Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Tumbling Paddy

The Tumbling Paddy

Ormsby, Frank

Paperback

General Poetry

ISBN10: 1943667225
ISBN13: 9781943667222
Publisher: Wake Forest University Press
Published: Jul 28 2026
Pages: 84
Weight: 0.15
Height: 0.10 Width: 5.80 Depth: 8.80
Language: English
The Tumbling Paddy, Frank Ormsby's eighth collection, brings together many of his time-honored themes-- landscape, the rural life, the making of poetry-- and layers them with an elegiac sense of time passing and illness gathering. Beginning with a sequence on the Florence Court mansion of County Fermanagh and the nearby Marble Arch Caves, the poems often go spelunking through histories lost in the dark, while the concluding sequence, Autumn Burials, lowers its voice to the whisper of death. Throughout, Ormsby balances reverence with his wry sense of humor, and sometimes bawdy touch, as well as his penchant for the miniature poem, continuing his long-running Small World haiku series. The book's title poem, describing a hay rake, gathers many of Ormsby's themes into one symbol. Presenting rural life in decline, or the poet's experience living with Parkinson's disease, the tumbling paddy moves like a clumsy clockwork, perfecting the work of the harrow to turn a crop (of poetry). Another poem, Landscapes, transposes the field to art in a gallery the size of Ireland -- In a country newly ours, / we move from field to gallery, / from gallery to field.

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