The Beautiful Librarians
By Sean O'Brien
2.5/5
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About this ebook
Sean O'Brien
Sean O’Brien’s poetry has received numerous awards, including the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize (three times), the E.M Forster Award and the Roehampton Poetry Prize. His Collected Poems appeared in 2012. Europa is his ninth collection. His work has been published in several languages. His novel Once Again Assembled Here was published in 2016. He is also a critic, editor, translator, playwright and broadcaster. Born in London, he grew up in Hull. He is Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
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Reviews for The Beautiful Librarians
6 ratings1 review
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Part of my statement of poetics is that 21st century poetry should be written in such a way that not only literary professionals, but Everyman and Everywoman can relate to the words, meaning and emotions contained in the poetic form.O'Brien's The Beautiful Librarians contains some lyrical and thought-provoking words but is, overall, too obscure for my taste in poetry.
Book preview
The Beautiful Librarians - Sean O'Brien
From
Audiology
I hear an elevator sweating in New Orleans,
Water folding black on black in tanks deep under Carthage,
Unfracked oil in Lancashire
And what you’re thinking. It’s the truth –
There goes your silent count to ten, the held breath
Of forbearance, all the language not yet spoken
Or unspeakable, the dark side of the page.
But this is not about you. I can hear
The sea drawn back from Honshu,
Hookers in the holding pen, and logorrhoea
In the dreaded Quiet Coach,
The firestorm of random signs
On market indices, the bull, the bear,
The sound of one hand clapping and the failure of the rains,
The crackle of the dried-out stars,
Stars being born, anomalies and either/or,
The soundtrack of creation in an unrecorded vowel,
The latest that might be the last, the leading edge
Of all that is the case or is not there.
‘The contradictions cover such a range.’
And I’m told that soon it will be easier
To balance out the love-cry and the howl,
To wear an aid and act my age, to hear the world
Behind this world and not to crave amnesia.
Always
After Ruth Stone, ‘Train Ride’
The morning lasts forever. It does not.
The teller in the high white room
Beside the silent harbour loathes
His ledgers and his counterfoils
But adds and checks and enters, does
What he is here to do. He knows the rules.
The sunlight floods a rubbled alleyway.
Venetians, Turks and all the rest
Are dead and gone, likewise their gold.
The enemy has sailed away,
Gone south, gone west,
But no one living has been told.
The morning is eternal. It is not.
For now is noon, the sun too hot
For thinking or for loving,
The noonday girl’s asleep, her bitter breath
Distressing to the bitter clerk who lies
Beside her in the sunstruck heat, his cock
Shrunk back in white surrender.
Slowly in the blazing bay,
The ferry turns, is leaving.
The bank is opening again. The clock
Repeats that this is always, always,
That you are not here to wonder.
The hills grow pale. The sea’s dim haze
Means time has passed invisibly again.
The widow in her blinding black
Comes up the street with bread and oil
And speaks to no one, and the surf
Returns, returns along the shore,
Still seeking the perfection of its form,
A girl not quite a girl, who frets through
Every finical frou-frou adjustment: or
Like this, perhaps, or this, or this,
Her breath still bitter in the kiss.
A sailor would know how to name that star,
The first of evening, hanging in the square.
Lock up the money and the bonds,
Remembering to wash your hands,
And let the world become anonymous.
In this day there are all the days.
Immortals
The Lodge, near Aviemore
At five the day begins a slow withdrawal
From the mountain valley and the silver roar
Of all its urgent streams. As dark comes on,
The sky and the snow in the forest
Are not grey but gray, American gray,
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