Daniel Tobin: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Banshee

            The long, drawn-out howling of a dog

            shut up all night inside the auction ring

            out back of our B&B scares awake

            the owner's child so that she cries

            in the room below our bed, a duet

            that in my half-sleep seems to carry

            beyond Mount Eagle and Slea Head

            to my grandmother's Brooklyn apartment

            thirty years ago where, back-lit in her chair,

            she told me her story of the banshee,

            how as a child she heard it wail

            through the townland of Kilvendoney the day

            the neighboring farmer died; and again

            years later she listened to what sounded

            like the keening of an old woman

            under Sixth Avenue streetlights,

            and knew then that no prayer could save

            her oldest son lying in a coma,

            meningitis working into his brain,

            the pain like a small voice rising to a pitch

            beyond all hearing -- a noise so unlike

            the steady hum and beep of machines

            that monitored your induced sleep

            in the outpatient wing where they carved

            the lump from you, as it turned out,

            benign, the word soothing as the whisper

            this child's mother must use to calm

            the fractured music in her daughter's throat,

            Shush, shush, it's only an old watch dog,

            as moonlight softens the tin roof

            outside both our windows, and I draw you

            closer to me in our rented bed

            and rest my hand on your scarred breast.

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Daniel Tobin is the author of nine books of poems, including From Nothing, winner of the Julia Ward Howe Award, The Stone in the Air, his suite of versions from the German of Paul Celan, and most recently Blood Labors, named one of the Best Poetry Books of the Year for 2018 by the New York Times and The Washington Independent Review of Books. His poetry has won many awards, among them the Massachusetts Book Award and fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation. His critical and editorial works include Passage to the Center: Imagination and the Sacred in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney, Awake in America, The Book of Irish American Poetry from the Eighteenth Century to the Present, and To the Many: The Collected Early Works of Lola Ridge. His most recent work is On Serious Earth: Poetry and Transcendence. A trilogy of book-length poems, The Mansions, will appear in 2023. He teaches at Emerson College in Boston. [See also this link for more poems and information.]

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                    Kiki Smith, American (born Germany), born 1954; Banshee Pearls (detail), 1991;  Smithsonian American Art Museum.          

Comments

[Jack Skelley]

Oh, man. That's good! Thank you, Daniel!

[Patrick Clancy]

Well, I wasn't too scared to read "Banshee", but I am too scared to read it a second time.*

Excellent work!

* I have the added burden of my grandmother spell binding me by telling my 4, 5, 6-year old self that in the far west of Galway where she was a child, the banshees came during the night screaming and driving(!) rattling, horse-drawn black carriages past the houses to be affected by the tragedy.

[lally]

another great pick Terence, brilliantly done Daniel

[Beth Joselow]

"-- a noise so unlike/ the steady beep and hum of machines..." what a brilliant transition!

[Grace Cavalieri]

Powerful Powerful

[clarinda harriss]

So powerful. I read it with trepidation--about the plot line, not the banshees--and OMG the relief the last line brought. Thanks, both Tobin and Winch.

[Martha Rhodes]

Great poem!

[Christopher J Mason]

Beautiful poem!

[Glenis Redmond]

Palpable, Daniel. This journey, whew!

[Blake Campbell]

Amazing how much you have managed to intertwine in a poem of this length. The ending is just beautiful!

[Terence Winch]

Thanks, Pat. Banshee trauma is a common affliction in Irish households.

[Terence Winch]

Thanks, mo chara is fearr.

[Terence Winch]

Thank you, Clarinda.

[Mary Winch]

Just beautiful...

[Maureen Owen]

Perfect art pick for the haunting Banshee!

[Terence Winch]

Thanks, Maureen. (I was hoping someone would notice.)

[Peter Kearney]

Despite the references to the banshee, the poet seems to move effortlessly, even peacefully, from scene to scene, perhaps because the "you" toward whom the poem has been moving is healed and so clearly beloved.

[Geoff Young]

'Banshee" is a poem as stunning single sentence, perfectly
delivered, with many a pin-drop turn, including the final,
touching last lines.

[Don Berger]

Jeez I love the heartbeat in this poem, how the lines punch forward in their great measure. Music to live by! The trip we take!

[Karen Hildebrand]

This is gorgeous and moving. I am noting, of course, the way you move from scene to scene...

[Dr. Earle Hitchner]

Daniel Tobin's "Banshee" is impressively foreboding and, toward the end, forgiving in its unfolding. Everything in the poem works not only as it might but also as it must. The structure and diction are faultless. Irish lore and medical ills entwine in this apprehensive descent into what is, finally, two gestures of tenderness, simple yet profound. It is the anodyne of touch given and received as caress.

[Christopher Jane Corkery]

"and knew then that no prayer could save" that line brings me back to her back-lit chair....
I like that a lot...