The Five Quintets

"OSiadhail not only immerses us in a fascinating period of historythe past few hundred years up to the present, with its discoveries, traumas, transformations, and artistic creativityin addition, in musical and beautifully crafted language, he brings history to life through one key person after another and offers matured, prophetic insight for the twenty-first century. The result is daring, moving, and profoundly relevant to anyone seeking personal and public wisdom today." David Ford, Emeritus Regius Professor of Divinity, University of Cambridge
"The Five Quintets is perhaps best described as a mammoth poetic adventure undertaken by the celebrated poet Micheal OSiadhail, representing the culmination of an extraordinary lifes work. The project is vast in scope. OSiadhail attempts nothing less than an exploration of the predicaments of Western modernity as they appear in five fields of human endeavor: science, arts, economics, politics, and philosophy, and theology." Jeremy Begbie, Thomas A. Langford Research Professor of Theology, Duke Divinity School
"Whatever you have planned for next weekend, change it and make space to read this book. Your heart and mind and soul will thank you. This swirling work of love for humanity from Ireland's most exceptional romantic love poet will take you from the paralysis of our visionless future to a place where 'every bole and limb begins to dance the universe's light fantastic prayer.'" Mary McAleese, President of Ireland, 19972011
"As a composer of choral music, I try to allow the sung and the repeated word point to new dimensions of awareness, contrition, joy, or grief. These astonishing words in their settings, combinations, repetitions, and choices resonate with my own efforts on a very special, spiritual and different medium, and I welcome and applaud them. They are of international significance." Paul Mealor, Welsh Composer
"This is not an ordinary book of poems. It brings a vision of hope, an understanding about the evolution of our society in words of grace. Micheal leads us on to a road of peace." Jean Vanier, Founder of LArche
"With astonishing depth, breadth and creative range, OSiadhail interweaves paradox and contradiction across the centuries, conversing with historys greatest minds and evolutionary agents. This masterwork delivers a layered feast of wisdom and insight to inspire lovers of words, ideas, and action. Historians, politicians, artists, theologians, and economists alike will be delighted and nourished by this poetic tour de force." Jerry White, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and CEO, Global Impact Strategies, Inc.
"The Five Quintets unfolds slowly, the steady self-revealing of insights that catch the edge of thought and provoke an arrest of mindthe fruit of a life in languages and words and depth of perception in wisdom." Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury
"As a scientist I am thrilled at the way The Five Quintets weaves the history and the individuals involved up to the present time into a rich poetic fabric which is remarkable in its depth of understanding, yet leaves the reader with a sense of awe and mystery. The reader is invited to immerse into this world and enjoy the pleasures therein." John Wood, Scientist, International Research Infrastructure Policy Adviser, and Consultant to CERN
"I am in awe of the whole enterprisethe magnitude of it, the daring of it, and the easy competence of it." Brian Friel, Playwright
"The Five Quintets celebrate how the threads of our culture are woven together across the continents in a grand tradition extending back many centuries. As an astronomer, I resonate specially with a poet who acclaims science alongside humanistic culture. He celebrates the succession of great individuals who have probed the wonders and mysteries of our natural worldand what lies beyond. Nobody else could have created a work like this." Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, President of the Royal Society (20052010), Master of Trinity College Cambridge (20042012)
"An unparalleled book of instruction for a troubled age, The Five Quintets retrieves and exhibits human gifts our own age may have lost, like the power to measure the merely probable or to shape verses whose pulse draws us to love. A book of poetry in the category of the epic, the encyclopedic, and the sacred." Peter Ochs, Professor of Modern Judaic Studies, University of Virginia
"Micheal OSiadhails The Five Quintets takes the premise of Dantes Divine Comedy and brings it into the current day. This epic poem is rich in language, complex in meter, but astoundingly modest in rhetoric. As Dante brought us to the circles of Hell, OSiadhail brings us to the pinnacles of modernity. And as Dante brought out the humanity in characters of myth, OSiadhail brings us to confront the humanity of the creators of todays dreams of perfectionscientists, economists, artists all get their due. Somehow he manages to explain how each one's work may approach perfection, even as he recognizes the humanity, incompleteness, and mortality of them all. It is a great work of humble humanism." Robert Pollack, Professor of Biological Sciences, Columbia University, and Director, Research Cluster on Science and Subjectivity
"Wading boldly into the murky waters of the past and its still swirling, dangerous depths, O'Siadhail offers us an angle of vision for the future that he invites us to create as he also gracefully enacts its unfolding. Its the perfect poetic intervention into the monstrous imperfections and possibilities of the present political moment." Serene Jones, President Union Theological Seminary
