by Claire Jussel
November 14, 2023
Claire Jussel is a poet, writer, and artist from Boise, Idaho. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in West Trade Review, Wizards in Space, Split Rock Review, Black Fox Literary Magazine, and SEISMA Magazine. She currently resides in Ames, Iowa where she is pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing & Environment at Iowa State University.
Cacophony of Bone by Kerri ní Dochartaigh; Milkweed Editions; 312 pages; $26.00.
Following her haunting and beautiful debut book Thin Places, Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s new work of nonfiction Cacophony of Bone traces a year lived in the rural heart of Ireland. In twelve months, ní Dochartaigh, her husband, and their dog moved into and made a home of an old stone cottage between fields and bog. But what begins as a record of a new year is quickly knocked into a new cadence at the onset of the 2020 pandemic. In ní Dochartaigh’s intimate, resonant, and keenly observed account, she records the year that unfolds, winter solstice to winter solstice, and encompasses–among other motifs, miracles, and divine mundanities–a year of building a home and coming to know a place after years of moving, of swimming in open water, of planting a garden, of finding nests and bones while out walking, of preparing for a once-unthinkable child, and weathering the intensities of a pandemic.
I have wondered, as I imagine many of us have, what kinds of literature, films, and art will emerge in the coming years that are shaped by and around the COVID-19 pandemic. I confess that, I personally have anticipated the likely oncoming subgenre of “pandemic books” with a sense of unease. But in Cacophony of Bone, ní Dochartaigh weaves her experience of the early days of the pandemic into the text with astounding balance and honesty. Through this book’s unique, collage-like style, ní Dochartiagh generously brings us into the intimacies and range of her experiences with a variety of prosaic cadences, emotional tenors, and subject matters ranging from ache of not being able to travel to the sea or to loved ones to the delight of connection by receiving gardening tips from strangers on Instagram. ní Dochartaigh COVID is very much part of the fabric of this text. But so too are moths. And the moon. And a newly planted garden. And birds. And light. There are many pieces that make up a year, and ní Dochartaigh has given us a gift by writing about such times with acuity and emotion that neither ignores nor solely focuses on the pandemic. As ní Dochartaigh states in the opening pages of Cacophony of Bone, “I am telling you here / of a year / that was like / no other. // I am telling you here / of a year/ that was the same / as every other that / had ever gone before.” (1) This is not just a book about the onset of a pandemic. This is a book about a year and the multitude of extraordinary circumstances in both ní Dochartaigh’s life and global events that made it unique. It is also a text that aligns itself with and finds thematic resonances with seasonal patterns and everyday rituals, which is to say, the matter that makes up “every year that has gone before.”
The text is broken into fourteen sections: a prologue, epilogue, and twelve months. The start of each section names the month in Irish and English, then lists the many names given to the full moon of that month across numerous cultures and traditions. Each moon cycle section includes dated diary entries and two short essays or passages of lyrical prose that linger and sink deeper into a particular moment or mental state. The pattern established across each section creates a cyclical and ritual sensibility as the book progresses.
As it encapsulates the course of a whole year, Cacophony of Bone contains many thematic touchstones. Among these are the elusiveness of time, motherhood, sobriety, companionship, isolation, and the ways that light and darkness shift together in changing seasons. ńi Dochartaigh’s contemplative, lyrical, and achingly frank prose illuminate these revelations in both her internal and physical landscapes. Images and beings appear and reappear, looping through the text not just as indications of motifs, but in keeping with the pattern of observed natural occurrences and emotional cycles such as the quality of a winter sky, the movements of birds and moths, anniversaries of relationships and devastations. Repeated images become refrains that indicate a sense of continuation and progression of time in a year otherwise marked by disruption and isolation. These refrains in turn relay seasonal patterns, build connections across the text, develop symbolic heft through accumulation, and contribute to the circular motion imbued across the book.
In Cacophony of Bone, ní Dochartaigh makes sense of these collective observations and contemplations by shaping them around a unique guiding structure for the book. Both the style of the prose and its form fluctuates across the book. Ní Dochartaigh repeatedly shifts from standard formatting to segments that leap to the center or right margin, altering the momentum of the text in a manner that reflects the sensation of an interjected thought or arriving at long last at a well articulated realization. At times, ní Dochartaigh’s prose breaks into pure poetry, complete with line breaks, abundant white space on the page, and language that lifts into a lyrical sensibility to circle an idea and point towards the heart of it. Much of the book is relayed in dated entries that range from sparse lists to multi-page diarstic accounts. This varied topography brings the reader into the landscapes of perception, processing, and reflection. This waxing and waning form on the page echoes the way in which the book is structured around the moon.
Early in Cacophony of Bone, in January, when she is pondering what to do with the bones she keeps finding in the fields on her walks, ní Dochartaigh writes:
What do do with all the bones,
as white as old man’s beard
– on the circle of this darkling winter?
(make a moon of them,
make a moon of them)
MAKE A MOON FROM THESE
BROKEN, BRILLIANT BONES
(you will always know the way/) (19-20)
From collected occurrences, scenes, and bone shards filling a year, ní Dochartaigh forms a moon–a text that cycles through each phase of the year and returns to make a full circle of time. By carving a circle of a year in words, ní Dochartaigh invokes a sense of ritual that resonates thematically with the acts of daily ritual and meaning-making through patterns across the book. Through this form, ní Dochartaigh shapes a sacred space within the pages of this text, and draws the reader right into the heart of that space with her.
From the first few pages, I had the sense that Cacophony of Bone was going to be one of those books that left behind a hallowed residue on me after I finished reading it. My suspicions were proven correct. ní Dochartaigh’s entrancing, fresh, bone-deep meditations on the matter that makes up our lives, the paradoxical slipperiness and steadiness of time, and the porousness between us and our surroundings will linger and circle within me for many years to come.
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“Make a Moon of Them:” The Ritual of a Year in Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s Cacophony of Bone
Image by Steven Hylands from Pexels
©2023 Iron Oak Editions LLC
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