“Our world is interwoven”: Micheal O’Siadhail and The Five Quintets

Abstract

is article examines Micheal O'Siadhail's 2018 collection e Five Quintets. It o ers a placement of this collection as inheriting the grand modernist narratives that poets like T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound set out in e Waste Land, Four Quartets and e Cantos. O'Siadhail's complex poetic, thematic and stanzaic structures are examined, as are the detailed and expansive range of thinkers and writers who appear in his work. Each of the ve quintets is divided into ve canti, which are then further broken down in sections, with each written in a di erent form. In each quintet, we meet a series of personages from the last several hundred years in art, music, literature ("Making"), commerce and economics ("Dealing"), politics and governance ("Steering"), science and mathematics ("Finding"), and theology ("Meaning").