Vinegar Hill, Colm Toibin
Vinegar Hill, Colm Toibin
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Vinegar Hill
Poems

Author: Colm Tóibín

Narrator: Colm Tóibín

Unabridged: 1 hr 45 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/12/2022

Synopsis

From the New York Times best-selling author of Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín’s first collection of poetry explores sexuality, religion, and belonging through a modern lens

Fans of Colm Tóibín’s novels, including The Magician, The Master, and Nora Webster, will relish the opportunity to re-encounter Tóibín in verse. Vinegar Hill explores the liminal space between private experiences and public events as Tóibín examines a wide range of subjects—politics, queer love, reflections on literary and artistic greats, living through COVID, and facing mortality. The poems reflect a life well-traveled and well-lived; from growing up in the town of Enniscorthy, wandering the streets of Dublin, and crossing the bridges of Venice to visiting the White House, readers will travel through familiar locations and new destinations through Tóibín’s unique lens.

Within this rich collection of poems written over the course of several decades, shot through with keen observation, emotion, and humor, Tóibín offers us lines and verses to provoke, ponder, and cherish.

About The Author

Colm Tóibín is an Irish novelist, essayist, playwright, and poet. He is currently the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University. He has been short-listed 3 times for the Booker Prize and has won the Los Angeles Times Novel of the Year, the Costa Novel of the Year, the Stonewall Book Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and the Irish PEN Award for his contribution to Irish literature. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a vice president of the Royal Society of Literature.

Reviews

Goodreads review by LeeAnna on April 29, 2022

A lovely collection of poems that transported me back in time to Ireland, to Italy, and to present day America. He is as deft with poetry as he is with prose. The attractive book jacket is a copy of his mother’s paintings of Vinegar Hill, a touchstone of Toibin’s past. From the title poem: “There is......more

Goodreads review by T P on March 28, 2022

Much as I love most of his writing, I didn't enjoy this collection. It's more a compendium of thoughts, reflections and impressions of passing moments. Some of these would have worked very well as prose passages. I didn't find the poetic form in this book. Light and not very memorable.......more

Goodreads review by Lynn on May 11, 2022

Moving Poems A nice book of poetry looking at his past and present. Some look at the places around his home and town, others look at American politics. All are very moving. My favorite is about missing classic cinemas in his town. I’m a movie lover too.......more

Goodreads review by Claire on January 10, 2024

For the most part I liked this collection, there were a couple poems I really liked (In San Clemente was my fav!) I do think many of the poems read more like short stories rather than poems, which is understandable from Tóibín since he is mostly a prose writer. The poems I tabbed: September Mysterium......more

Quotes

“A meditative probe into the language of ordinary days.”
—The New York Times

About the work of Colm Tóibín:

The Magician

“Tóibín’s novels typically depict an unfinished battle between those who know what they feel and those who don’t, between those who have found a taut peace within themselves and those who remain unsettled.”
—D. T. Max, The New Yorker

“The Magician recaptures a literary giant. . . . Symphonic and moving . . . Maximalist in scope but intimate in feeling.”
—Dwight Garner, The New York Times

The Master:

“Tóibín’s work displays the kind of depth and sensitivity that few authors can offer. . . . The result is a beautiful, haunting portrayal.”
—The Christian Science Monitor

“A quiet tour de force: a work of deep seriousness and sympathy that gives us a genius in his full human dimensions. . . . [This] profound novel is—dare one say it?—masterly.”
—The New York Observer

Brooklyn:

“Tóibín . . . [is] his generation’s most gifted writer of love’s complicated, contradictory power.”
—Floyd Skloot, The Los Angeles Times

“Reading Tóibín is like watching an artist paint one small stroke after another until suddenly the finished picture emerges to shattering effect. . . . Brooklyn stands comparison with Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady.”
—The Times Literary Supplement (UK)

Nora Webster:

“A high-wire act of an eighth novel . . . Tóibín’s radical restraint elevates what might have been a familiar tale of grief and survival into a realm of heightened inquiry. The result is a luminous, elliptical novel in which everyday life manages, in moments, to approach the mystical.”
—Jennifer Egan, The New York Times Book Review

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