The classic Irish mythology surrounding Étaín is one rooted in a feeling of excruciating envy; the bitterness of an old love set to destroy a new one, playing out over thousands of years and generations, sometimes with disastrous results for children born amid the fray. An optimist might argue that it illustrates love conquering all; a realist might add “but at a cost.” Either way, it is an ode to beauty in all its forms, from that which one wants for themselves to that which one cannot tolerate in someone else’s possession.
Lilies on the Deathbed of Étaín and Other Poems by Oisín Breen explores these themes in detail, coupling mythology with natural elements and other magnificent wildness, illustrating the existence of things we desire but, despite our best efforts, may never fully obtain. Draped in equal parts longing and anger, death’s inevitable grip looms large over the speaker, but never quite enough to put the fiery flame of emotion out. Sometimes flowing and melodic, the rich metaphor ranges between lyrically dreamy and strikingly real, changing tone just when you think you know what to expect. Still, a rhythm carries forward in a collection that feeds seamlessly verse-to-verse.
From III:
Or it was where scoliosis stitches up once beautiful women into
the shape of feuding Christmas birds; and where I once sat
hammering out inconsistencies, where others fled to the soft
arms of pretty girls as a means to find a rum-soaked
chin-splitting escape that happened to the clock, every fourteen
years; and where I held hands and felt whole, totally and utterly
whole.
~
Here then, the beast is holy, the haar is holy,
and holy too is the red honey,
so too are lips, each others’,
especially yours,
for which I have such a thirst.
From A Chiaroscuro of Hunger
I was tired then, worn out by hundreds of poor choices,
And passions that burnt red hot, only to turn white hot,
And sunder skin from bone, prompting the perennial
Reassembling of fragments of a jigsaw puzzle,
That, at times, resembles my face.
From love and hate in all their forms to the shades that live in between, this work lays itself clear and bare without falling into a trap of predictability. Lilies on the Deathbed of Étaín and Other Poems offers a complete and three-dimensional examination of reckoning, with oneself or with others, about the possession and loss of beauty; what we want, what we’ll do to get it, and what it feels like when we don’t.
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