Richard Barakat, Anno Domini Anne Kennedy, Buck Mountain Poems Ciaran Cosgrove, Lassoed Suns Seamus

Rory Brennan

If some of the poems are individually too slight they still help to contribute to the overall feeling the collection leaves which is one of a life prepared to face ordeal and discomfort in order to know the meaning of individuality. One final point. Anne Kennedy is an American and the book is financed from her home country. However it is typeset, printed and published in the West of Ireland where the author now lives. In every sense it is a pleasing production and an example of just what local presses should be doing.
If you have read Eliot's" Journey of the Magi" - and who has not? - then I feel there is little point in recommending that you wade through "Anno Domini" by Richard Barakat. I have always felt that Eliot's treatment of camel-drivers lacked a certain ring of truth but there is no doubt that his Magi poem does register the power of great spiritual change. Barakat deals with the "bible stories" of the New Testament in language that is conventionally antique and seems to be devoid of the least irony or hint of sub-text. Not just chopped prose this is chopped chapter and verse and in any case it was all handled much better by the champion of plagiarists from St. Louis seventy years ago