Sweeney Now - by Greg Delanty (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Sweeney Now, a new book from the celebrated Irish poet Greg Delanty, is based on the twelfth-century texts of the middle Irish poem Buile Shuibhne (The Frenzy of Sweeney), a sequence in both verse and prose, which Delanty uses as a blueprint, a mythic foundation to tell and review what it is like to be a deracinated person and poet today, spending much of his time away from his native Ireland in the U.S.

In the original, Sweeney, the archetypal poet of Irish myth, is driven mad as a consequence of a curse imposed on him. He sprouts wings and takes flight, exiles himself to the wilderness, where he spends many years alone, naked or sparsely clothed, ostracized by the outside world, living in trees, bemoaning his fate, celebrating nature, intermittently recovering his sanity, conversing with a fellow madman, and grieving this kindred spirit in moving elegies on the latter's death. Sweeney is also portrayed as somewhat of an amateur seer and converses with various visitors to whom he relates his plight and thoughts. Throughout the story he thinks of himself as a bird.

Delanty's Sweeney riffs on these situations and predicaments in settings drawn from the modern literary and political world. The Sweeney of these often humorous poems should not be literally mistaken for Delanty himself--not entirely, that is. The poems are more like carnival mirrors, with the concomitant exaggerations, distortions, and partial truths of most any reflective autobiography.

Review Quotes

"Delanty has always had an astonishing and rare gift, praised from the beginning by Christopher Ricks and Seamus Heaney."--Thomas McCarthy, Irish Times

"Delanty remains resolutely sui generis."--Fiona Sampson, PN Review

"Delanty's is an important body of work for both sides of the Atlantic, and for English language poetry."--Daniel Tobin, Agenda

"Everywhere he unleashes unbounded energy and upbeat cheer."--F. D. Reeve, Poetry

"One of the most passionate and ambitious contemporary writers."--Adrienne Leavy, Reading Ireland

"Poet laureate of the contemporary Irish-in-America, Delanty has cataloged an entire generation and its relationship to exile. He is the laureate of those who have gone."--Colum McCann, Irish Times

About the Author

Greg Delanty was born in Cork City, Ireland, and maintains dual citizenship in Ireland and the United States, where he has lived since 1986. He is the author of No More Time and The Professor of Forgetting, among many other poetry collections, and he has received numerous awards for his work, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. He teaches at Saint Michael's College in Vermont.