By Paul Murray

Stones and Stars

The reissue, in a single volume, of Paul Murray’s two much-admired Dedalus collections, The Absent Fountain (1992) and These Black Stars (2003).

Description

Paul Murray’s third and fourth collections of poems, The Absent Fountain (1992) and These Black Stars (2003) are still  sought-after and admired: the precision and economy of the language is exemplary, its concentrated focus well suited for the task in hand. Murray’s is a mystical journey, informed by the vocabulary and symbols of the spiritual quest, and he regularly engages the reader – and indeed God – in dialogue, drawing us into an exploration of memory and desire, of dream, darkness and rebirth. The closing poem, paradoxically entitled “Beginning”, at once celebrates and challenges: “I have come through / after all. I have a new / dawn on my shoulders.”

“The Absent Fountain is the product of a passionate and sometimes playful mind, which teases out paradoxes, making the absent seem palpably present and the material seem ultimately immaterial. It is, in every sense, an inspired work.”
– Dennis O’Driscoll, Doctrine & Life


ISBN 9781906614713 Paperback
216 x 140 mm, 150 pp
01 March 2013

Additional information

Weight.2 kg
Dimensions216 × 140 mm

Product Detail

  • ISBN: : 9781906614713
  • Size: : 216 x 140 mm
  • Pages: : 150 pp
  • Published: : March 2013

About The Author

Author

Paul Murray was born in Newcastle, Co. Down, Northern Ireland in 1947. He entered the Dominican Order in 1966 and currently lives in Rome where he teaches the literature of the mystical tradition at the Angelicum University. He has published four poetry collections, Ritual Poems (1971) Rites and Meditations (1972) and more recently The Absent Fountain (1992) and These Black Stars (2003), the latter two from Dedalus Press and reissued here in a single volume. He is also the author of several prose works, among them T.S. Eliot and Mysticism: The Secret History of ‘Four Quartets’ and, most recently, In the Grip of Light: The Dark and Bright Journey of Christian Contemplation.