening, game theory, graveyards, friendship, death, the moon . . . "Tender, philosophical, disabused, these poems are a putting in order of 'the business of life'. Worked from The Tsurezuregusa of Kenko they are wide-awake, alert, moving from joy to disgruntlement, from bleak advice to quiet celebration: the kind of poetry that gets written in the early hours of the morning when the poet remembers the dates on gravestones. The poetry is in the detail, the things that are all too easy to miss (maple leaves, wisteria, 'morning glories on a low fence, / not too high, and not too many', the waxing and waning moon, 'what the sky arranges'), and equally in the subtle music of Andrew Fitzsimons' language." (Peter Sirr) "A truly wonderful sequence of poems, combining a lightness of touch with great depth and resonance, and one to be enjoyed in the words of the work itself 'under the lamp alone / a book spread out before you: bliss'. Absolute bliss, indeed." (David Peace) "These poems are really stunning: shafts of truth, beautifully crafted. The way they link Eastern and Western traditions of precision and eloquence is magical." (Bernard O'Donoghue) "Gently witty, wise, finely phrased variations on Kenko's themes. A pleasure to read and reflect on." (Royall Tyler) The thirty poems are complemented by nine striking drawings by the well-known Italian artist, photographer and designer, Sergio Maria Calatroni, now resident in Tokyo.

What the Sky Arranges

Poetry

Isobar Press

<p>A Fire in the Head contains two complementary works, both of which emerged out of the aftermath of the March 2011 earthquake in Japan.The title poem-sequence takes the 5-7-5 form of the haiku to create an accumulating narrative of life adjusting to altered circumstance. The essay 'What Are Poets For'. . .' explores the efficacy of art when confronted with calamity, and from within the experience of the catastrophic events offers a response to the question: in a time of need, what use is a poem? &#12501;&#12451;&#12483;&#12484;&#12469;&#12452;&#12514;&#12531;&#12474;&#27663;&#12398;&#19977;&#34892;&#35433;&#12399;&#33453;&#34121;&#12398;&#12356;&#12358;&#12300;&#12418;&#12398;&#12398;&#35211;&#12360;&#12383;&#12427;&#20809;&#12301;&#12434;&#30906;&#12363;&#12395;&#25417;&#12360;&#12390;&#12356;&#12427;&#12290; &#39640;&#27211;&#30566;&#37070; ("In these three-line poems, Andrew Fitzsimons has captured what Basho called 'the revelatory light of things'." Mutsuo Takahashi) "Among those who have taken on the challenge of writing about Japan's triple catastrophe, none has done so with greater intensity or economy than Andrew Fitzsimons. Gently, indirectly, in a sequence of bright flashes, his haiku sequence illuminates that unforgettable period when the vocabulary of radioactive contamination entered the language of everyday life and when Japanese could no longer trust the ground beneath their feet. His essay, 'What Are Poets For? ...' makes spine-tingling literary connections with other moments of 'unrelievable, directionless despair', and celebrates, as Yeats did, the 'bright energy required for the necessary task of renewal'." (Richard Lloyd Parry) "Andrew Fitzsimons's A Fire in the Head is a marvelous, elegiac sequence, conceived in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake. With beautiful drawings by Sergio Maria Calatroni, it is an intimate, universal, poised and skillful confirmation of poetic craft and duty. (Gerard Fanning) "These haiku register with a rare compassion and clarity shifts that are seismic as well as intimate. Their economy belongs as much to perception as to form." (Jamie MacKendrick)</p>

A Fire in the Head

Il Porto Sepolto was written in the trenches of northern Italy while Giuseppe Ungaretti was serving as a private in the Italian army; when the collection was published in Udine in 1916, it changed Italian poetry. Part of its impact was due to the influence of Japanese poetry, which Ungaretti had recently encountered in Italian translation. In his introduction, Irish poet and Tokyo resident Andrew Fitzsimons explores the nature and history of Ungaretti’s engagement with Japanese poetics; the book also includes sixteen vibrant illustrations by another Tokyo resident, the renowned Italian artist Sergio Maria Calatroni. This is the only complete translation into English of the Udine first edition: the poems of a ‘man present at his own / fragility’ that spoke to their moment, and continue to speak one hundred years later.

The Sunken Keep

Ungaretti, Giuseppe

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Books by Fitzsimons, Andrew

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The Sea of Disappointment: Thomas Kinsella's Pursuit of the Real

The Sea of Disappointment: Thomas Kinsella's Pursuit of the Real

What the Sky Arranges

A Fire in the Head

The Sunken Keep