Greetings to Our Friends in Brazil: One Hundred Poems

by Durcan, Paul

• ISBN13: 9781860466076
• ISBN10: 1860466079
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-04-01
• Publisher: Trafalgar Square

Summary

Paul Durcan has been at the heart of Irish cultural tile for thirty years, and his poetry has acquired a huge international following. With Greetings to Our Friends in Brazil he has produced the correction by which his whole career will be judged. It is a book of tremendous ambition, at once his most personal and his most public work to date. It will stand as his Prelude: a meticulously honest record of a writer's inner life, but it is also an audacious attempt to fix the sour of his country at a particular point in time -- years of Mary Robinson's presidency. The pain and redemption of his inner odyssey are mirrored in the images of an Ireland awakening from the nightmare of its violent past, becoming freer, more cosmopolitan, and less hypocritical.

Table of Contents

Greetings to Our Friends in Brazil	3	(12)
Recife Children's Project, 10 June 1995	15	(2)
The Last Shuttle to Rio	17	(3)
Fernando's Wheelbarrows, Copacabana	20	(2)
Samambaia	22	(1)
The Geography of Elizabeth Bishop	23	(2)
Casa Mariana Trauma	25	(1)
The Who's Who of American Poetry	26	(1)
Televised Poetry Encounter, Casa Fernando Pessoa, Lisboa	27	(2)
Elvira Tulip, Annaghmakerrig	29	(1)
The Daring Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze	30	(2)
Brazilian Presbyterian	32	(1)
Jack Lynch	33	(2)
A Visitor from Rio de Janerio	35	(3)
Brazilian Footballer--Please Do Not Pedestalize	38	(1)
North Inner City Brazilian Monkey	39	(4)
The Chicago Waterstone's	43	(4)
Remote Control	47	(2)
O God! O Dublin!	49	(3)
Dirty Day Derry	52	(1)
Norway	53	(3)
Eriugena	56	(2)
O'Donnell Abu!	58	(2)
Death of a Dorkel	60	(2)
The Binman Cometh	62	(3)
Island Musician Going Home	65	(4)
The Bellewstown Waltz	69	(2)
Thistles	71	(3)
October Break (Lovers)	74	(3)
Flying over the Kamloops	77	(2)
Man Circling His Woman's Sundial	79	(3)
High in the Cooley	82	(5)
The Only Isaish Berlin of the Western World	87	(3)
Karamazov in Ringsend	90	(2)
Notes Towards a Necessary Suicide	92	(2)
Mecca	94	(2)
Holy Smoke	96	(1)
Irish Subversive	97	(4)
Paddy Dwyer	101	(4)
Tinkerly Luxemburgo	105	(3)
Tangier in Winter	108	(2)
Cissy Young's	110	(2)
Notes Towards a Supreme Reality	112	(2)
Tea-Drinking with the Gods	114	(3)
Buswells Hotel, Molesworth Street	117	(2)
Self Portrait '95	119	(1)
Ashplant, New Year's Eve, 1996	120	(1)
We Believe in Hurling	121	(6)
Surely My God Is Kavanagh	127	(3)
On First Hearing News of Patrick Kavanagh	130	(2)
Waterloo Road	132	(3)
Patrick Kavanagh at Tarry Flynn, the Abbey Theatre, 1967	135	(2)
``Snatch out of Time the Passionate Transitory''	137	(2)
The Who's Who of Irish Poetry	139	(1)
Kavanagh's Ass	140	(2)
Francis Bacon's Double Portrait of Patrick Kavanagh	142	(3)
The King of Cats	145	(2)
The Stoning of Francis Stuart	147	(9)
Dancing with Brain Friel	156	(4)
The Rule of Marie Foley	160	(1)
Physicianstown, Callan, Co. Kilkenny, 30 April 1993	161	(1)
Portrait of Winston Churchill as Seamus Heaney, 13 April 1999	162	(3)
The Pasha of Byzantium	165	(2)
The Night of the Princess	167	(2)
At the Funeral Mass in Tang and the Burial Afterwards in Shrule of Dr Hugh M. Drummond	169	(3)
Mother in April	172	(3)
The Shankill Road Massacre, 23 October 1993	175	(2)
The Bloomsday Murders, 16 June 1997	177	(2)
Rainy Day Doorway, Poynztpass, 6 March 1998	179	(1)
North and South	180	(1)
Politics	181	(4)
On Being Commissioned by a Nine-Year-Old Boy in Belfast to Design a Flag to Wave on the Steps of City Hall on the Twelfth of July 1998	185	(1)
8 a.m. News, Twelfth of July 1998	186	(1)
The Voice of Eden	187	(2)
56 Ken Saro-Wiwa Park	189	(2)
Mohangi's Island	191	(1)
Letter to the Archbishop of Cashel and Emly	192	(2)
A Nineties Scapegoat Tramping at Sunrise	194	(5)
Omagh	199	(12)
On the Morning of Christ s' Nativity	211	(3)
Sunday Mass, Belfast, 13 August 1995	214	(2)
Self-Portrait as an Irish Jew	216	(2)
Travel Anguish	218	(2)
Waiting for a Toothbrush to Fall out of the Sky	220	(5)
Making Love inside Aras An Uachtarain	225	(3)
Real Inishowen Girl	228	(2)
Handball	230	(2)
Enniscorne, 1955	232	(2)
Private Luncheon, Maynooth Seminary, 8 July 1990	234	(1)
Edenderry	235	(1)
The First and Last Commandment of the Commander-in-Chief	236	(1)
Somalia, October 1992	237	(2)
Meeting the President (31 August 1995)	239	(5)
That Douce Woman Who Was Your Neighbour	244	(1)
Meeting the Patriarch, Meeting the Ambassador	245	(2)
American Ambassador Going Home	247	(2)
Cut to the Butt	249	(1)
President Robinson Pays Homage to Francis Stuart, 21 October 1996	250	(1)
The Functions of the President	251	(3)
The Mary Robinson Years	254