In his tenth volume of poetry, Irish American poet Carlos Reyes
returns once again to Ireland, to the townlands of Letterkelly and
Cloonanaha in County Clare. These communities have informed much of
Reyes? work, including At the Edge of the Western Wave (2004), and The
Keys to the Cottage: Stories from the West of Ireland (2015). For more
than forty years Reyes has returned to West Clare to his second home and
his second family.
The
poems in this collection capture the stark rural life that now has
mostly passed. Reyes attempts to gather the remnants of a way of life
that was pushed aside and forgotten with the arrival of the ?Celtic
Tiger.? Sitka spruce has supplanted the peat bog, and the slane rusts in
the barn. The iconic haycocks that dotted the countryside are now
replaced with huge black bags of sileage.
This book paints a lyrical picture of a world gone. As Yeats? said, a way of life ?all changed, utterly changed.?