Andalusian Hours

Andalusian Hours: Poems from the Porch of Flannery OConnor is a collection of 101 sonnets that channel the voice of celebrated fiction writer, Flannery OConnor. In these poems, poet and scholar Angela Alaimo ODonnell imagines the rich interior life Flannery lived during the last fourteen years of her life in rural Georgia on her familys farm named "Andalusia." Each poem begins with an epigraph taken from OConnors essays, stories, or letters; the poet then plumbs Flannerys thoughts and the poignant circumstances behind them, welcoming the reader into OConnors 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 Flannerys 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 OConnor herself honored in her prayer life and in her quasi-monastic devotion to her vocation and to the home she learned to love, Andalusia.