I was introduced to Micheal O’Siadhail through my internship at Baylor University Press, where I knew him as “that Irish poet” who occasionally called the office. I was intrigued by Micheal, but buried under the workload of graduate school applications, an honors thesis, and general senior year angst, I put off reading his work. 

One afternoon, I found myself with every intern's dream—nothing to do. After refreshing my inbox, spinning in my desk chair, and asking my boss if he had anything for me, I turned to a stack of books by my desk. On the top was One Crimson Thread, a collection of 150 profound and visceral sonnets detailing Micheal’s wife Bríd’s twenty-year battle with Parkinson’s disease. Through Micheal’s mastery, I experienced what it means to love someone “in sickness and in health” and the messy, intimate beauty of the grief that deep love leaves behind. I cried at work that day. I lost my grandfather to Parkinson’s, but my tears were stirred by more than empathy. Micheal’s poetry encapsulated something potently human. 

His latest work, Desire, does the same. Writing again in sonnets, he explores a different grief—that of a dying world. Micheal digs into the causes and effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and a culture fueled by unfulfillable avarice. Drawing on his Catholic faith, Micheal dissects the destructive nature of human greed. The result is poetry that is as stirring as it is philosophical.  Micheal probes readers: “What is worth the sum of striving hearts?” Christians consider God the ultimate desire of the human heart, where true fulfillment is found in a deep relationship with our maker. However, since the fall in Genesis, there has been a distortion of our hierarchy of desire. Today, society no longer treasures, respects, or desires the sacred. When nothing is sacred, everything is easily exploited and destroyed. 

I had the privilege of hearing Micheal read and discuss portions of Desire at the Beall Poetry Festival. Although I was hesitant about whether or not I truly liked his choice to utilize sonnets—I had enjoyed his variation in style in Testament and The Five Quintets—hearing his poetry read aloud made me realize that the urgency I felt in his poetry was driven by the rhythmic rhymes of the sonnet form. I find that the act of reading good poetry has a meditative quality to it, which is why I often turn to poetry for relaxation. While Desire does what I believe all good poetry should do in making creative observations about the world around us, it is not a collection of poetry to hold close for comfort. Micheal writes with well-earned wisdom and righteous indignation that made me repentant of the ways desire has led me astray while helping me to regain a sense of earthly stewardship. For believers and nonbelievers alike, Desire is a call to reexamine what we revere and how it guides the manner in which we live our lives. Our desires can lead us to destruction, but they can also lead us home.