The range of poems in Massacre of the Birds moves from an encounter
with water creatures in 'Hanging House in a Canal' to the appearance of
a satyr in O'Donnell's back garden in 'Muse.' Mythic nature abounds, but
wake-up calls to social denial also appear in '#MeToo: 12 Remembered
Scenes and a Line' and 'It Wasn't a Woman.' She speaks of the endangered
biosphere, of losses incurred by forced migration, but also about the
attritions of time in a mother-daughter relationship. A beautiful
collection from one of our most accomplished poets.
"At last a proper creative response to our times. With the most gracious
authority, Mary O'Donnell speaks truth into the storm of wounds mankind
is causing to nature and the feminine. These poems 'witness the grace of
wing tilt and wind', and map where we stand on the 'lakeshore of
conscience' as nature's 'vanishing' happens all around us. As the
collection progresses Massacre of the Birds successfully charts the full
spectrum of female experience. Here are the lyrical, sensuous spaces of
our intimacies. And here too is a bold, political reckoning of the many
painful injustices women have suffered for too long. O'Donnell's work is
a deeply satisfying fusion of poignancy and forthright power; her poems
are both a healing for our ills, and a vital demand for action."
-GRACE WELLS
"What I admire most about Mary O'Donnell's poetry is the way she reaches
beyond her formidable Irish roots to embrace, aesthetically and
thematically, a global poetic that joins hands with Adrienne Rich,
Federico García Lorca and Tomas Tranströmer. She blends the sensual with
the mystical, the exotic with images from home. From finding the
transcendent in something as simple as trying on a pair of sandals, to
allowing imagination's flight in 'dancing to Cuban rhythms/ rum on my
tongue, /a reek of skin, all body, / burning up'--Mary O'Donnell takes
us along with her on the journey of a life rooted in tradition, but too
large to be contained."
-RICHARD KRAWIEC
"In her new book Mary O'Donnell demonstrates a thrilling preparedness to
breach boundaries and interrogate the world from fresh angles. The voice
is urgent, with poems that can be both passionately political and
devastatingly personal in turn, whether it is exploring the experience
of refugees with 'a whole sea like a judgment on us', a woman's aging
process or the writer's complex relationship with the art of poetry.
There's anger with our casual plunder of the natural world and at our
obliviousness to the suffering of those we seek to hide away. But
there's also joy, a capturing the numinous--what O'Donnell calls the
'perfect stealth / of these moments'--when it offers itself in language
that is precise, charged and hauntingly beautiful."
-NESSA O'MAHONY
"Mary O'Donnell writes with the vigour and tremulous excitement of
youth, now enriched with the wisdom of the years. Her lyricism is laced
with raw courage and rare sinew, her compass being both meticulously
local yet still global in its vision. In this astonishing collection,
amongst many other subjects, her pen ponders upon the unwitnessed death
of an aged aunt, the fancy skirts of an unwashed lettuce, the slaughter
at Bataclan, with equal ease and elegance. As a poet, Mary O'Donnell
stands with Heaney and Boland, Kavanagh and Clarke: as a living writer,
she stands alone."
-KEVIN MYERS
