Of Snails and Skylarks: Poems

by Christy Brown

First edition hardcover with unclipped dust jacket in very good condition. Jacket edges are creased and nicked, with a very small tear to the front lower edge. Page block and page edges are lightly tanned. Pages are otherwise clear and unmarked throughout. LW

79 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1977

About the author

Christy Brown was an Irish artist and writer. However in order to do both these things he could only use his left foot. Having been born with cerebral palsy this was the only
way he could express himself.
He was born in Dublin on the 5th June 1932. His mother was the first to notice that something was wrong. But it wasn't until he was just over a year - old that his parents sort medical help. By now
there were distinct signs that he had something wrong with him. The doctors told his mother that nothing could be done. She would never give up on him though. It was through her help and
support that he achieved what he did. Her love and strong belief that he was not totally incapable
drove her onto prove this.
Then it happened when one day he picked up a piece of chalk in his left foot and unsure what do
next. She began to show him by writing the letter "A" and encouraging him to copy it. After some difficulty he managed to do this. She then went onto teach him the rest of his letters. She taught him
as best she could since he couldn't go to school even though by this time he
was 6.
She had a very large family but, despite having to look after all of them and doing the household chores, she still found time to help him. She even started to build an extension on the house
so he could have a room of his own, to begin with his father and 4 brothers all of whom were bricklayers, refused to build a room for him. So she began to do it herself and they then took over.
Christy Brown published his autobiography My Left Foot in 1954. It was later turned into an award winning film. He also published several novels before his death in 1981.

Reviews

[Victoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was..wonderful, to say the least. I love his work in this book. It just seemed more freshly done and more concentrated. And, I could not help but positively die over one of them in particular, the one titled Victoria. My real name is, of course, Victoria. :D (I use "Little Lotte" here because it is my book blog, and one of my favorite books is Gaston Leroux's, The Phantom of the Opera. Christine Daae is, you guessed it, Little Lotte, and oh wouldn't I love to live and die as The Phantom's [Erik's:] love interest. Ahem. Enough side-tracking now!) Anyway, I am Victoria, and I am thrilled to finally come across a poem, by one of my favorites, entitled with my name. Even though it certainly was not written for me. (I wish!) I still love it. And the fact that California (where I am from and currently still live) is mentioned in it, thrills me even more. I can't help but wonder what it was like and how they were to have such a poem written. But that's just my silly heart wondering such things as it often does.

[James]

The story of Christy Brown is an exceptional one.

I recommend seeing the film My Left Foot, in which Daniel Day Louis (one of my favorite actors, and one of the most menacing)plays Christy Brown.

The amazing thing about some of these poems, besides the fantastic word combinations and incantation-style flow of the lines that is somehow exactly what I have been looking for in recent days, is that Brown is recognized as a foremost Irish writer, HAVING TYPED EVERY WORD WITH THE TOES ON HIS LEFT FOOT!!

I can almost guarantee that if everything you had to write had to be written with your left foot, on a type-writer nonetheless, you would not waste your painstaking time with petty, inane, or semi-intelligent ramblings - you'd have something to say worthy of your readers.

[niina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Real nice classical poetry. Grudges and self-hatred still do it for me, call me an angsty teenager or whatever, but I'm more than happy to come around authors with a mildly angry, bored and jealous mindsets, so feel free to keep sending them this way. What makes Christy Brown quite different character is that he seems to have every right to feel betrayed and cuffed and left out, and since I really just ran into this author now, I got informed on the realities of his illness only after I was half done with this book. I was already in awe with his wonderful vocabulary and the way he used and arranged it, and now I'm in awe with his patience and need to express, too. This read sure was bitter, and I enjoyed every minute.