The Hudson Letter

by Derek Mahon

Mahon writes from lower Manhattan, addressing, in ramble or vigil, his absent lover, his children in London, Auden, Yeats’s father, and other cosmic vagrants, “clutching our bits and pieces, arrogant in dereliction.” In the eighteen sections of “The Hudson Letter,” the gabble of a dockside bar, voices of a recycled Sappho and of an Irish immigrant girl reassuring her mother in Inishannon, and the midwinter, all-night sounds of the City intersperse with the voice of the poet—lively, witty, poignant, elegiac, humane, and thoroughly human. “The Hudson Letter” is prefaced by four new poems in different voices.

Genres: Poetry

63 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Derek Mahon was born in Belfast in 1941, studied at Trinity College, Dublin, and the Sorbonne, and has held journalistic and academic appointments in London and New York. A member of Aosdána, he has received numerous awards including the Irish Academy of Letters Award, the Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize, and Lannan and Guggenheim Fellowships. - See more at: http://www.gallerypress.com/authors/m...

Reviews

[Jason · Rating 2 out of 5]

just not my cup of booze!