Absences: A Sequence - Softcover

Griffin, John A.; Griffin, Samuel M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 069214286X ISBN 13: 9780692142868

Publisher: Esthetic Apostle, The, 2018

Synopsis

Absences addresses the themes of loss of youth, loss of innocence, isolation, separation, exile, death, the absence of familiarity, affection, and above all the loss or absence of love. The sequence meditates on the natural world but finds little comfort there. There are no idyllic, romantic refuges from the self, and pathetic fallacies remain just that: instead of providing a balm to the sick heart, the dales of Arcady merely accentuate its angst. The poems find fitting motifs in poetic echoes and these are channeled into the poems' movement to harmonize their rhythms and oscillations and to achieve a kind of unsettling but restorative equipoise. The sequence resonates with allusions to classical mythology, Virginia Woolf, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Julio Cortazar, Franz Kafka, Johann Georg Hamann, Paul Celan, and Bruno Schulz, and tries to weave its patchwork aesthetic by drawing on their disparate but unified themes. Ultimately, the sequence is a celebration of life, even if life's great peroration is death, and even if we all die the same death over and over again.

About this title

About the Author

John A. Griffin was born in Tipperary, Ireland. He attended St. Louis University and Washington University (USA), where he read for his PhD. He currently lives and works in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He sometimes blogs new work at odradek-poetry.blogspot.com.

About this edition

• Publisher: Esthetic Apostle, The
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 069214286X
• ISBN 13: 9780692142868
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Knutseltroep, Mooijenkind Martine