Bitter harvest : an anthology of contemporary Irish verse /

Montague, himself an important contemporary Irish poet, has here selected 136 poems (most of them written since 1960) from 48 poets (29, including 5 women, born after 1940). All but two of the contributors are alive and producing what the editor correctly calls "some of the best poetry in the English-speaking world." This impressive harvest of the celebrated and lesser known is, as Montague makes clear in title and introduction, not only a "bitter" one reflecting the menace and anguish of a divided Ireland but, in response to these pressures, also a "provident" one. Yeat's reference to "art whose end is peace," which serves as Montague's epigraph and is also quoted here in Seamus Heaney's "The Harvest Bow," indeed characterizes the entire collection. The anthology confirms that contemporary Irish poets forge from Ireland's distress a vision that is--in Eamon Grennan's phrase from "The Derry Air"--"alive with expectation." Eminently readable, this anthology is recommended for academic, secondary school, and public libraries. -J. D. Brophy, Iona College

Carlos Fuentes once said that the best thing about English literature is that it's invigorated by the Irish. The literature should brace itself, then, for the maturation of the new generation of Irish poets on display in this anthology. Some of them, like Seamus Heaney, are as well known here as at home; others, like Eavon Boland, have devoted though smaller readerships. Editor Montague, a transplanted northerner, argues that the civil war in the north cannot be ignored in literature. Nor is it: Montague chooses tense poems in which conflict is apparent even when war is not the subject. The selection slights women poets--surely Nuala Archer and Eithne Strong are as worthy of inclusion as, say, Peter Sirr and Gerald Daw. Yet, overall it is a good, general-interest anthology, especially for libraries with active readership in Irish studies. --Pat Monaghan