Author Micheal O’Siadhail
Publisher Canterbury Press £19.99 2019
Format pbk
ISBN 9781786221957
Micheal O’Siadhail’s achievement is so staggering that it is difficult to know how to describe it. As he explains in his introduction, each of the Quintets is deliberately given a present participle for a title: ‘Making’, ‘Dealing’, ‘Steering’. ‘Finding’, and ‘Meaning’. The broad concepts relating to each of these are arts, economics, politics, science and philosophy. Within these the five cantos of each Quintet focus on what O’Siadhail describes as ‘our journey to modernity’. This vast poetic sweep is designed to contribute to what he terms ‘poetry in the public sphere’. The result illustrates the abiding power of lyric poetry in a long, dramatic, modern poem. The introduction itself is fascinating. O’Siadhail traces the tradition of public discourse from Dante’s Divine Comedy as the world picture of the medieval beginning its journey to modernity and Milton’s Paradise Lost portraying the justification of divinity in the upheavals of the Protestant Reformation. The Five Quintets therefore seeks to follow the history of ideas to the modern and secular. In his poem, O’Siadhail is engaging with outstanding figures from different period of modernity. There are certain poetic forms, sonnet, haiku, rhyming and stress, including iambic pentameter and terza rima, for each Quintet.
For me, the length was off-putting until I resorted to dipping into pages randomly, not the most studious or perhaps mature approach but one which led me to be drawn into Canto Three ‘Power’ from Quintet Three ‘Steering’. This ranges from the Russian Revolution to World War Two to Mrs Thatcher to 9/11. It also includes what I think is the heart of the poem:
We are meaning seekers who desire
Broader narratives where we can find
How our earthly sojourn somehow counts.
The poetry flows through over 300 pages of this epic work of modern life and thought. I may never read all of it, but I would not have missed reading some of it.
ROSEMARY WALTERS
Leave a Reply