THE BOOK OF IRISH AMERICAN POETRY

On this St. Patrick’s Day, perhaps today provides the perfect opportunity to remind readers about the extensive anthology (976 pages) of Irish American poets that was edited by Daniel Tobin and published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 2007: The Book of Irish American Poetry (from the Eighteenth Century to the present). The jacket flap of the volume responds to the question about what it means to be an Irish American poet:

The question is not merely rhetorical, claims Daniel Tobin in the introduction, for it raises the issue of a certain kind of imaginative identity that has rarely, if ever, been adequately explored. This anthology brings together exemplary poetry of the “populist period” of Irish American verse (in particular the work of poets such as John Boyle O’Reilly), with the work of those Irish Americans who have made an indelible imprint on American poetry: Robinson Jeffers, Marianne Moore, Louise Bogan, John Berryman, Thomas McGrath, John Montague, Robert Creeley, Frank O’Hara, Ted Berrigan, Charles Olson, Galway Kinnell, X. J. Kennedy, and Alan Dugan, among others. Finally, the anthology includes distinctive poems by contemporary Irish Americans whose work is most likely to stand the test of time: poets such as Tess Gallagher, Alice Fulton, Brendan Galvin, Marie Howe, Susan Howe, Billy Collins, Michael Ryan, Richard Kenney, and Brigit Pegeen Kelly. The poems in this collection cut across the broad spectrum of American poetry and place Irish Americans within every notable school of American poetry, from modernism to confessionalism and the Beats, from formalism to imagism, and from projectivism to the New York School and Language poets.

I am pleased to note that two of my poems, “Homecoming” (from Words Spoken, Words Unspoken: Chimney Hill Press) and “Listening to Lester Young” (from Seeded Light: Turning Point Books), are also included in this anthology.