Andalusian Hours: Poems from the Porch of Flannery O'Connor (Paraclete Poetry) (Volume 1) - Softcover

O'Donnell, Angela Alaimo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1640603530 ISBN 13: 9781640603530

Publisher: Paraclete Press, 2020

Synopsis

Andalusian Hours: Poems from the Porch of Flannery O’Connor is a collection of 101 sonnets that channel the voice of celebrated fiction writer, Flannery O’Connor. In these poems, poet and scholar Angela Alaimo O’Donnell imagines the rich interior life Flannery lived during the last fourteen years of her life in rural Georgia on her family’s farm named “Andalusia.” Each poem begins with an epigraph taken from O’Connor’s essays, stories, or letters; the poet then plumbs Flannery’s thoughts and the poignant circumstances behind them, welcoming the reader into O’Connor’s private world. Together the poems tell the story of a brilliant young woman who enjoyed a bright and promising childhood, was struck with lupus just as her writing career hit its stride, and was forced to return home and live out her days in exile, far from the literary world she loved. By turns tragic and comic, the poems in Andalusian Hours explore Flannery’s loves and losses, her complex relationship with her mother, her battle with her illness and disability, and her passion for her writing. The poems mark time in keeping with the liturgical hours O’Connor herself honored in her prayer life and in her quasi-monastic devotion to her vocation and to the home she learned to love, Andalusia.
 

About this title

About the Author

Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, Ph.D., is a writer, poet, and professor. She teaches English, Creative Writing, and courses in Catholic Studies at Fordham University in New York City and serves as Associate Director of Fordham’s Curran Center for American Catholic Studies. She is also co-editor of the Curran Center’s new book series, “Studies in the Catholic Imagination: The Flannery O’Connor Trust Series,” published by Fordham University Press.

From the Back Cover

Avid readers of Flannery O'Connorwill find Andalusian Hours a stunning, thrilling, gloriouscollection of poems inspired by Flannery's own biography and her smart, witty,yearning reflections on things large and small. Angela Alaimo O'Donnellhas accomplished an amazing thing here, channeling Flannery's voice and by akind of alchemy reproducing the gold of a mostly hidden life that is both deeplyrevealing and utterly convincing. This is, for me, O'Donnell's finestbook so far.

--Ron Hansen, author of Mariette In Ecstasy

Get ready to delight in, yes, a full cento of gorgeous,endlessly fascinating and endlessly varied sonnets in a no-nonsense Georgia-boundidiom, this two-year labor of real love, where one of our best contemporaryCatholic poets has managed -thank God--to channel the wit, humor, and profoundspirituality of our own saint Flannery O'Connor, broken and flawed like therest of us, whether we know it or not, and yet risen now once again in thesepoems and crying out, startling us into a brilliant new reality, like one ofthose blue peacocks of hers unfolding a hundred eyes before us.

--Paul Mariani, author of TheMystery of It All: The Vocation of Poetry in the Twilight of Modernity

AngelaAlaimo O'Donnell's singular biography, FlanneryO'Connor: Fiction Fired by Faith,seemed to offer the last word on a compelling author. But now the polyvalentO'Donnell has switched genres, and in 101 sonnets she channels O'Connor'svoice, writing poems like "Flannery and TV," "Flannery Considers Marriage," and"Flannery in the Bullring." In exploringbetween-the-line nuances of O'Connor's letters and essays, O'Donnell reachesbeyond O'Connor's words to imagine--richly and provocatively-- what might haveoccasioned them. This is a collection ofpoems without precedent. It willsurprise the reader with every line of startling insight--so similar to O'Connorthat it will give you goosebumps.

--JillPeleaz Baumgaertner, author of Flannery O'Connor: A Proper Scaring

This book wowed me from the first introductory poem--Flannery'smusings on the porch, her tendernesses towards her father, her loving enduranceof her mother, and the panache of the final rhymed couplets. Angela Alaimo O'Donnell has done FlanneryO'Connor the great service of removing her from the static position as icon andallowing her to move and breathe and have full being. Flannery O'Connor wouldmuch admire the technical mastery and the depth of vision of these poems.

--Mary Gordon, authorof On Thomas Merton

Edition details

• Publisher: Paraclete Press
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1640603530
• ISBN 13: 9781640603530
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128