Description
Book SynopsisFor twenty years Micheal O'Siadhail's beloved wife, Brid, suffered from Parkinson's disease. These love poems chronicle the last two years of her life, her death and his grief. In Love Life, now available again in his Collected Poems, he told their story of over three decades of marriage. In this sonnet sequence their love faces illness and death and sounds the depths of parting. There is a tenderness, intensity and gratitude which will resonate with those who know both love and loss.
Trade ReviewI read slowly, carefully and with deep emotion, One Crimson Thread. It is a beautiful, beautiful but terribly sad poem of love. -- Jean Vanier
In this poignant and hopeful sequence of poems, Micheal O'Siadhail explores how a devoted husband and wife respond and adjust when she is greatly altered by Parkinson's disease, examining his states of mind and feeling, his daily adjustments her changing personality, and finally his sorrow and brokenness at her death. Yet at the spiritual heart of this sequence are the ways in which the poems courageously show how the couple's deep-rooted love searches for ways to overcome her debilitating illness, their fear and dread, and their eventual loss. The vivid image of the title of these linked sonnets demonstrates that their love always connects these lovers by an incorruptible, unbreakable "crimson thread". As the poet memorably writes: "I hush you in my arms to tell you how / This suffering still sounds our depths of love. -- Joseph Heininger
O’Siadhail seems to rise to a new intensity of writing and analysis in this collection. This is both a searing and a beautiful interrogation…it offers immense compassion and consolation. -- Martyn Halsall * Church Times (Christmas Books 2015) *
