Andalusian Hours

Andalusian Hours: Poems from the Porch of Flannery OΓÇÖConnor is a collection of 101 sonnets that channel the voice of celebrated fiction writer, Flannery OΓÇÖConnor. In these poems, poet and scholar Angela Alaimo OΓÇÖDonnell imagines the rich interior life Flannery lived during the last fourteen years of her life in rural Georgia on her familyΓÇÖs farm named ΓÇ£Andalusia.ΓÇ¥ Each poem begins with an epigraph taken from OΓÇÖConnorΓÇÖs essays, stories, or letters; the poet then plumbs FlanneryΓÇÖs thoughts and the poignant circumstances behind them, welcoming the reader into OΓÇÖConnorΓÇÖs private world. Together the poems tell the story of a brilliant young woman who enjoyed a bright and promising childhood, was struck with lupus just as her writing career hit its stride, and was forced to return home and live out her days in exile, far from the literary world she loved. By turns tragic and comic, the poems in Andalusian Hours explore FlanneryΓÇÖs loves and losses, her complex relationship with her mother, her battle with her illness and disability, and her passion for her writing. The poems mark time in keeping with the liturgical hours OΓÇÖConnor herself honored in her prayer life and in her quasi-monastic devotion to her vocation and to the home she learned to love, Andalusia.