The Fallen

By Denise Ryan

“It’s a book full of air, of flight and flying things, it’s liquid and solid, everything is in flux but always, somehow, tethered and anchored in the heart but there is real and solid pathos, human frailty, and acceptance of mortality — but still the airy swooping and swerving of the first section.” – Theo Dorgan

• Language: English
• Publisher: Limerick Writers Centre
• Release date: Nov 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215003336

Denise Ryan

Denise is a writer of contemporary poetry from Dublin, Ireland. She has been published in THE SHOP, Crannóg magazine, and also several online journals and newspapers including Lakeview International Journal of Literature and the Irish Times . She has been internationally received and highly recommended, shortlisted and runner-up in several poetry competitions, including the Francis Ledwidge, the Jonathan Swift Awards and the Gregory O’Donoghue awards. Her debut collection, Of Silken Waters, was published in Autumn 2017, through Ara Pacis Publishers (Chicago, USA). She continues to live and write in Dublin City.

Book preview

It is a well-founded truism that true art survives any and all cultural upheavals no matter how long or tumultuous, but the waning of poetry and its needed impact on the world-spirit is particularly worrisome given our most immediate social and political uncertainties; yet in spite of darkness and uncertainty, there are poets who shine forth their light in such brilliant fashion that they blind us with the poetic beauty they offer. Denise Ryan’s poetry achieves such brilliance in language and offers us a reimbued perception of life and nature that envelops us with every phrase and every image she brings us in her poetry. That we have never seen or experienced poetry in such a way before is a testament to her remarkable ability to invest language with an expressionism that leaves us in wonder at her remarkable work that brings us the world in all its darkness and light, lays it in our hands, yet brings us closer to the reality of the human condition. Her poetry embraces all things natural in ways that opens us to alternate forms of perception, while at the same time her courage to face all that would humble us to the dark side of existence both inspires and illuminates. She keeps us awake to the small and large and magically transforms that darkness into poetic language that leaves one breathless with both its sophistication and strength of will. In the end her poetry touches so purely the inner and outer dimensions of life that all things merge into one body, one soul, no longer alone in isolation, but embraced by her whole spirit, and thus giving us poetry that reshapes our perception of all that we experience and all that will ever come into existence.

–Thomas Sanfilip

I

The Fallen

Apple Tree

Their breached ends blossom

like perfectly formed lips

their fleshy inwardness white as bone

dangling in dimpled light.

You have fulfilled your duty

the silent stork has fled

filling his voice box

with apple seeds.

Sleep standing,

in the shadow of your androgyny

resting your crown of fronds

on the narrow slip of sky.

Unfold your fallopian