Love's Answer

by Michael Heffernan

Overview

This is Michael Heffernan's fourth book of poetry, the work of a masterful and deeply intelligent practitioner at the height of his maturity. A pleasurable, wry, sweet book, full of prayers against the difficult passage of the night. Despite the surface demeanor, some of these poems seem to be rendered in a state of spiritual disquiet. There is also a powerful intellectual quarrel which Heffernan infuses in his work and through which he attempts to discover a sustaining metaphor rather than a rational conclusion.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781587291067
Publisher:	University of Iowa Press
Publication date:	03/01/1994
Series:	Iowa Poetry Prize
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	96
File size:	237 KB

Table of Contents

CONTENTS
1 The Abyss
The Facts on the Ground
A Temptation in the Wilderness
The Atonement
The Blessings of Liberty
The Light of the Living
Another Part of the Forest
The Monks at Large
The Queen of Heaven
This Life
Souls in Purgatory
Afternoon of the Hun
On the Beach at Saugatuck
The Last Man
The Council
A Passerby and His Companions Visit the Widow after the Mad Avenger's Dreadful Accident
A Creak of Hinges
Free Country
The Banquet
The Music of Forgiveness
Rendering Aquinas
A Rhetoric upon the Window
2 Summer in Umbria
Remembering Skye
The Ape of Emain Macha
A Highway Brook in Dingle
The Moving Statue at Melleray
Poulnabrone Dolmen
Lake Isle
A Catch in the Breath
A Girl Sings to Moravia at the World's End
Magpies
The Land of Heart's Desire
The World of Light
The Magnum Opus
The Boulevardier
Why We Forget the Things We Thought We Wouldn't
Dream Vacation
B-Minor Mass
Merciless Beauty
The Peasants' Rising
A State of Grace
The Island
3 The Rooming House
A Sign from Heaven
The Consolation
A Light in the House
A Phantom of Delight
The Nightgown
The Flesh
Stickbug
Great Beast
White Dwarf
Lawn Mower
Angelology
Watering Impatiens
Truth
Requiem
Lost Boy
Café Paradiso
Badia Fiesolana
The Disenthralled

Editorial Reviews

The blues of the sky provide the mood, and more than a handful of birds--magpies, curlews, hummingbirds, jackdaws--are sent into the open spaces that Heffernan, a tranquil, philosophical poet who sees the universe with the help of ``the inmost eye in the middle of me,'' stirs up in this, his fourth collection, winner of the 1993 Iowa Poetry Award. Showing a spare, musical touch combined with a masterful sense of color, the most captivating poems explore the nature of things, the unchartered places where objects intersect or connect, especially where the human gives way to the divine, as in ``A Sign from Heaven,'' where a man takes an early afternoon ride into the brilliant light of day. Returning home, he ponders the sunlight shining on the beach stones on his windowsill, which are suddenly transformed by ``Creation's primal flame / in the micromoment of transparent fire.'' Irish echoes lead us back to Heffernan's past, as do myths and dream visions, poems calling on Aquinas and Proust, and portraits of women. The collection achieves a satisfying variousness, and thus a few less exhilarating poems can be overlooked as we celebrate the certain care this poet takes. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

When reading Heffernan's fourth collection, winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize, three adjectives come to mind: grandiose, spiritual, and macho. Perhaps his greatest feat is the ability to impose mystical references on a speaker who continually adopts an infuriatingly juvenile girlwatcher stance. Considering the juxtaposition, readers will have difficulty separating mockery from belief. The poet's attempts at historical commentary as he travels through Ireland are marred by contemporary ego; relics seldom transcend their hackneyed descriptions. The home front fares no better. In a poem that begins beautifully, comparing the Gospel of St. John to the speaker's father and son, Heffernan breaks into clich halfway through: ``Sometimes I need love's answer to the question/about the breathing creatures and their pain.'' These academic, prosaic poems are in no way aided by the use of an awkward, irregular rhyme. Not recommended.-Rochelle Ratner, formerly Poetry Editor, ``Soho Weekly News,'' New York

Library Journal