"Micheal O'Siadhail has done nothing less than give us a poetic account of that strange character called 'modernity.' He seems to have read everything, but more significantly, he has transformed what he has read through poetic narratives in the manner of Dante. This is a beautiful book of hope because of O'Siadhail's unrelenting passion to tell us the truth." Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Divinity and Law
"In The Five Quintets, Micheal OSiadhail takes us on an exhilarating journey through four centuries of modern thought and sensibility. This is an extraordinarily ambitious project, but it is richly realised. If the sweep of OSiadhail's interests is epic, the insights afforded into the achievements of some of the period's greatest literary and artistic figures reflect a deeply personal engagement. Moving effortlessly across several literatures and cultures, he embarks on an absorbing personal odyssey." David Donoghue, Ambassador and Former Permanent Representative of Ireland at the United Nations and Co-Chair of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda
I am sticking my neck out to declare Micheal OSiadhails book-length poem, The Five Quintets, is the most important work of English-language literature to be published so far this century. - Frank Armstrong, Cassandra Voices, September 1, 2018
As poetic craft, this is superb. The Five Quintets, the result of nine or so years of nearly consistent work, is a fitting capstone to the career of a poet with such capacious interests and such an open sensibility. - Anthony Domestico, Commonweal Magazine. August 6, 2018
Not just a collection but a new cornice stone of civilization, Michael O'Siadhail's new collection The Five Quintets is dazzling in its achievement. To know the future, you must understand the past, his new book reminds us. So, nine years in the making, he offers us a high wire meditation on late modernity, as we straddle what he calls the first-ever global century. The result is the first major collection of poems of this new era to grapple with who we are, who we still can be and where we might be going. It's a work of near magic to rescue you from the besetting and imprisoning certainties of our faltering era. - Cahir ODoherty, Irish Central, October 3, 2018
Given the nature of the subject, along with its pretensions to exactitude, readers will be surprised to learn of an economist looking for poetic licence. But this economist insists on such faced by a writer who takes poetic licence with economists. Micheal OSiadhail, one of Irelands foremost poets, has produced a remarkable opus, The Five Quintets, a Dante-esque trip through les temps modernes that can be read and enjoyed by all. For the readers of Finance Dublin it is a must for the Christmas stocking, one to show their partners the links, however uneasy, between culture and economics. - Professor Antoin Murphy, Finance Dublin, Oct 2018
For those interested in the intersection of poetry and theology, not to mention all general lovers of poetry, one of the major publishing events of recent years must surely be the 2018 publication of Micheal OSiadhails The Five Quintets (Baylor University Press. OSiadhail says very clearly that he desires to talk to people who want to read poetry. I dont want to be inaccessible, I want to be accessible. So, while an element of mystery in the poetry will remain, just as some mystery remains in all areas of life, I would never want to be obscure to the point that a person who desires to read poetry couldnt understand the poems. He reflects, I like clarity. I like clarity of thought. I like to be understood. I dont ever want to make it difficult, I want to make it moving. I want to move peoples hearts and minds. Jake Morley, Transpositions, Oct 2018
By any standard this is a big book. Muscular. Ambitious. Poetry on steroids. That last may be pushing it, but OSiadhail, much published and much admired over many years, has produced a doorstop of a collection that is heavy, in every sense, but enjoyable and challenging. OSiadhail possesses what an old uncle of mine described, in a different context, as the touch. He has always had great writing in him and this is some of the very best, deserving to be included on the educational curriculum. - Fred Johnston, Books Ireland, January 2019
A visionary engagement on a breath-taking scale. -- Iain R. Torrance -- The Expository Times
It's a giant symphony, with vast sweeping tunes and small lyrical moments, building to a sustained climax. It's an intellectual, cultural and political history of the modern western world. It's a portrait gallery with over a hundred sharply etched miniatures -- Cervantes, Donne and Rubens all the way to Kierkegaard, Levinas and Ricoeur; and these are talking portraits, since the poet not only describes them and addresses them but lets them answer him back. It is, above all, a party, with dancing and delight, with the rhythms of the poetry setting our feet tapping and our hearts soaring. -- N.T. Wright -- Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits
By any standards this is a big book. Poetry on steroids. That last may be pushing it, but O'Siadhail, much published and much admired over many years, has produced a doorstop of a collection that is heavy, in every sense, but enjoyable and challenging. -- Fred Johnston -- Books Ireland
Micheal O'Siadhail's three-hundred-and-fifty-page poem, The Five Quintets , is the most important work of English-language literature to be published so far this century. O'Siadhail's towering achievement melds reflections on the arts, economics, politics, philosophy and, fascinatingly, science into lyrical verse that transfixes the reader. -- Frank Armstrong -- Cassandra Voices