February 6, 2013

Rose Kelleher

ENLIGHTENMENT

The knowledge that napalm exists,
that it was designed to do what it does
and that we use it knowingly, can’t be
unlearned. Such knowledge burns itself
into the brain’s soft tissue, a burn so slow
it can last for 40 years and keep on burning.
Down through the complex network
of surface squiggles, into the mind’s meat
it sinks like a live coal, and keeps on sinking.
It burns through philosophy, it burns through art.
Wet sentiment yields with a hiss; a wisp of mist,
then nothing. The knowledge of napalm eats
Dostoyevsky for breakfast and keeps on eating,
burns every cross there is and keeps on burning,
the unthinkable, once thought, forever thinking,
more merciless than the Viet Cong, tunneling
down to the part of us that’s hard and lasting.

from Rattle #37, Summer 2012

__________

Rose Kelleher: “Why do I write? To be honest, I don’t write purely for the love of words, the way poets are supposed to. Usually I write because I have something to say. When I wrote ‘Enlightenment’ I was feeling overwhelmed, thinking of all the evil in the world. It’s just too much to process. Admitting that, and writing a depressing poem about it, is a lot like praying. You know it’s useless, but you do it anyway.”

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April 30, 2009

Review by Mary Meriam

BUNDLE O’ TINDER
by Rose Kelleher

The Waywiser Press
P.O. Box 6025
Baltimore, MD 21206
ISBN: 978-1904130-33-8
2008, 88 pp., £7.99
www.waywiser-press.com

Why do we read poems? Poems can be songs, prayers, chronicles, confessions, memories, meditations, complaints, portraits. Poems give us contact with the world and help us feel less alone. Reading a poem can be a moment of pleasure in an otherwise painful world. Sometimes poems speak for us when we can’t find the words, when it all seems too terrible. Here’s where we can be thankful for Rose Kelleher’s brave, strong book of poems, Bundle o’ Tinder. This book wrestles demons to the ground and pins them there, crushed.

In Kelleher’s poem, “Lourdes,” compassion is in full force. Lourdes is a grotto in France, with spring water that many pilgrims believe can heal. With great gusto, Kelleher writes:

Burst the spigots. Overflow.
Send mercy surging down the mountainside,
washing over every borderline.
Don’t just stand there. Go

These commanding lines are just one Continue reading

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