SOURCE: “Glittering in the Wilderness,” in Belles Lettres, Vol. 9, No. 4, Summer, 1994, p. 26-7, 96.

In the following excerpt Oness commends Ní Chuilleanáin's ability to write flowing poetry and comments on the recurring themes found in The Second Voyage.

Ní Chuilleanáin's The Magdalene Sermon was shortlisted for the 1990 Irish Times/Aer Lingus Poetry Book Prize Committee. The Second Voyage contains poems from Acts and Monuments (1966) and Site of Ambush (1975). The beauty of Ní Chuilleanáin's poetry does not lie in dramatic revelation, but in the cadence of her sentences, which are both flowing and simple. Throughout her work, there is a wonderful sense of how a line of poetry works. “St. Mary Magdalene Preaching at Marseilles” opens:

Now at the end of her life she is all hair— A cataract flowing and freezing—and a voice Breaking loose from the loose red hair, The secret shroud of her...