Flannery's Last Day

Stack Takeover | Angela Alaimo O'Donnell

August 3, 2024, marks 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 the next fortnight, you’ll see a selection of poems from O’Donnell’s book Andalusian Hours: Poems from the Porch of Flannery.

August 3
Anniversary of Flannery O’Connor’s Death

Today of all days you would show up
making sure you are not forgotten.
Your suffering at the end was true,
fever, nausea, coma, and all you
wanted was another day of life
even if you spent it throwing up.
Your bed was sweaty, the sheets sodden
with Georgia summer, the air rife
with peaches growing outside the door.
And still you wanted more.
In your final dreams you were thinking up
new stories that needed to be told,
bonkers plots that would never unfold,
a sick woman who rises up and grows old. 

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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.