The End of the Modern World
The End of the Modern World
by Anthony Cronin
‘The sun, a crucible of nuclear rage, Knows nothing of such ends: Such a culmination Of history seen at sunset from the harbour, Meaningless, astonishing and simple.’
Since the original version of Anthony Cronin’s classic sequence, The End of the Modern World, first appeared in 1989, it has been acclaimed as one of the most singular achievements in twentieth-century Irish poetry. Revised and extended since then by the author, this new edition is the first time that this major work has been published in its entirety as a solo volume. Its publication allows Cronin’s psychic history of western civilisation to finally stand alone as a landmark work in its own light.
About the Author As well as ten collections of poetry, Anthony Cronin has written a number of prose works, including biographies of Flann O’Brien and Samuel Beckett, the classic memoir of Dublin’s arts scene in the fifties, Dead as Doornails, as well as numerous essays and a novel, The Life of Riley. He is married to the writer Anne Haverty and lives in Dublin. He served as a cultural and artistic advisor to the Irish Government in the 1980s, and was a founding member of Aosdána, where he holds the office of Saoi, a distinction conferred for exceptional artistic achievement.
C-Format, Paperback | 60pp | ISBN 9781848405240 | Release Date June 2016
Reviews
“The End of the Modern World is the key text and Anthony Cronin’s finest achievement to date. Not in terms of length alone, though its sustained concentration stands in reproachful contrast to the work of many a slighter lyricist, but in its panoramic scope, the astonishing confidence with which it takes so much in its thematic stride, the range and depth of its knowledge and understanding, its grasp of how the world works, [and] its candour and humanity.”
