Black Irish

Every line in Somerville's verse packs a wallop. Her bawdy piety and divine colloquialism lets us know that truly a bard walks upon this earth. Nava Renek, Author of Spiritland and No Perfect Words Seventy years later, an ocean removed from the churchyard stone where Yeats' epitaph is carved, Michele Madigan Somerville dares to cast a cold eye on life, on death. But she looks deeper: rather than merely sing "whatever is well made," Black Irish celebrates all that Somerville finds fragile or...