Flannery's Manifesto

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.

“Do you think . . . that you are really using the talent God gave you when you don’t write something that a lot, a LOT, of people like?”
— Flannery O’Connor, quoting Regina O’Connor, April 3, 1959, The Habit of Being

I do admire her confidence that my
gift comes from God. That it’s not a game or
a trick, an affliction that she must endure.
My gospel-knowing mother fears that I
might be the fearful servant, the one who
buries his treasure in the dirty ground.
She might be right. But what else can I do
but write what my crooked heart tells me to?
I know I am a trial, hard to be around.
But what else is making fiction for
if not to trouble folks, mess with their heads,
make them question why they rise from their beds
if not to marvel that the world’s still here,
that some body watches and holds it all dear. 

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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