Medbh McGuckian‘s The Book of the Angel includes responses to the apocalyptic wars engendered by September 11, but ultimately the book’s focus is on personal triumph over the forces of dissolution and the possibility for human salvation through the advent into this life of extraordinary and exceptionally loveable individuals, who may or may not be akin to what we mean by ‘angels’.
‘Taking its title from the Old Irish eighth-century Latin document, Liber Angeli, in which Saint Patrick is granted the ecclesiastical see of Armagh through colloquy with an angel, and its inspiration from the reconciliation in Renaissance and mediaeval art, between the tenets of Christ’s Passion and the tensions of passion, between Agape and Eros, these poems use the millennial standpoint to contemplate the eternally unfathomable mystery of the Incarnation.’— Thomas McCarthy, Cork Literary Review
Like a medieval painting whose archaic symbolism is lost on modern viewers, the beauty of McGuckian’s work proves ravishing, uncanny. — Megan Harlan, San Francisco Chronicle
