What the Hammer

by Dermot Healy

Hardcover

First published October 1, 1998

About the author

Dermot Healy (born 1947 in Finnea, County Westmeath, Ireland) was an Irish novelist, playwright and poet. He won the Hennessy Award (1974 and 1976), the Tom Gallon Award (1983), and the Encore Award (1995). In 2011, he was shortlisted for the Poetry Now Award for his poetry collection, A Fool's Errand.

Healy was a member of Aosdána and of its governing body, the Toscaireacht, and lived in County Sligo, Ireland.

Reviews

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Serenities


A fire lit.
Candles burning.
The animals in.

The last weather report
giving warm breezes
from the south.

Our lovemaking sweet
and, just before sleep,
thoughts like prayer.

Then the dark
where, when you turn,
I turn,

as if we were
for one beautiful moment
looking the same way

from some height
at something moving slowly
out of sight.

[Sanjuro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Healy wrote five collections of poetry. This was his second, though it was the fourth of his that I've read. It was, on the whole, less compelling than the other three, and still much better than a lot of the weaponized poetry becoming popular in recent years. In both his prose and his poetry, I've always connected deeply to Healy's work, as though it was written in a strange and anomalous language that I've understood since birth.

The shovels
work like oars

rowing the dead man
from this world

to the next

He speaks often of the sea, and of wildlife, and of the nuanced aspects of human life, such as footsteps and dreams and strangers in passing cars. Reading Healy always brings on creative flourishes where I enter into a few days of my own writing.