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Drunken Sailor
by John Montague
"Less strict than British verse, more formal than American, Montague poems take a great variety of forms — imagistic description, dramatic monologues, elegies, litanies, quest romance all appear in the Drunken Sailor.... There are many measured and measuring allusions to the late great Yeats in Drunken Sailor, but this best thing ["Last Court"] is simply great late Montague." Adrian Frazier, Irish Times
In Drunken Sailor, Montague explores the political divide in his native County Tyrone, his own rural Catholic upbringing, the changing face of modern Ireland, the landscape of Ireland as historical palimpsest, and his own fascination with the sea. Many of these themes are familiar to readers of Montague, but here they are handled with the amplitude and unhurried artistry of one deeply practiced in his craft. In this volume the poet grapples with mortality, his own and others', creating images that haunt the imagination.
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White Water
for Line McKie
The light, tarred skin
of the currach rides
and receives the current,
rolls and responds to
the harsh sea swell.
Inside the wooden ribs
a slithering frenzy; a sheen
of black-barred silver-
green and flailing mackerel:
the iridescent hoop
of a gasping sea trout.
As a fish gleams most
fiercely before it dies,
so the scales of the sea-hag
shine with a hectic
putrescent glitter:
luminous, bleached —
white water —
that light in the narrows
before a storm breaks.
$50 clothbound (Limited, signed, and numbered first edition with vellum wrapper)
ISBN 1-930630-19-0
ISBN13 978-1-930630-19-2
$11.95 paperback
ISBN 1-930630-18-2
ISBN13 978-1-930630-18-5
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