Tenebrae: A Memoir of Love and Death

by Dan Flanigan, Matthew Lippman (Foreword by)

Overview

From the Foreword by Matthew Lippman:

“Dan Flanigan is a visionary poet. His series of poems, Tenebrae: A Memoir of Love and Death, based on an ancient service sometimes performed in the Roman Catholic Church, grapples with the death of his wife. In these poems he takes the reader on the journey that his wife endured, and he with her, in her wrenching passage from life to death. I initially read his manuscript sometime ago but still I am filled with its humanity, its depth of vision, and imagination. One of the things that resonates with me most is how willing he was to explore the hardest stuff in order to find his voice. He found it. These poems are some of the most moving poems I have ever read about death. What he has created is astonishing. There is a humanity at the core of these pieces that shakes the reader to the bone. They are moving. They are elegiac. They are celebratory. If sadness and solitude make for big art, these poems are big art. But they are more than that—they are the human heart in a singular and authentic voice. Flanigan’s poetry is everything that I think of when I think of what poetry should be—playful, intelligent, of the personal and the universal simultaneously. So, while the poems have a confessional air to them, they are completely of us, for us, the world at large.

Other of the poems in this book focus on family, on history, on his Irish heritage. In particular, there is a piece entitled “San Josef Bay, Cape Scott, Vancouver Island,” which recounts a walk and conversation between a father and his young daughter. The writing in the prose poem is magical, haunting, and utterly sublime because of what Dan says and does not say all at once. He has that ability, that talent, to know what not to say, to impose silence into a piece, the unsaid, in order to say more, in order to garner the most powerful emotional effect possible.

This is Dan Flanigan’s power—his poetry is an emotional poetry. It is not a sentimental poetry, though. It gets at the heart of the heart and tears things up to build them back up. It is a smart poetry. The ethos of his voiceis strong. When you read his work, you feel like you are in the hands of a master craftsperson, in the hands of a poet who has figured out the big and gorgeous balance between ‘here and there’ at the same time. Like the Tenebrae poems, his other pieces, though different in subject matter, come from the same well-spring and express, again, the depth of humanity that is so heartbreaking and exquisite in his work.

Dan Flanigan’s poems are for the world, for every man and woman who wants to know more about the beauty and the suffering that are in a state of constant collision.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781733610322
Publisher:	Arjuna Books
Publication date:	02/26/2019
Pages:	78
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.19(d)

About the Author

Dan Flanigan is a novelist, poet, and playwright, as well as a practicing lawyer. His novel, Mink Eyes, is set in 1986 and explores the "greed is good" dynamic and the cultural tensions and gender complexities of that era. It is a modern hero's quest in mystery-detective form. Dan has also developed a screenplay version of Mink Eyes. He has also published a book of verse and prose poetry, Tenebrae: A Memoir Of Love And Death. He will soon publish Dewdrops, a collection of his shorter fiction. He has also written the full-length plays-Secrets (based on the life of Eleanor Marx) and Moondog's Progress (based on the life of Alan Freed). He enjoys college basketball, ballet, modern dance, the theatre in its manifold forms, and sacred music. His inspirations include J.S. Bach, Shakespeare, Rumi, Bob Dylan, Secretariat (yes, the horse), Joseph Campbell, W.B. Yeats, Turgenev, James Joyce, Robert Stone, and E.L. Doctorow. Dan also is also a social commentator of sorts, and his occasional observations about the culture, travel, and, when he can't hold it in any longer, politics, can be found at www.DanFlaniganBooks.com.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

FOREWORD by Matthew Lippman i

ADDITIONAL PRAISE FOR Tenebrae: A Memoir of Love and Death iii

INTRODUCTION 3

1—Sonora 5

2—Quills 7

3—72ND & Amsterdam 11

4—The Second Theological Virtue 15

5—Certain Proceedings In The Tribunals Of A Vanity Called Hope 16

6—Incidents Of Life On Death Row 20

7—A Trip To The Underworld 25

8—Under The Redbud Tree 28

9—Briar Rose 31

10—Word And Flesh 33

11—Last Words 34

12—Resurrection Day 36

13—De Profundis (A Sparrow’s Fall) 39

14—“I Paid Them The Things I Never Took” 41

15—Strepitus: Like A Fallen Empire 44

Quanta [A Brief Guide To Quantum Theory (And Exposure Of The Absurdity Thereof, Perhaps)] 46

Lincoln Blvd., Highway 1, Los Angeles 47

San Josef Bay, Cape Scott, Vancouver Island 49

The Irish In America: Aunt Kate 56

The Irish In America: Mary And Herb 57

The Irish In America: Annie D 58

That Sunday Morning 61

Ecce Homo 62

Dido Revisited 63

Prodigal 2 64

Editorial Reviews

"Dan Flanigan is a visionary poet. His series of poems, Tenebrae: A Memoir of Love and Death ... grapples with the death of his wife. In these poems he takes the reader on the journey that his wife endured, and he with her, in her wrenching passage from life to death. … What he has created is astonishing. There is a humanity at the core of these pieces that shakes the reader to the bone. They are moving. They are elegiac. They are celebratory … they are the human heart in a singular and authentic voice. Flanigan’s poetry is … playful, intelligent, of the personal and the universal simultaneously … they are completely of us, for us, the world at large.”

