The Ghost Orchid
1995
First Published
3.84
Average Rating
64
Number of Pages
Following the remarkable riches of Gorse Fires, the poems brought together under the title The Ghost Orchid share some of the same concerns, but take many different approaches. Whether in the west of Ireland, Sissinghurst or the stone gardens of Japan; whether confronting the blood of The Iliad or The Odyssey or undergoing “Ovidian metamorphoses;” whether testing poetic form or renewing Ulster Scots dialect, Longley speaks with pared delicacy, passion and vulnerability about love, life and death. A lyric craftsman of genius, Michael Longley has written a book that is fragile and exquisite—like the evanescent ghost orchid itself—yet full of tragic intensity; it is his finest achievement.
Avg Rating
3.84
Number of Ratings
31
5 STARS
29%
4 STARS
39%
3 STARS
23%
2 STARS
6%
1 STARS
3%
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Author
Michael Longley
Author · 13 books
Michael Longley was born in Belfast in 1939, and educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution and Trinity College, Dublin, where he earned his degree in Classics. He worked as a schoolteacher in Dublin, London, and Belfast before joining the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, where he served over twenty years as Director for Literature and the Traditional Arts. He is married to the critic Edna Longley and has three children. He has received numerous awards, including the American Irish Foundation Award, the T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize, the Whitbread Prize, and the Hawthornden Prize. He is also the recipient of the prestigious 2001 Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry.
