What Light There Is and Other Poems - Softcover

Accidents
All Souls' Morning
Armageddon Autumn
At Home In Winter
At My Sister's Flat In London
By The Hudson
Cavalier And Smiling Girl
A Closer Look
Common Theme
Conjunctions
The Cycle Of Thier Lives
Daughter Lying Awake
Daughter Waiting For School Bus
End Of Winter
Eos
Facts Of Life, Ballymoney
Fall
Father In Front Of A Picture
For The Record
Four Deer
From Your Window
The Futility Of Wishing
A Gentle Art
Hieroglyphic
Homelight
Houseplants In Winter
In The National Gallery, London
In Winter: Three Women
Incident
James Wright, 1927-1980
Jewel Box
Laundromat
Lesson
Lizards In Sardinia
Lunch-break On The Edge Of Town
Lying Low
March
Men Roofing; For Seamus Heaney
Morning, Looking Out
Morning: The Twenty-second Of March
Mother And Child
Muse, Maybe
Mushroom-picking In The Old World
The Nature Of America
Night Driving In The Desert
Night-piece
On A Cape May Warbler Who Flew Agains My Window
Ona 3-1/2 Oz. Lesser Yellowlegs, Departed Boston August 28
Patience In Renvyle
Pieces Of Kate
Porridge
Raeburn's Skater
Skunk
Something After All
Soul Music: The Derry Air
Source
Speech
Staying In Bed
Stuffed Birds
Sunday Morning Through Binoculars
Swifts Over Dublin
Taking My Son To School
Totem
Traveller
Trees After Snow
Vespers
Voices
Walking Fall
Walking To Work
Wife
Wing Road
Winn's Blackbird
Winter
Winter Morning, Twelve Noon
Woodchuck
-- Table of Poems from Poem FinderŪ

The Irish poet now residing in the U.S. makes his American debut with verse that celebrates the quotidian--a child's first day at school, a son and mother curling up together, a bird crashing into a window. Grennan's persona goes for a walk and comes home to his children, "nuzzling them awake / with my rimey beard and the names of birds / I'd seen." Birds and other animals are ever-present, treated with a compassion the poet extends to all living creatures. Flies swarming around the "raspberry"-red belly of a dead rabbit are likened to the animal's lovers. Grennan makes loss as tender as love; without chronicling the nature or process of his separation, the persona finds himself missing his children. "Daughter Lying Awake," told in the voice of a youth learning of her grandfather's death, is a small masterpiece. The sight of a neighbor walking a dog reminds the narrator of his father "hastening . . . home to the wife / who, when he leaves her behind, will run aground with grief / at being no one in the world."
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