Cinderbiter: Celtic Poems

by Martin Shaw, Tony Hoagland

Overview

Dramatic new retellings of Celtic poetry’s great lyrics and legends

Cinderbiter collects tales and poems originally composed and performed centuries ago in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, when notions of history and authorship were indistinguishable from the oral traditions of myth and storytelling. In the spirit of recasting these legends and voices for new audiences, celebrated mythologist and storyteller Martin Shaw and award-winning poet Tony Hoagland have created extraordinary new versions of these bardic lyrics, folkloric sagas, and heroes’ journeys, as they have never been rendered before.

In long, shaggy tales of the unlikely ascensions of previously unknown heroes such as Cinderbiter, in the shrouded origin stories of figures such as Arthur and Merlin, and in anonymous flickering lyrics of elegy, praise, and heartbreak, these poems retain at once the rapturous, supernatural imagination of the deep past layered with an austere, devout allegiance to the Christian faith. Shaw and Hoagland’s collaboration summons the power within this storehouse of the Celtic mind to arrive at this rare book—distinctive, audacious, and tuned to our time and condition with a convincing resonance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781644450277
Publisher:	Graywolf Press
Publication date:	07/07/2020
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	469,697
Product dimensions:	6.04(w) x 8.94(h) x 0.38(d)

About the Author

Martin Shaw is a mythologist, a storyteller, an author, and a designer of mythic life and oral tradition courses at Stanford University.

Tony Hoagland (1953–2018) was the author of Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God and six other books of poetry.

Table of Contents

Foreword: Shaking the Tree Martin Shaw vii

Cinderbiter 3

Deirdre Remembers a Scottish Glen 20

The Mansion of the Woods 21

The Wild Man and the Monastery 23

Bard-Come-a-Fire 25

The Ruins of Timoleague Abbey 41

Hut Talk 44

The Stars 46

The Girls of Llanbadorn 50

Snow 51

A Word to the Men 53

Lament for the Four MacDonalds 55

Fionn's Migrations 57

Lament for Reilly 81

The Turn in the Road 83

The Black-Haired Lad 84

Arran 85

Blodeuedd of the Owl-Face 86

The Yarrow Charm 99

Crooked Stick 100

Midhir's Invitation to the Fair Land 101

Wise Morning 102

The Horned Women 104

The Owl-Court of Ifor Hael 111

Who Will Buy a Poem? 113

The Hermit's Hut 114

The End of Things 116

Praise to Arthur's Hidden Men 119

Afterword: Some Notes on Context and Process Tony Hoagland 127

Editorial Reviews

07/20/2020

In the foreword to this lyrical collection of stories in verse and poems, Shaw, a mythologist and storyteller, recalls an afternoon spent with Hoagland (who died in late 2018) looking out at the Irish Sea. There, the joint project, which he remarks has “an oral liveliness to the way the lines skip and twist in their stanzas,” found its origins in a discussion of the story “Cinderbiter.” The result is a book of reinvented bardic lyrics and folkloric sagas. Gems among these include “Deirdre Remembers a Scottish Glen,” a poem full of stunning descriptions of setting: “Glen of my body’s feeding:/ crested breast of loveliest wheat,/ glen of the thrusting lorn-horn cattle,/ firm among the trysting bees.” The speaker describes the glen full of “badgers, delirious with sleep, heaped fat in dens” and “sentried with blue-eyed hawks,/ greenwood laced with sloe, apple, blackberry” before concluding with the striking, resounding final line: “To remember is a ringing pain of brightness.” These wonderful retellings will introduce readers to new and enchanting stories told in a lush, musical way. (July)

Publishers Weekly

This is the stuff out of which the modern genre of fantasy romance and quest was born. In these versions, that stuff is tougher, sharper, and clearer. Oh, do read them aloud!”—Booklist, starred review

“These wonderful retellings will introduce readers to new and enchanting stories told in a lush, musical way.”—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher