Who is Eamon Grennan

Eamon Grennan (born 1941) is an Irish poet born in Dublin. He has lived in the United States, except for brief periods, since 1964. He was the Dexter M. Ferry Jr. Professor of English at Vassar College until his retirement in 2004.

Biography

Though his Irish roots are clear in his poetry, Grennan has an international sense of literary tradition. He has cited as influences American poets including Robert Frost and Elizabeth Bishop (herself an international poet with ties to the U.S., Canada, and Brazil). In addition to writing poetry, he has translated Giacomo Leopardi and—with his wife, Vassar classicist Rachel Kitzinger—Sophocles's Oedipus at Colonus.

Grennan studied at University College, Dublin, where he met poets Derek Mahon and Eavan Boland, and a...
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Eamon Grennan Poems

  • One Morning
    Looking for distinctive stones, I found the dead otter
    rotting by the tideline, and carried all day the scent of this savage
    valediction. That headlong high sound the oystercatcher makes
    came echoing through the rocky cove ...
  • The Cave Painters
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  • Untitled: Back They Sputter
    Back they sputter like the fires of love, the bees to their broken home
    Which they're putting together again for dear life, knowing nothing
    Of the heart beating under their floorboards, besieged here, seeking
    A life of its own. All day their brisk shadows zigzag and flicker...
  • Art
    The whole chorus saying only one thing: look
    at what goes, where we stand in the midst of it:
    Golden eyes of the beginning, deep patience
    of the end. Stone-deaf, the rocks in silence...
  • On A Cape May Warbler Who Flew Against My Window
    She's stopped in her southern tracks
    Brought haply to this hard knock
    When she shoots from the tall spruce
    And snaps her neck on the glass....
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Top 10 most used topics by Eamon Grennan

Light 5 Dark 5 High 4 Silence 4 Heart 3 Night 3 Water 3 Warm 3 Blue 3 Great 3


Eamon Grennan Quotes

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Comments about Eamon Grennan

Adriennecrezo: eamon grennan's discussion of otherness and the "camoflage of invisibility" is very interesting!
Jsrichman: eamon grennan on the irish coast to wake you up. (just a bit)
Gbclarkson: houseplants in winter their survival seems an open question: i make a mess of watering, prune without discretion, grieve over the leaf whose borders burn and curl. their fresh petals a perpetual surprise-- minute coral hearts, magnesium stars... eamon grennan
Poemakontsa: to the moon giacomo leopardi on the moon and remembrance of things past. to the heartbroken (tr. eamon grennan) now that the year has come full circle, i remember climbing this hill, heartbroken, to gaze up at the graceful sight of you, and how you hung then above those woods
Danmulhall: i want his delicate balance, his sturdy, sane, domesticated grace. … equilibrist of spirit, solid nerve. crowblack and solemn, he holds himself together, between limegreen ice & coral air. beyond his ken, out of the picture, the fixed stars hold him fast. eamon grennan
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Poem of the day

Isaac Watts Poem
Psalm 119 Part 10
 by Isaac Watts

Pleading the promises.

ver. 38,49

Behold thy waiting servant, Lord,
Devoted to thy fear;
Remember and confirm thy word,
For all my hopes are there.
...

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