Half Wild: Poems

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.You were the part of methat gave itself to death.Sometimes I dream of eyes, sealed with a membraneof unknowinglike a mystic's veil, that open to my glance without surprise.Sometimes I dreamof perfect understanding.Sometimes I snatchat hands that seem to seekas through a caul.Sometimes I wakenWith an infant's shriek. -- from Twin

Author: Mary Rose O'Reilley
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 04/01/2006
Pages: 72
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.23lbs
Size: 9.25h x 5.50w x 0.25d
ISBN: 9780807131626
Award: Walt Whitman Award - Winner

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 08/15/2006 pg. 92
Library Journal 08/01/2006 pg. 92

About the Author

Mary Rose O'Reilley is the author of five essay collections, most recently The Love of Impermanent Things. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, and is a professor of English at the University of St. Thomas