The Colby Echo

Issue date: 2/23/07 Section: Arts & Entertainment

Media Credit: Rob Kievit

Some beards are small, some large. Some are unkempt, and some are curiously well-groomed. The beard of Eamon Grennan appears at every level to be that of an outstanding individual, outlining the noggin in a slightly monastic, strangely awe-inspiring manner. At a poetry reading on Thursday night in Miller's Robinson Room, the man surely proved himself worthy of such a beard. Grennan is a poet of Irish origins struggling, as he would have it, to emerge from the shadows of his great Celtic forbearers, particularly William Butler Yeats and James Joyce.

Life, however, has influenced Professor Grennan to draw from the traditions of both sides of the ocean. Following his studies at University College in Dublin, he attended Harvard, and went on to teach English at Vassar. The professor has lived mostly in the US since 1964, and has written in the US and during occasional respites in Ireland. Thus among his influences, he cites a variety of American authors to supplement his native greats including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Elizabeth Bishop. He is also inspired by more ancient traditions of poetry, citing specifically Sophocles and the Italian Count, Giacomo Leopardi. Attesting to his knowledge of classical poetry, he recently collaborated on a translation of Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus (2004), and has translated various works of Leopardi, published in Selected Poems of Giacomo Leopardi (1997). Naturally, the professor has used the study of all these poets to shape his own genius, and Mr. Grennan has put to press a number of poetic anthologies including Still Life with Waterfall (2002), Renvyle, Winter (2003), and most recently, The Quick of It (2005).

His readings on Thursday afternoon were selected from these later and some yet unpublished works, and ranged in poetic form from 13-line almost-sonnets, to shorter formless pieces, to poetic prose. With formidable humility, he admitted to the influence of forbearers on his works, and was not remiss to mention when he had borrowed a turn of phrase. After all, as he put it-and as certain Chinese authors might have it - we eat our ancestors. Grennan also explained that a root of his poetry feeds chiefly off of visual arts. While he is no painter, he stands in awe of the capability of paintings, particularly still lifes, to capture moments out of time's influence. While his subject matter is varied, much of his work focuses on aspects of wilderness, including landscapes, and any number of beasts. It would be an easy task to construct a poetic menagerie with such titles as, "Four Deer."

The author ever emphasizes his efforts to isolate and explore bits of the world. He stands in awe of the painter like Vermeer or Cezanne, and their ability to probe into the ordinary and construct small thick things registering the thickness of that moment. And ideally, this probing and observation is both the means and the end of his art form. It would seem that Grennan is above all a man translating the world into the dialect of humanity. Happily, the world continues to provide the professor with the worthiest of subjects.

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