Flannery & Eschatology

Stack Takeover | Angela Alaimo O'Donnell

August 3, 2024, marked the 60th anniversary of the death of Flannery O’Connor. In honor of O’Connor’s work and memory, we have invited Angela Alaimo O’Donnell to take over this Substack for two weeks. In this time, you’ll see a selection of poems from O’Donnell’s book Andalusian Hours: Poems from the Porch of Flannery.

“A truck driver driving up with a load of hay found a peacock
turning before him in the middle of the road, shouted, 
‘Get a load of that bastard!’ and braked his truck to a shattering halt.”
—Flannery O’Connor, “The King of the Birds,” Mystery & Manners

It’ll be like that, the Second Coming.
Making your way, laden with hay,
down the same old local road,
and there you are, stopped dead by Christ
with no idea what to say
in the face of such transforming
glory. Helpless without a code
to die by, tact is sacrificed
and candor coughs up the words we need.
He was a bastard, truth be told,
His father being not of this world
but the hidden one we just can’t see
until a blue-plumed vision stalls your truck
leaving you blind and wonderstruck.  

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Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, PhD is a professor, poet, scholar, and writer at Fordham University in New York City, and serves as Associate Director of Fordham’s Curran Center for American Catholic Studies. Her publications include two chapbooks and nine full-length collections of poems. Her book Holy Land (2022) won the Paraclete Press Poetry Prize. In addition, O’Donnell has published a memoir about caring for her dying mother, Mortal Blessings: A Sacramental Farewell; a book of hours based on the practical theology of Flannery O’Connor, The Province of Joy; and a biography Flannery O’Connor: Fiction Fired by Faith.  Her ground-breaking critical book on Flannery O’Connor Radical Ambivalence: Race in Flannery O’Connor was published by Fordham University Press in 2020. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Able Muse, Alabama Literary Review, America, The Bedford Introduction to Literature (anthology), Christian Century, Christian Poetry in America Since 1940 (anthology), Christianity & Literature, Contemporary Catholic Poetry (anthology), Flannery O’Connor Review, Italian Americana, Italian Poetry Review, Literary Matters, Mezzo Cammin, Peacock Journal, Presence, Reformed Journal, and Taking Root in the Heart (anthology), among others. O’Donnell’s eleventh book of poems, Dear Dante, was published in Spring 2024. 

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Photo by Islam Hassan on Unsplash