“… magical, haunting, and utterly sublime …”

“… heartbreaking and exquisite …” —From the Foreword by Matthew Lippman Author of A Little Gut Magic, The New Year of Yellow, Monkey Bars, Salami Jew, and American Chew

“Grief transformed into verse, but no less painful. Poignant and a brutally honest reckoning but also a celebration of a life.” C.P

“Written as a tribute to his beloved wife and partner in life, the author takes the reader into seldom explored terrain, the mysterious time between living and dying…the author’s free verse style and dream like writing makes the story that unfolds seem more like a mysterious journey which has several twists and turns that reveal unexpected events which they both experience, each in their own way, but within a cocoon of support, comfort and unconditional love that only these two people can understand and share.” E.B.

“…I heard about this on a podcast, downloaded it on a whim, and ended up reading the entire thing on my phone in an evening.

This is the only modern poetry I’ve read on this subject, and it engrossed me.” J.S.

“What I love most…it made me enjoy reading poetry again; and even, sometimes, reading it aloud. The TRUTH in the feelings of these poems underpins the language and the form of his work--sometimes free verse, held together by rhythm and by consonance (‘Sonora’); sometimes in prose poems. Speaking of which, ‘72d and Amsterdam’ is prose in form and poetic in language and inspiration. “A Trip to the Underworld’ references a Greek Classic but uses the idea with sardonic humor to deal with a painful end-of-life experience: the rapid loss of a wife after many years of marriage and struggle and family. That sense of struggle is masterfully presented in ‘Quills:’ the poem resonates for me as a contrast with a song both the poet and I are familiar with: ‘Muskrat Love’...In ‘The Second Theological Virtue” there is the wonderful line: ‘Hope is much crueler than despair.’ Enough said: I am getting back to my reading and reciting and thinking. This is what modern poetry can be: honest and not precious; technically strong but not academic; available like that of Robert Frost; worth re-reading.” J.E.

From the Publisher

2021-04-07
A writer grieves the loss of his wife to an aggressive form of cancer in this collection of poetry.

In a concise introduction, Flanigan connects this noteworthy volume’s title to the first 15 poems, each of which features a candle printed above it that would be extinguished one by one during the traditional ceremony. He explains: “The structure, mood, and dramatic progression of this ancient ritual seemed to perfectly suit my mournful purpose.” The first offering, “Sonora,” is an impressive work that creatively paints a vivid desert landscape: “Roadrunners like wicked witches arrogantly prancing.” It also sets the stage for what is to follow. With the benefit of hindsight, the author realizes that this memory from the couple’s early days suggests a youthful disregard for mortality. Upon closer inspection, danger lurks beneath the surface, represented by a hawk stalking desert creatures: “Stopping every few yards and glancing sharply to the sky / From which Death swoops down and strikes low. / We did not know then what we do know now— / You are, you become, then are no more.” Most of the poems feature free verse while three longer works appear as prose poems and deftly use the second person as Flanigan directly addresses his wife. With a journallike feel, these denser texts present a timeline as readers learn the details of his wife’s battles with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. In addition to self-recrimination, the author makes the physical and emotional tolls of the disease palpable, recounting her decline, her last words, and her death. Curiously, one of these longer works, “A Trip to the Underworld,” breaks out of the prose format and ends with a traditional rhyme scheme. Similarly, the 15th poem, “Strepitus: Like a Fallen Empire,” presents a rhyming pattern and a heart-wrenching finality: “Yes, may we take solace in the certainty of our defeat, / We gave it almost all that it was due, / We were braver than we knew.” The remaining 10 pieces include visions of older relatives and a poignant moment shared by father and daughter. One of the standouts here is a moving tribute to Flanigan’s grandmother, “The Irish in America: Annie D.” Despite all of the challenges she confronted, the author’s “Nana” was the best he could have asked for in the face of uneven parenting.

Sharp writing and keen imagery underscore poetic themes of love and loss, memory and regret.

Kirkus Reviews