The Magpie and the Child
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
The Magpie and the Child tells a story of great loss, love, and learning. The volume starts from the days before the poetic journey, in a sort of pre-exploration of events before they were events, moving to and through the death of her child Emily at almost eleven years old from an unsuspected heart condition. The poems speak, lament, and sing among the metaphors and religious resonances that such mourning must inspire. The thieving magpie of the prefatory title poem pecks at its own image in the glass while the poet daubs the hope of intervening blood on the "trembling lintel of faith." The volume is filled with self-examination, suffering, remembered conversations with the living child, and very real ones with the dead, each of which record the steps of the emotional journey. The second half of The Magpie and the Child is an extended sequence taking the form of a fragmented diary, one that captures the pain of loss in a skeptical age yet insists on the ritual compensation of belief. In the rigors of its form, the depth of its despair, and the necessary belief in the meaning of its artistic act, Clutterbuck's poetry carefully and beautifully maintains this very delicate balance.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Irish poet Clutterbuck's debut is a tender, haunting portrait of grief, magnificently crafted out of unimaginable loss. The first half features scenes from the Irish countryside relayed with stunning lyricism: "bird flick against light/ louvring open the sky// and deepest green/ eight at evening/ where the long grass/ stands uncombed." Interspersed with this sparkling imagery are scenes from the poet's earlier life, reflections on time, and references to the challenge of maintaining religious faith in the face of tragedy. There are also poems about a miscarriage and a second pregnancy, the hushed waiting for a new life to begin ("I crouch in the house of my coming child, the webs of this cocoon life in my mouth"). The book's second half deals more directly with Clutterbuck's grief through a long poem titled "Thre-nodies for Emily," featuring the poet's thoughts and experiences after the death of her 10-year-old daughter from an undiagnosed heart condition. She captures the bewilderment that often accompanies death: "and still the traffic comes, morning sits on every surface,/ a crow calls, cutlery rattles in the kitchen/ and a keyboard begins to patter-jab." Emptiness suffuses this poem as a physical presence, but so does an inspiring, dogged perseverance to carry on. This impactful work captures the grieving process with artful clarity.