"Peggy O'Brien's new collection is, to adapt the words of one of her poems, an 'adventure of the optic nerve'. It's full of attractions, of friendships, food (and tea), flowers and sharply measured light... The consistent elegance of the poems equals the deliberation that gives the book its gravity."
Eileán Ni Chuillenáin
"Here are poems of a quiet elegance that examine the natural world in a soft and almost grateful manner... O'Brien knows how to invest her poems not just with grace, but with an undercurrent of real power."
The Sunday Tribune
Praise for Sudden Thaw (2004):
"[P]uts words on exactly the kind of emotions that censors fear most: subtle, elusive and tinged with erotic intensity."
Luke Gibbons, The Irish Times, 'Books of the Year'
"Peggy O'Brien writes with such intelligence, such sensitivity, such skill about everything, it seems, from the grace of dragonflies to a solemn march of wild turkeys to the memory of a poet-friend who lived joyfully and died young. O'Brien has a particular gift for the lyrical farewell, paying homage to the brave and the dead who have 'gone ahead of me / Again, this time to the last, dim / Island in the archipelago of stars.' These are, indeed, poems of the starry skies, and yet they are poems of solid earth as well, with the keen powers of observation we need to survive in this world, and transcend it."
Martín Espada
Peggy O'Brien is a member of the English Department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She formerly taught at Trinity College, Dublin, having lived in Ireland for nearly twenty years. Her first collection of poetry, published on both sides of the Atlantic, was Sudden Thaw (2004). She is the editor of the Wake Forest Book of Irish Women's Poetry (2002) and the author of Writing Lough Derg (2006). Her daughter and three granddaughters live in Dublin.
Eileán Ni Chuillenáin
"Here are poems of a quiet elegance that examine the natural world in a soft and almost grateful manner... O'Brien knows how to invest her poems not just with grace, but with an undercurrent of real power."
The Sunday Tribune
Praise for Sudden Thaw (2004):
"[P]uts words on exactly the kind of emotions that censors fear most: subtle, elusive and tinged with erotic intensity."
Luke Gibbons, The Irish Times, 'Books of the Year'
"Peggy O'Brien writes with such intelligence, such sensitivity, such skill about everything, it seems, from the grace of dragonflies to a solemn march of wild turkeys to the memory of a poet-friend who lived joyfully and died young. O'Brien has a particular gift for the lyrical farewell, paying homage to the brave and the dead who have 'gone ahead of me / Again, this time to the last, dim / Island in the archipelago of stars.' These are, indeed, poems of the starry skies, and yet they are poems of solid earth as well, with the keen powers of observation we need to survive in this world, and transcend it."
Martín Espada
Peggy O'Brien is a member of the English Department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She formerly taught at Trinity College, Dublin, having lived in Ireland for nearly twenty years. Her first collection of poetry, published on both sides of the Atlantic, was Sudden Thaw (2004). She is the editor of the Wake Forest Book of Irish Women's Poetry (2002) and the author of Writing Lough Derg (2006). Her daughter and three granddaughters live in Dublin.