About the Author
Gerard Donovan, who was born in Wexford and grew up in Galway, is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University. The author of two previous collections, Columbus Rides Again (Salmon, 1993) and Kings and Bicycles (Salmon, 1995), his poetry has appeared in journals on both sides of the Atlantic, including The Sewanee Review, New Statesman, Stand, and the Irish Times. After a career playing classical guitar in the eighties, he currently works as a professor in New York. In 1999 he completed the 140-mile Marathon des Sables in North Africa with his two brothers, later the subject of an award-winning documentary.
"Gerard Donovan is a man of two countries, teasing the beauty out of what lies in between. The LightHouse is easily his finest work so far, haunted, plaintive, hopeful and raucous. Like all good poems, they create a temporary silence around themselves, luring us in and stunning us. The LightHouse is a great collection." -- Colum McCann, Author of This Side of Brightness
"Donovan's poems are a joy to read. Their diversity defies categorization -- the poem glistens with detail." Irish Echo, New York
"Donovan is capable of taking an idea and unfolding it back to discover unexpected areas of meaning and suggestion." Poetry Ireland Review (from www.salmonpoetry.com)
Poems from The Lighthouse
| The Body Lights |
| Not far from our window, the lighthouse dreams. |
| Its steel steps draft short breaths, |
| the granite flashes a heartbeat |
| under nightÕs vast sheet. |
| And now a breeze |
| parts the curtains into waves: |
| that glow again, like eyes opening. |
| When I dream, I too flicker between light and dark. |
| As you lie beside me, you see nothing of this. |
| You sleep like coastal distance, |
| another light in a long night, |
| your body spread from the pillow |
| like moon's reflection. |
| Your skin covers you like water. |
| You are as full of light |
| as your first breath. |
| Night turns restless on its side. |
| The first birds sing on whitening sea. |
| Starlings |
| In a boiling second |
| the starlings strip off trees |
| to a shrill scarf trailing in a gust, |
| curving, whipped, contorted, |
| crumpling to the roadside grass. |
| Today is colder, the wind north; |
| sparseness, contained a season, spills everywhere. |
| A few people walk the trails, |
| each breath marked, then released by air. |
| A child might see those birds as leaves |
| that scrape the sky with yellow veins. |
| I seem to lose that magic year by year. |
| I'm learning to open my hands; they fill |
| with what I let go. So I freed you too. |
| By the way, I forecast autumn by starlings: |
| it arrived today at two in the afternoon. |
| I had coffee and then came to the park |
| and it touched me on the shoulder ? just like that, I swear. |
| (Copyright Gerard Donovan 2000) |
