| ISBN | 9781911337652 |
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The Gravity Wave
€11.95
‘The title, The Gravity Wave, evokes several possible interpretations and he extrapolates these, suggesting, among other things, both a momentum (wave) and a restoring force (gravity). “The gravity wave” connects all life, past, present and future. In terms of the universal, our existence may be of negligible consequence, and transient, but our songs and stories, energy, our very particles, are all part of the continuum . . . With a grace and tonal quality reminiscent both of Derek Mahon’s meditations and Vona Groarke’s lyrics, Sirr continues to be open to the world, like the dog who is following his nose; doing, as Denis O’Driscoll would declare, “whatever it takes to make it last”.’ — Afric McGlinchey, Dublin Review of Books
‘Peter Sirr draws on the classics — Homer, Catullus, Sappho — to ask if we, in comparison, live in a disenchanted world:
Diminished? Really? Gods don’t hold us, the temples
wither, the priests are all in sales
but the sun still shines, the oxen low
and the winedark sea is still as dark as wine.
He acknowledges world-traumas — the Final Solution, “Shahad, Rawan, Maram / this hand in the rubble / these broken shutters / shrapnel on the bed cover” — while risking, as Auden had it, a voice of affirmation and praise. I admire this book for how it registers the weight of the world, and also for its creative resistance to the brutality of the actual.
