The fourth poem in Angela Alaimo O’Donnell’s series, “Crossing Ireland.” The next poem in the series will appear on Monday, March 10. Here’s the link to the essay that began the series “Crossing Ireland”
Angela Alaimo O’Donnell has had a few flirtations with the notion of “Being Irish.” Given that March seems to belong to the Irish, she has written a brief essay, along with a suite of poems called “Crossing Irish.” This is the second of twelve poems. More about Angela Alaimo O’Donnell
Angela Alaimo O’Donnell is a poet and professor at Fordham University in New York City where she teaches English, Creative Writing, and American Catholic Studies. Her most recent book of poems, Waking My Mother, a collection of elegies focused on the relationships between mothers and daughters. has been published by Word Press in Fall 2013. Her previous book, Saint Sinatra & Other Poems (May 2011), was been nominated for the Arlin G. Meyer Prize in Imaginative Writing.
Angela has had a few flirtations with the notion of “Being Irish.” Given that March seems to belong to the Irish, she has written a brief essay, along with a suite of poems she wrote called “Crossing Irish.” The poems are devoted to the theme of wanting to be Irish.
Today we are presenting Angela’s essay and the first of twelve poems. The rest of Angela’s poems will be posted in the days leading up to St Patrick’s Day.
As a child, I never wanted to be Irish. This was a convenient circumstance, since I wasn’t. (My Irish name is my husband’s gift to this Sicilian girl.)
Then I grew up and fell in love with poetry—English poetry first, then American poetry, and then, finally, fully, fatally, I fell in love with Irish poetry. The yearning of Yeats, the wicked wit of Kavanagh, the heart and heft of Heaney—all of them spoke to me, or rather, sang to me, in voices that were at once distinctly their own and also the collective voice of their common clan. It was then that I wanted in.
Angela in Sligo
This itch to be Irish only got worse when I visited Ireland for the first time. Once our plane set down on Shannon’s tarmac (holy ground), once we got in our rental car and started driving across the glorious West of Ireland, I recognized the landscape as though it were my own. Irish poetry—with its deep rooting in the past, its mists of memory, its hard love of the hard land—had claimed me, planted in me the bizarre belief that I belonged to Ireland. I felt a sense of homecoming I’ve felt in only one other place in the world—Sicily, my true ancestral island from which my grandparents emigrated 100 years ago.
The Ring of Kerry
Though Ireland & Sicily might seem to have little in common—one ruled by rain, the other sun—they share much: a rich history of miraculous happenings; a penchant for saint-making; a fierce pride in their separateness, their exiled state; a wild & wonderful language that makes ordinary English and Italian sound strait-jacketed, tied-up, and tame.
As a child, I never wanted to be Irish. Now, as an adult, I do (oh, I do).
Happily, as a poet, I’ve found a way to claim this invented identity—or, at least, to imagine it—through poetry. The poems that follow belong to a series called, “Crossing Irish,” a suite of poems I wrote five years ago during another visit to that Island of the Blessed. For all of you Irish readers out there, I hope this Italian-American wannabe’s work might not seem presumptuous. For all of you non-Irish readers who are also lovers of Ireland—well, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.
Today, Sunday, Feb 2 from 3-5 PM, Angela Alaimo O’Donnell we’ll be one of two featured readers at Carmine Street Metrics. The event will take place at Otto’s Shrunken Head, 558 E. 14th St. Angela has published three collections of poems, Saint Sinatra (2011), Moving House (2009), and, most recently, Waking My Mother (2013), and two chapbooks MINE (2007) and Waiting for Ecstasy (2009). Her work has been published in many journals and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, the Best of the Web Award, and the Arlin G. Meyer Prize in Imaginative Writing.
The Persuasions
The Persuasions will be performing at the Studio Theater at Lehman College, 250 Bedford Park Blvd. West, Bronx, NY on Thursday, February 6, 12:15pm. “They Still Ain’t Got No Band But They’re Still Making Music After All These Years” – A Celebration of Life, A Capella Music, and History. This event is sponsored by the Dept. of African & African-American Studies.
Honor Finnegan
Honor Finnegan will be performing at the Irish Arts Center’s “Sunday’s at 7 on Feb 9th, 7pm . A great night of comedy with Honor providing the music. Curated by Fiona Walsh and Ann Design. Tickets for members is $10 and $12 for non-members. 553 W 51st St. NYC.
Tara O’Grady
Singer Tara O’Grady will be at Why Not Jazz Room, 14 Christopher Street, in NYC’s West Village on Sunday, February 9, 9-11pm. $10 at the door. She will be joined by Pete Kennedy on guitar and David Shaich on bass. At the corner of Christopher St and Gay St in the West Village, a lovely coffee shop sits on the corner and plays records on a turn table. And below the turning and churning of Etta James and Colombian beans, nestled below the street, is a tiny jazz club where one can escape the cold and imagine the Village of Bob Dylan’s days.
