In Plenty's Woods - by Brendan Galvin (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In Plenty's Woods, a final collection of poems by Brendan Galvin, returns to many settings and subjects that fascinated him: the natural world, particularly the birds around his home off Cape Cod in Truro, Massachusetts; the attractions and dangers of the seashore; his Irish heritage, including its rich language and folk culture; and the pleasures of domestic life. He explores the natural order in dialogue--sometimes playful, sometimes grave--with a personal realm of love, mortality, and the history embedded in the language we exchange.

Whether describing the birdlife he sees even during wintertime, speculating on the voices heard by sleeping sailors at sea, or writing a love poem he cannot read to his departed wife, Galvin remains a poet of consummate skill and powerful emotion who works the narrative lyric with great precision of attention, flexibility of tone, and expressivity of figure.

Review Quotes

PRAISE FOR BRENDAN GALVIN
"A voice that alternately conjures and captures the manifold wonders of the natural world."

--New York Times Book Review

"Galvin makes poems whose seemingly effortless conversation haunts us with human truths and lyric staying power."--Virginia Quarterly Review

"Galvin's poems can be elegantly scruffy as a crow's chatter, but they seek beauty as if finding it were a matter of life and death, as he proves over and over it is."--Shenandoah

About the Author

Prior to his death in 2023, Brendan Galvin published nineteen books of poetry, including Habitat: New and Selected Poems, a finalist for the National Book Award. Among his many additional honors were a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Sotheby Prize of the Arvon Foundation, Poetry magazine's Levinson Prize, and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.