Poem. Poet. Prompt - Angela O'Donnell

WELCOME!

Happy Spring to Poets and Poetry Lovers! I hope the exuberance of April and May have set you feeling poetic and finding new ideas for poems and wanting to write!

Given the exhilaration of National Poetry Month events, I have been inspired by the many literary events I had the pleasure of attending in recent weeks: Baylor University’s Beall Poetry Festival, East Central University’s Scissortail Literary Festival, Festival Hill’s Poetry@Roundtop Poetry Festival, Tyler Junior College’s Poetry Club Open Mic, spoken word performances at community events, and the launch of the Spring, 2026 Equinox Journal that featured a poem of mine, which as a final delight, won 1^st place for that issue. So much poetry fun!

Now that my ears are full of beautiful, poetic language, I have returned to my personal reading and writing practices, which include this Substack series Poem. Poet. Prompt.— a celebration of poems by poets I know and love. If this is your first visit with us, welcome!

Lately, I have been enjoying music that is not in my usual playlist – classical, avant garde, drumming, children singing, Irish ballads, Spanish love songs. As a poet and librettist, my heart hears lyrics as poetry, and, as an amateur piano and guitar player, I also focus on the continuum of sounds of the instruments being played. Mostly, I just close my eyes and enjoy listening!

Inspired by all that, the poem I have chosen to share with you this month is titled “Flannery’s Music.” It was written by my dear friend Angela O’Donnell, from her book Andalusian Hours – Poems from the Porch of Flannery O’Connor (Paraclete Press, 2020). Each of the dozens of sonnets in the collection begins with an epigraph that is a quote from Flannery O’Connor, followed by an original persona poem imagined by O’Donnell in the voice of the beloved American novelist.

THE POEM

Here is the poem I selected to consider, with permission from Angela:

Flannery’s Music

“I have the original tin ear. I cannot hear music; just don’t know what to listen for.” ---Flannery O’Connor, November 5, 1963, The Habit of Being

Except when it comes to the human voice,
An instrument I cannot help but love,
the husky whisper of the stout li-
brarian, the nasal twang of the back-
woods handy man, the high whine of the waitress
who brings coffee and pie, whom my
mother thanks in her own throaty tone
and I nod at, keeping my silence
so as not to disturb the patter song
goin’ on all around me, the click
of forks on plates, the talk of coffee spoons.
This is the music I dream of
while I sit at my desk each day till noon
and learn how to carry the tune.

What a provocative epigraph! Flannery O’Connor makes an honest admission of her inability to hear the musicality of music because of her “tin ear.” That revelation continues into the soliloquy of the poem in which the imagined speaker explains that the music she does hear and love is the “music” of everyday voices and sounds.

In fact, to experience it best, you might pause here to reread the poem aloud in your own version of the slow Southern accent that was O’Connor’s trademark!

Speaking of sound, a previous Poem.Poet.Prompt. post featuring a poem by Ed Madden included an appreciation of his masterful and unassuming use of the sounds of words, letters, and phrases. In contrast, “Flannery’s Music” overtly announces itself as a celebration of sounds--the “music I dream of” inherent in everyday life. In fact, after the second line of the poem, what follows is a treasury of the speaker’s favorite musical soundtracks. The list is almost ekphrastic in its precision.

Set in a cafe, the list begins with “the human voice/an instrument” as “the husky whisper,” “the nasal twang,” the “high whine,” a “throaty tone.” Then we get other sounds: “the patter song,” “the click of forks,” and “the talk of coffee spoons.” Through those sounds, we meet Southern characters like a “stout librarian,” a “backwoods handyman,” a “waitress who brings coffee and pie,” and the novelist’s own mother. It creates a lively scene.

Then, after all those “voices” and “noises”, we are offered the lovely line, “This is the music I dream of…” before the closing rhymed couplet invites us to the idea of writing as a way “to carry the tune” inherit in Flannery’s, Angela’s, and our own sound-filled worlds.

