Afterwords

At 90 years old, Maurice Harmon is making poems out of memory and out of the experience of growing old, recognizing what is lost and the little that is gained. In this collection he gives us the present moment, then offers three, past thematic portrayals: life in academe, in small-town Ireland, and in encroaching old age. Training his lyrical imagination and discerning eye on Irish life in the twentieth century, he forces us to examine its consequences in the twenty-first century. Ever compassionate, he gives us a poetry of keen insight we cannot afford to ignore.