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Irish Elegies PDF

187 Pages·2009·3.571 MB·English
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Irish Elegies New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature Claire A. Culleton, Kent State University Series Editor Contemporary Irish Republican Prison Writing: Writing and Resistance by Lachlan Whalen (December 2007) Narratives of Class in New Irish and Scottish Literature: From Joyce to Kelman, Doyle, Galloway, and McNamee by Mary M. McGlynn (April 2008) Irish Periodical Culture, 1937–1972: Genre in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland by Malcolm Ballin (August 2008) Joyce through Lacan and Žižek: From A Portrait of the Artist to Finnegans Wake by Shelly Brivic (October 2008) Irish Modernism and the Global Primitive edited by Maria McGarrity and Claire A. Culleton (January 2009) Irish Elegies by Chris Arthur (June 2009) Irish Elegies Chris Arthur IRISH ELEGIES Copyright © Chris Arthur, 2009. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-61534-2 All rights reserved. First published in 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-37917-0 ISBN 978-0-230-62249-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230622494 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Arthur, C. J. (Christopher John), 1955– Irish elegies / Chris Arthur. p. cm.—(New directions in Irish and Irish American literature) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Arthur, C. J. (Christopher John), 1955—Homes and haunts. 2. Northern Ireland—Description and travel. I. Title. DA990.U46A727 2009 941.60824—dc22 2008042738 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: June 2009 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Hubert Butler (1900–1991), Ireland’s master essayist, once described a family property as “a place where it is easier to believe in happiness than in pain.” This book is dedicated to those who have made my places thus. See you miss nothing proffered. Name and store and set in order all. Let nothing be a toy too small, a trophy overpast the weighing palm that reckons less or more; for all you know, or I know, these must last the slow attritions of eternity. John Hewitt (1907–1987) Contents Series Editor’s Foreword ix Acknowledgments xi The Willow Is Green, the Flower Is Red 1 (En)trance 13 Rosary 27 On Not Being Who You Think You Are 47 Bookmarks 59 Wisdom’s Garden 79 How’s the Form? 87 Thirty-six Views, None of Mount Fuji 95 Falling Memory 117 Broken Flags 127 Object Lesson on Qualia with No Mention of This Term 141 An Essay on the Esse 155 Last Words 169 Series Editor’s Foreword “See you miss nothing proffered,” counsels the epigraph that opens Chris Arthur’s Irish Elegies, the sixth book published in Palgrave Macmillan’s New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature series. Miss nothing he does. The brilliant essays that make up Irish Elegies explore a variety of topics that capture the wonder in each ordinary minute of our lives. Much of this wonder Chris Arthur explores through memory, that imperfect repository of history and narrative. Memories have a way of surfacing, of pushing through hard ground with the stubborn determination of a maple tree’s thickest roots. Though most of our lives we will walk right over those protru- sions, one day we will stumble over them and be forced to confront a hazy past. With elegiac lyricism, Chris Arthur examines those tangled mem- ories that have secured his understanding of family, community, and nation. Each rich narrative develops into a marvelously elaborate con- ceit. Readers will be delighted by Arthur’s masterful juxtaposition, his striking perceptiveness, his sumptuous vocabulary, by the way he treats the topics of transience, loss, and death with meditative rever- ence, and the way he traces through shadowy memories the peculiar and rare imprints we leave behind for others to interpret and understand. I first came into contact with Chris Arthur in May 2008, after he responded to a call for proposals and book manuscripts I sent out to members of the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures (IASIL). He described his Irish Elegies project, contextu- alized the trilogy that preceded it—Irish Nocturnes (1999), Irish Willow (2002), and Irish Haiku (2005)—and added that he’d like to think that the new direction he could offer the series might be of some interest. Intrigued, I asked to read some sample chapters, and then some published reviews of his previous work. I quickly was astounded; his reviews were the most stellar I’d ever seen: “Chris Arthur is the Irish writer who has been quietly rescuing the m editative essay for the twenty-first century” (Patrick O’Sullivan); “Chris Arthur’s x SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD recently completed ‘Irish trilogy’ of essay collections should not only put him on the map as the contemporary Irish essayist, but also raise general interest in the possibilities of the essay form in our time” (Graham Good); and “[Chris Arthur] must, on the strength of this collection alone, now be counted among the most innovative advo- cates of creative nonfiction in contemporary Irish writing, and cer- tainly the one most committed to creating a distinctly Irish habitation for the essay” (James Silas Rogers). I signed the book within a week and the rest, as the saying goes, is history. It is not only a pleasure to see Irish Elegies in print but an honor to list it among the titles in the Palgrave Macmillan series New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature. CLAIRE A. CULLETON Kent State University

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