Barley Child (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781682262696)

Barley Child, Greg Rappleye's fifth collection, draws from family legends, whispered stories, and sworn denials across four generations of Irish American lives--recalled, imagined, and reconstructed from census records, old letters, church registries, yellowed newspaper clippings, and a few odd photographs in which the human figures are often unnamed. The sum of these affidavits, arrayed across the lyric and narrative lines of these poems, is an electrifying human choir--male and female, child and adult, Irish and American--their voices rising out of shame, poverty, absurdity, violence, a strained Catholic faith, and a virulent legacy of madness and alcoholism.

Free of nostalgia and cant, with a sharp Irish wit that often braves nearly monstrous subject matter, and reported with eyes that seldom mist over, Barley Child is a volume that once again confirms Greg Rappleye as a poet of witness.

Author: Greg Rappleye
ISBN-10: 1682262693
ISBN-13: 9781682262696
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
Language: English
Published: 03/03/2025
Pages: 144
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.40lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.36d