September Elegies

'This elegant cadenced work shows Mary O'Donnell in mature possession of her distinctive voice and vision. In poems that seek 'to be true to the light and dark / in each of us.' the inner and outer search for meaning and fulfilment finds shapely utterance in the book's gracefully structured progression through the haunted towards the consolatory and on to the elegiac and tender. The transcendent is occasionally encountered '(the marvellous incarnate)' and articulated in a register that is characteristically scrupulous, sensuous and subtle. Against the clear-eyed awareness that 'everything is borrowed' and that love 'rides on the brink of nothing,' love remains the grounded act of faith that may exalt, transfigure and redeem the human experience and its mystery.'

Michael Coady