Wake Forest University Press

Irish Poetry

Thomas Kinsella - Collected Poems (paperback)

“Kinsella is one of the finest poets of the last century, in Ireland or out of it.” Justin Quinn, Poetry Review

“‘TOGETHER, both as one, / We lifted our dripping blades in the dying light …’— the haunting, Dantean river journey of Thomas Kinsella’s ‘Downstream’ makes other poems inspired by the brooding Tuscan seem like homework. And when the poem’s imagery of a skiff moving under starry skies effortlessly shifts to stark visions of a concentration camp’s ‘tall chimneys flickering,’ one wonders why this Irish poet isn’t as revered as Seamus Heaney. Wake Forest University Press’ Collected Poems makes the case for this singular poet of enormous depths.” Nick Owchar, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"A writer of singular originality and integrity, Thomas Kinsella is essential reading, one of the most vital and important poets of the English language." Floyd Skloot, Sewanee Review

"Kinsella writes in 'Dura Mater,' 'She came along the passage in her slippers / with a fuzz of navy hair, and her long nails / held out wet out of the washing water. // Come here to me. Come here to me, my own son.' Kinsella's poems never fail to be that mother, slipper-footed and wet-handed, waiting for her son to embrace her. The poems move from Kinsella's early formalist years—Another September (1958)—to the more modernist poetics of Poems from Centre City (1990); throughout his epic body of work, the poems are 'eliciting order from significant experience,' leaving no doubt that Kinsella is a poet of major literary significance, both in and out of Ireland." Lilah Hegnauer, The Virginia Quarterly Review

$18.95
2006   389 pages
paperback
ISBN 978-1-930630-27-7