The Five Quintets is a mammoth poetic adventure undertaken by the celebrated poet Micheal O’Siadhail, representing the culmination of an extraordinary life’s work. The project is vast in scope, attempting nothing less than an exploration of the predicaments of Western modernity. Drawing on inspiration from T S Eliot’s Four Quartets, The Five Quintets brings the premise of Dante’s Divine Comedy into the current day. As Dante explored humanity though mythical characters, O’Siadhail focuses on the humanity of the creators of today’s dreams of perfection: scientists, artists, economists, politicians, politics, and philosophers and theologians from the past speak with each other in this extraordinarily imaginative work. The result is an unparalleled book of instruction for a troubled age. The Five Quintets retrieves and exhibits human gifts our own age may have lost to create a work ‘whose pulse draws us to love. A book of poetry in the category of the epic, the encyclopedic, and the sacred.’ (Peter Ochs, Professor of Judaic Studies, Virginia).
