Irish-American author John McNamee searches for his “homeland” among the “wind and salt-spray” of the seacoast or a brilliant sunset over the water. He finds comfort in the Irish people: the compassion of a bar owner for a homeless man, the solemn love that overcomes McNamee on a city bus.

Written over two summer holidays in an Irish-speaking village in County Donegal Ireland, the poems in this collection celebrate the tranquil atmosphere of their origin, and the tense irony of coming home to a place that is not home.

They offer a unique dislocated view of the world, a view that reflects a feeling of seclusion, an eremitic existence far from the commotion of the quotidian. They explore the freedom, good and bad, of empty space and time.

October 18th 2006, 5½ x 8½, 64 pages
ISBN 0-8023-1344-2 Cloth $24.95
ISBN 0-8023-1343-4 Paper $13.95

Special edition limited to 200 numbered copies signed by the author,
in a deluxe binding featuring an Anne Stahl print on the cover.
Copies to be sold in the sequence of orders received.
ISBN 0-8023-1345-0 LSE $99.95

The Author

John McNamee has been an inner-city priest for over 30 years. Working at Saint Malachy School and Parish in an impoverished neighborhood of Philadelphia, he has seen the worst of city life and yet has developed a serene demeanor that allows him to write so observantly. Donegal Suite is his second book of poetry; he has also written Diary of a City Priest, an acclaimed memoir of his time in the inner city, which was made into a film starring David Morse.

Reviews

“We are human, and this condition inescapably involves us in the mystery of being. The truly rewarding grace of Donegal Suite is that while it draws on a learned and profound wealth of spiritual awareness, faith and tradition, it is also humble in its struggle, its wonderment and its insights, divining springs and trickles of revelation, hope and love in the earthiness of what’s specific, broken and everyday. In the course of ‘this vigil which is always inconclusive’ there is also story, light and shadow and transfiguration, as well as wit and warmth for savour and for blessing — as there should be in all that’s human and incarnate.”—Michael Coady

“I’m delighted that these poems will see the light of a larger day. My delight is spontaneous and studied, both. This new ‘diary of an urban priest,’ for a time living in solitude in wild Donegal, trades wonderfully in contrast, choice, implicit risk. John goes from his needy flock of the homeless and helpless, languishing in the inner city, to the ‘sea in distant view,’ to the ‘home as never elsewhere am I home.’ The clash is salutary, the poems summon healing and eloquence. We are gently, greatly benefited.”—Daniel Berrigan, S.J.

“They are mostly poems written at the edge of epiphany…I recommend this book warmly. But please give the poems room and time. They are not poems to be rushed through, but poems to take with you into still spaces. They will sharpen your ability to perceive the God who hovers over your solitude.”—Pádraig J. Daly

“There is something both of the solitary and the collective, the place of the person in a harsh world, oftentimes alone even when in company….Each of these poems, while a reflective, is always a ‘now’. The memory of each allows us to climb in a half-door, so that the living moment finds a new resonance; and a new voice; and a new ear.”—Aelred Magee

Events

Sunday December 3, 2006
Reading at The Painted Bride in Philadelphia
4pm - 6pm

Friday June 8th, 2007
Reading at Doylestown Bookshop
7:00 PM
Contact Jennifer Teaford at (215)230-7610