The Darkness of Snow

Frank Ormsby

• Publisher: Wake Forest University Press
• Year: 2018
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781943666171
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

Frank Ormsby's poetry is deep but never sententious, exhibits great technique but never flaunts it, is of the moment but never trendy. In his most recent volume,  The Darkness of Snow, we see memories of his youth in Fermanagh as well as poems of adult years in Belfast, reflecting on the aftermath of the Troubles and the city's restoration while commemorating a life lived in poetry. This collection also includes a sequence that meditates on the art of Irish painters, followed by a series of Parkinson's Poems. Finally, we encounter poems on the atrocities of a village called "The Willow Forest," told by one of the interpreters who understands the difficulties of bearing witness. As the title suggests, this volume is both luminous and dark.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Beginning
• I.
• Altar Boy
• Altar Boy Economics
• 1959–1960
• The Cash Railway
• The National Anthem
• The Fields
• Neddy
• Snow on the Way
• The Fox
• Owls
• Do You Renounce?
• Inoculation
• The Gang
• Diversion
• Omagh
• Rhododendrons
• Ruts
• Unapproved Roads
• Storms
• Loss of Sound
• The Woodpile
• Snowdrop
• Landscape with Endangered Species
• Unfinished Music
• Towards a Sketch of My Mother
• After a Storm
• A Zen Dream of Fermanagh
• My Father Again
• The Farmyard Haiku
• II.
• The Fisherman
• The Black Duckling
• The Waterworks Park
• Crows Again
• At the Graveside
• My Last Words
• Purgatory
• Gunslingers
• For Ciaran Carson
• Lunch in The Crown with Michael Longley
• An Evening in The John Hewitt with Conor Macauley
• Visiting the Grave
• Grandfather’s Week
• Small World (3)
• The Snail
• The Soul
• The Cult
• Outside the Walls
• After Edward Hopper: Sun in an Empty Room
• No Telling
• Belfast Needs Fountains
• III. Twenty-Six Irish Paintings
• Aloysius O’Kelly: The Christening Party
• John Lavery: Under the Cherry Tree
• Walter Osborne: Apple Gathering, Quimperlé
• Stanley Royle: The Goose Girl
• Norman Garstin: Among the Pots
• Norman Garstin: Madonna Lilies
• Joseph Malachy Kavanagh: Pursuing His Gentle Calling
• Richard Thomas Moynan: Girls Reading a Newspaper
• Walter Osborne: Breton Girl by a River
• Roderic O’Conor: Portrait of a Young Woman Smiling
• May Guinness: Pump at Pont-l’Abbé
• Nathaniel Hone: Feeding Pigeons, Barbizon
• Stanhope Forbes: Miss Ormsby, later Mrs Homan
• Frank O’Meara: Towards Night and Winter
• William John Leech: Convent Garden, Brittany
• Mary Swanzy: The Clown by Candlelight
• Frank O’Meara: On the Quays, Étaples
• Henry Jones Thaddeus: The Wounded Poacher
• Frank O’Meara: The Widow
• Augustus Nicholas Burke: Farmyard in Brittany
• William John Leech: Interior of a Barber’s Shop
• Stanhope Forbes: Street in Brittany
• Norman Garstin: Estaminet in Belgium
• Richard Thomas Moynan: The Laundress
• Nathaniel Hone: Old Woman Gathering Sticks
• Nathaniel Hone: Leafy Lane
• IV. The Parkinson’s Poems
• Agitans
• Tremors
• Side Effects (1)
• Notes in Small Handwriting
• The Insulin Pen
• Hallucinations (1)
• Hallucinations (2)
• Hallucinations (3)
• Friends
• Side Effects (2)
• Side Effects (3)
• Once a Day
• The Later Stages (1)
• The Later Stages (2)
• V. The Willow Forest
• The Accused (1)
• The Interpreter (1)
• Witness A
• Witness B
• The Accused (2)
• The Interpreter (2)
• Witness G
• The Interpreter (3)
• Witness J
• The Interpreter (4)
• The Undertaker’s Wife
• The Accused (3)
• The Interpreter (5)
• The Willow Forest
• Acknowledgements
• Notes