Dantomine Eerly

Annotation

You are invited to witness Dallin's passage into death. The ailing poet distantly recalls his own life through the language of a damaged psyche and the symbols of a spirit upended by violent transformation. In this, memories abound: an old, wind beaten house where a palpable absence suggests a past but somehow still-looming tragedy; vacancy permeates a ghostly barroom and the campus of a condemned university; city streets and desolated forests are populated by no one except the changing formulations of Dallin's own mind. His inner conflict reigns, and the geography takes on the disorientation and divisiveness at the center of us all. Along with his wife Aisling, the two flee an obscure political persecution which leads to her graphic, methodically planned murder. The impact of her death afflicts a lone Dallin in ways he cannot comprehend, spiraling him headlong into his meeting with the mythic celestial escort, An Dantomine Eerly. This intense, original novel is a skillful re-conception of the old Irish poetic form the asling, literally meaning "dream vision" or "vision-poem." As a reader you are personally addressed, called to the role of interpreter and revelator, allowing the story to unfold towards its strange, genre-defying conclusion. Through you, this story affords its telling. Dallin sends his regards.