"Once more Ted Deppe binds us in a gently potent spell where the physicality of lived experience is mixed through with the philosophical and we are left touched by the inexplicable. Impossible Blackbird is a deeply rewarding and, against all odds, consoling collection."—Geraldine Mitchell, author of Mountains for Breakfast
"To follow the poet’s discursive, supple stanzas from page to page is to marvel how miraculously he has joined moment to moment, how he has made a story that has become a life."—Eva Bourke, author of Tattoos
Description
In Theodore Deppe’s eighth book of poems, lyricism and a gift for narrative come together to explore the challenges and gifts of daily life on the coast of Connemara in the west of Ireland. Compassionate, humorous, utterly serious, these poems acknowledge the darkness of our times but also celebrate what they can. Deppe introduces us to remarkable people at moments of change: an outsider artist and a twelve-year-old Bosnian refugee who meet in hospital; the singer Meat Loaf reclaiming his career in the wilds of Ireland; and Olivier Messiaen, who composed his ‘Quartet for the End of Time’ in a prisoner-of-war camp.
December 2024