Dennis O’Driscoll (1954–2012) was such a presence in the Irish literary world and so attuned to his moment in the life of the nation that it is hard to come to terms with his absence. O’Driscoll was part of a literary scene dominated by the larger-than-life Seamus Heaney, and it is typical of Dennis’s selflessness and dedication to poetry that he put so much of his own time into Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney, the 2009 book that comes closer to being an autobiography of the Nobel-Prize winner than anything we will get. Though it was clear from his increasingly pale complexion and his gapingly large shirt collars that O’Driscoll was seriously ill, it was not in him to discuss it or to reveal the nature of his malady. He died suddenly but perhaps not unexpectedly in his fifty-eighth year, on Christmas Eve.

For followers of Irish poetry throughout the world, Seamus Heaney’s death in 2013 marked the end of an era. But within Ireland, O’Driscoll’s death was a loss equal in magnitude. Heaney, who was there to deliver the eulogy at Dennis’s funeral, would himself be dead within nine months. In the introduction to O’Driscoll’s last book of poetry, Dear Life, Heaney—himself a tireless advocate for Irish literature—called his younger colleague “a man who served the republic of letters in his radio broadcasts, his essays, his book reviews, his lectures, and his readiness to be of help to anyone who contacted him