Culdalee We took the winding road west from Aclair, arrived at where we thought the turnoff should be, the boreen so overgrown you’d hardly know it had ever been the way. We waded down through the uncut field, down the steep hillside to the wild valley below. Thankfully, the cottage still stood, looking much as it did when I saw it last, forty years ago. “Culdalee,” my cousin … [Read more...] about Poem: The Stones of Culdalee
Fiction & Poetry
“Green Georgette”
A short story by Edna O'Brien from her collection Saints and Sinners. Thursday Mama and I have been invited to the Coughlans’. It is to be Sunday evening at seven o’clock. I imagine us setting out in good time, even though it is a short walk to the village where they live and Mama calling out to me to lift my shoes so that the high wet grass won’t stain the white patent. I … [Read more...] about “Green Georgette”
Remembering Emily
One of the best-loved poets, Emily Dickinson, counted her Irish caretakers among her friends. On May 15, 1886, Emily Dickinson died in her narrow bed in the Dickinson house in Amherst, Massachusetts where she had lived for all but 15 of her 56 years. Her elder bother Austin wrote in his diary: "It was settled before morning broke that Emily would not wake again this side." She … [Read more...] about Remembering Emily