Abstract
Chapter 5 focuses on Tom French’s unique engagement with the issue of mortality in direct relation to the death of the brother to reveal an unwillingness to confirm the passing of the deceased and a clear intention to emphasise the various forms of the continued presence of the deceased sibling. French’s work seeks alternative modes of engagement with the absence associated with death, preferring instead to embrace the troubling potential of the multiple modes of presence of the deceased through posing direct challenges to the one-dimensional understanding of time as singular, linear and moving in one direction only, a challenge which may be informed through engagement with philosopher J. M. E. McTaggart’s work on the unreality of time.
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Notes
- 1.
“Lawrence O’ Shaughnessy Award for Poetry”, University of St. Thomas. Accessed 4 September 2016. https://www.stthomas.edu/irishstudies/poetryaward/.
- 2.
Jonathan Ellis, “Digging for Poetry”, review of Selected Poems, by Simon Armitage, The Universal Home Doctor, by Simon Armitage, and Touching the Bones, by Tom French, Metre 13 (2002): 99.
- 3.
Ellis, “Digging for Poetry”, 99.
- 4.
John McAuliffe, “Poetry: A High-Wire Achievement”, review of Midnightstown, by Tom French, Irish Times, 5 July 2014. Accessed 13 November 2015. http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/poetry-a-high-wire-achievement-that-brings-no-cure-just-peace-1.1853975.
- 5.
Martin Doyle, “Peter Fallon Launches New Poetry Collection by Tom French in Navan”, Irish Times, 26 May 2016. Accessed 21 June 2016. http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/peter-fallon-launches-new-poetry-collection-by-tom-french-in-navan-1.2661848.
- 6.
Arminta Wallace and Tom French, “Eloquence in Great Absence”, Irish Times, 8 February 2003. Accessed 13 November 2015. http://www.irishtimes.com/news/eloquence-in-great-absence-1.348271.
- 7.
Ellis, “Digging for Poetry”, 97.
- 8.
Ellis, “Digging for Poetry”, 96.
- 9.
All references from Touching the Bones will be made parenthetically under the abbreviation TTB.
- 10.
J. Ellis McTaggart, “The Unreality of Time”, Mind: A Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy 17.68 (1908): 457.
- 11.
McTaggart, “The Unreality of Time”, 457.
- 12.
Michael Tooley, “Farewell to McTaggart’s Argument?” Philosophia 38 (2010): 244.
- 13.
Ernâni Magalhães, “Introduction: McTaggart’s Paradox at One Hundred”, Philosophia 38 (2010): 225.
- 14.
Tooley, “Farewell to McTaggart’s Argument?” 246.
- 15.
Judith Jarvis Thomson, “McTaggart on Time”, Noûs 35, Supplement: Philosophical Perspectives, 15, Metaphysics (2001): 249.
- 16.
McTaggart, “The Unreality of Time”, 458.
- 17.
McTaggart, “The Unreality of Time”, 458.
- 18.
McTaggart, “The Unreality of Time”, 463.
- 19.
McTaggart, “The Unreality of Time”, 468.
- 20.
McTaggart, “The Unreality of Time”, 470.
- 21.
L. Nathan Oaklander, “McTaggart’s Paradox and Crisp’s Presentism”, Philosophia 38 (2010): 229.
- 22.
McTaggart, “The Unreality of Time”, 473.
- 23.
Thomson, “McTaggart on Time”, 242.
- 24.
Wallace, “Eloquence in Great Absence”.
- 25.
Magalhães, “Introduction: McTaggart’s Paradox at One Hundred”, 226.
- 26.
All references from The Fire Step will be made parenthetically under the abbreviation TFS.
- 27.
Wallace, “Eloquence in Great Absence”.
- 28.
Bradley Monton, “McTaggart and Modern Physics”, Philosophia 38 (2010): 258.
- 29.
Versions of “The Verge of Tears”, “02.07.2012”, “In Memory” and the later “At the River” were gathered together in the chapbook The Night Ahead (Smithereens Press, 2013), published on the first anniversary of the death of the poet’s mother.
- 30.
All references from Midnightstown will be made parenthetically under the abbreviation M.
- 31.
Jonathan Tallant, “Time for Presence?” Philosophia 38 (2010): 271–2.
- 32.
Monton, “McTaggart and Modern Physics”, 258.
Bibliography
French, Tom. Touching the Bones. Oldcastle, Co. Meath: Gallery Press, 2001.
———. The Fire Step. Oldcastle, Co. Meath: Gallery Press, 2009.
———. Midnightstown. Oldcastle, Co. Meath: Gallery Press, 2014.
———. The Way to Work. Oldcastle, Co. Meath: Gallery Press, 2016.
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Keating, K. (2017). The Unreality of Time and the Death of the Sibling in the Poetry of Tom French. In: Contemporary Irish Poetry and the Canon. New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51112-2_5
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