Another notable aspect of “Flannery’s Music” and the other poems in Andalusian Hours, is that it is a persona poem—a poem written as if the writer is speaking as another person. This is an approach that requires a clear understanding of poetic voice and a sustained suspension of the poet’s self. That is, the poet must set aside their own vernacular, personality, tone, voice, and world view to channel the voice of the chosen persona.

In this case, an Italian-American, Catholic, Fordham University Professor, Literary Scholar, and New Yorker has transformed the poem’s speaking voice into an incorrigible, rural Georgian, Southern Gothic, Celebrated Short-Story Writer living on her family farm. Quite a feat—and well done!

To that end, exploring Flannery O’Connor has long been a passion of O’Donnell, whose studies and promotion of the author’s work have led her to write books, essays, and poems about her and to develop special status among Flannery O’Connor fans. That deep knowledge is what gives the poem its authenticity.

As O’Donnell has suggested, her intent with Andalusian Hours was to evoke the writer’s inner life and unspoken view of the world in the voice of her silky Southern drawl and her playful (and sometimes startling) commentary. Of note, Andalusian Hours follows the liturgical calendar that O’Connor herself observed during her final fifteen years confirmed to her parents’ Georgia family farm, Andalusia, because of complications of the autoimmune disease, Lupus – hence, the subtitle, Poems from the Porch… Flannery O’Connor died at thirty-nine from that condition.

In addition to the challenge of writing in persona, for the poems in the collection, O’Donnell has chosen to write sonnets, a form she has produced and perfected in much of her work, including a much-admired poetry collection, Still Pilgrim (Paraclete Press).

In an interview for the blog Speaking of Marvels, O’Donnell once admitted:

I love writing sonnets, as I find the form to require great compression and discipline, yet at the same time it has an almost infinite elasticity.

Though all the poems are identifiably sonnets that follow the 14-line pattern and are mostly iambic with a final couplet, there is a relaxed feel of flow. Since Flannery was a prose writer, we are guided by O’Donnell to imagine how she might have approached the idea of poetic form and the sonnet, in particular.

THE POET

As I mentioned, Angela O’Donnell and I have been poetry and personal friends since meeting years ago at the Windhover Poetry Festival at University of Mary Hardin Baylor, where Angela was the Featured Poet . That festival continues annually with wonderful guest speakers and holds many memories for me. Over the years since then, Angela and I have been together several times, and we share other dear poetry friends.

Professionally, Angela O’Donnell is a professor, poet, scholar, speaker, and writer at Fordham University in New York City and also serves as Associate Director of Forham’s Curran Center for American Catholic Studies. Her many literary publications include Holy Land, which won the Paraclete Press Poetry Prize; Mortal Blessing: A Sacramental Farewell, a memoir of caring for her mother; and the poetry collection Dear Dante, along with the poems that first captured my heart, her early chapbook, Mine.

THE PROMPT

After reading this poem and my appreciation of it:

Are you listening differently to the sounds around you?

Are you wondering what it would be like to write a poem as someone else?

Are you imagining your favorite music or considering noises as music?

Have you considered writing sonnets for unconventional subjects?

I hope so! That’s why, instead of the single prompt that I usually present, I invite you to consider your answers to any (or all) of the three questions above as beginnings for poems. One suggestion is practice some intentional listening before your write. Another is to imagine metaphors in describing what you hear – as Angela did with “the talk of forks.” Finally, you might conjure the “music you (yourself) dream of” or the soundtrack of your dreams. Finally, if you haven’t used the sonnet form, this would be a great time to try it out!

CLOSING & INVITATION

My thanks to Angela O’Donnell for the use of her poem! And thank you for joining me for this celebration of her poetry—as well as the novelist Flannery O’Connor!

As always, I welcome your prompt-inspired response poems. You can send by email at annemccrady(at)gmail.com or here on Substack. You can find other poetry and posts by me on FaceBook and PoetwithaPressPass.com. My personal website is InSpiritry.com.

Keep Thinking. Keep Feeling. Keep Reading. Keep Writing!