Amazon.com: Caravan (9780935697049): Ethna McKiernan: Books

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0935697047 | ISBN-13: 978-0935697049 | Publication Date: June 1989 | Edition: 1st

A collection of skillfully crafted, imaginative, and moving poetry by an award-winning and widely published poet. As Eavan Boland writes: "The poems here have an exact and hard-earned lyricism...a difficult music that comes from experience rather than from any rhythmic holiday from it."

#outer_postBodyPS { display: none; } #psGradient { display: none; } #psPlaceHolder { display: none; } #psExpand { display: none; } A collection of skillfully crafted, imaginative, and moving poetry by an award-winning and widely published poet. As Eavan Boland writes: "The poems here have an exact and hard-earned lyricism...a difficult music that comes from experience rather than from any rhythmic holiday from it."

Editorial Reviews

Review

"To begin now is to start in the middle / of a train journey across the continent." These lines from "Dear Friend" perhaps most accurately describe the experience of reading Ethna McKiernan's first book of poems, Caravan. Always we are moving toward some recognized inevitability, or just as likely backwards, accumulating events, memories, some knowledge of the past. The poems are arranged in four sections, and as the title suggests, there is a progression. The movement is from a fragmented, dislocated self toward a reconciled self, able to connect with the larger world; relationships become the vehicle for growth. These are not sedentary "armchair" poems about self, but instead engage in a range of landscapes and voices....She has produced a fine first volume, featuring artwork by Anita White and Elaine Pelosini. -- North Stone Review, #10, Fall 1991/Winter 1992

Ethna McKiernan hails from the United States, where the removal of essentially sexist terms such as "poetess" and "woman-poet" has resulted in a strengthening of poetry written by women. McKiernan's work is passionate, evocative and rich in a sturdiness sadly absent in much poetry by women over here. One is reminded too of the Pulitzer winner Mary Oliver; crisp imagery balances with poignant described emotion. Could an Irish poet of either sex produce a line like "Meagre, but delirious with light--" ("House/Light"), or the abrupt directness of "I know what the black wire means" ("Morning Revelations from the Cosmos")? McKiernan is manager of the firm Irish Books & Media in Minneapolis and this apparently is her first collection and is very much worth reading. Irish poets who are also women please note. -- Books Ireland, May 1990

In Caravan, the human past reaches forth as myth, archetype, ghost. Here, from "Foreigner": "On such a night/the Clare coast split/and drifted out to sea;/ground collapsed/and Inis Mein was born..." The poem continues, "...and this is no country for strangers..." "To Inishmore" gazes unblinkingly at estrangement, finding here a bleak poetry of loss. "St. James Orphan" is one of the most chilling poems I've ever read, a small, coldly beautiful piece of Victorian history. Read McKiernan: you will emerge from these waters shivering but profoundly changed. -- Lonely Planet News, Fall 1993

The poems are accessible and have a range of emotions and themes mostly centering on identity and the growth process from birth to death. As subject matter, this makes good cannon fodder, and McKiernan has managed to wring out some plaintive images, and some powerful images. At times the poetry presents some very compact images ("Arctic Expedition") while "Catch" is noteworthy for its lively pacing. Nostalgia and thought provoking sadness comes forth in "Elegy Against the Dying of the Light" and "My Mother's Hands." McKiernan writes easily about the human condition, but her images are not commonplace: Now I flatten daily, thinner than peeled garlic skin, barely squeaking in through the stern Scandinavian door." (from "All Together Now") Towards the end of the book, the poems start becoming more risky, open and imaginative. "St. James Orphan" is a memorable work showing the many sides of a result, and "The Other Woman" gets beneath the skin in another fashion. -- On the Bus, Vol. III, No. 2, and Vol. IV, No. 1, 1991

After Loving
All Together Now
Arctic Expedition
At The Chiropractor's
Aterkomst
Biographical Notes
Catch
Ceili Mor
Dancing The Boys Into Bed
Dear Friend
Elegy Against The Dying Of The Light
Fire
For Naoise Unborn
Foreigner
Going Back
Halloween
Hegh School Girls
High Diver At The Fair
History Of Proper Nouns
Hospital
House%light
Instruction From A Self-made Mentor
Jazzmoon
Letting Go The Wolves
Love Poem In A Foreign Tense
The Moral Order
Morning Revelations From The Cosmos
Moving: 1
Moving: 2
Moving: 3
Moving: 4
Moving: 5
Muse In The Mirror
The Mute Answers Back
My Mother's Hands
One Summer's Lake
The Other Woman
Postscript: My Lai
Speed: 1
Speed: 2
Speed: 3
St. James Orphan: Child
St. James Orphan: Mother
Starting Over: The White Canvas
Still-life On Inisheer
To Inishmore
Wedding: A Decade Afterward
What Season
What We Cannot Help
Winter Widower In Key West
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

From the Back Cover

The poems here have an exact and hard-earned lyricism...a difficult music which comes from experience rather than from any rhythmic holiday from it.
Eavan Boland

Ethna McKiernan's poems are filled with music and metaphor. She writes with an economy of language that leaves us haunted by her honesty and her compassion. Many voices fill her work - an arctic explorer, a poverty-stricken Dublin mother, a Florida widower. But it is her own dark voice which is the most compelling.
Cary Waterman

Ethna McKiernan's poetry emanates a timeless quality from skillful craftsmanship and the universal subjects and themes she explores. These are imaginative, thoughtful poems in which emotions run deep...poems infused with heat and light.
Kevin FitzPatrick

McKiernan often presents situations which are about to change and this sense of movement is one of the strongest appeals of her work. Another is her seeming inability for self-absorption, even when she appears to be pondering her own life. In each of these poems, her energy and compassionate wit combine to carry herself and her reader toward simple, durable truths.
Small Press Review

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