Drowned Book
By Sean O'Brien
October 2007
Picador
Distributed By Trans-Atlantic Publications
ISBN: 9780330447621
81 Pages, 5 1/4 x 7 3/4"
$19.95 Paper Original
Many of the poems in Sean O’Brien’s new collection take their
emotional tenor and imaginative cue from his acclaimed translation of Dante’s
Inferno, and occupy a dark, flooded, subterranean world, as dramatically
compelling as it is disquieting.
Circumstances have compelled O’Brien
to return repeatedly to the elegiac form, and The Drowned Book contains a
number of powerfully moving poems written in memory of fellow poets and artists.
The Drowned Book again shows O’Brien a master of the authoritative
line, and underscores his pre-eminence among contemporary English poets.
Praise for Sean O’Brien’s verse translation of Dante’s Inferno:
‘Compelling, with a steady incandescence to the language’ Independent
‘All life is written in Dante’s burning pages, and Sean O’Brien is to be congratulated on his expert rehabilitation of a classic’ Spectator
‘Combines urgent readability with a muscular forcefulness’ The Economist