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Synopsis
Winner of the 2005 Walt Whitman Award of The Academy of American Poets
"[O'Reilley's is] a style that celebrates . . . that mystery we call the soul. That part of us that is of another world, come perhaps to instruct us in this one"
-Mary Oliver, from her judge's citation
Half Wild is spiritual biography wound backwards, spiraling into the world rather than out of it. Though it reflects on the paradoxes of our violent times, Mary Rose O'Reilley's collection hangs on to life like the bee "up to his hips in love" who "will fall asleep in the snow" and "wake up still kissing his flower." In O'Reilley's poems, human, animal, and mineral creations interpenetrate and share surreal conversation-even stones exchange stories of "hot times in the magma" and animals are listened to intently. Here sacred inquiry is grounded in a passion for the natural world, resolving questions through lyric, erotic, and sensual response. The poems of Half Wild revel in desire and longing as instruments of theological critique.
Library Journal
"This might be considered/ a waste of time: to sit/ still at a window, telling one bud from another." The delightful singularities of flowers, and even bees-"The one up to his hips in love/ will fall asleep in the snow,/ wake up still kissing his flower"-do not escape the notice of O'Reilley (English, Univ. of St. Thomas; The Love of Impermanent Things). She has the uncanny ability not only to see the commonly overlooked details of her world but to comprehend her place among them, recognizing that we are "hung/ like tongues/ in the bell/ of our whole desire." O'Reilley has an affinity for open spaces and the creatures, wild and half wild, that inhabit and adapt to them. Active in Quaker ministry, she is also trained in Buddhist precepts; curiosity and quest are at the heart of her poetry, and the spiritual world is never far from the natural one. Winner of the 2005 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets; highly recommended.-Louis McKee, Painted Bride Arts Ctr., Philadelphia Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.