God in Winter

Irish poet P draig J. Daly's latest collection of poems is set in a challenging place, "our unGodded world," as one poem calls it, "our infected kingdom," another. It is a place of darkness and heaviness of the soul, where things are left unfinished or in ruins and the sun goes down "protesting." But it is also a place that is somehow redeemed, a place made, if only momentarily, radiant by the perception of a greater design, by the vision of "a yellow ecstasy of leaves" in the street, and, most of all, by the guileless love and affection of the young whose laughter "lights / Every cobwebbed corner / Of our hearts." As in his previous books, God in Winter includes a number of Daly's versions of early Irish poems, remarkable for their simplicity and lightness of touch. At a time when what might be called 'poetry of faith' goes against the prevailing fashion, Daly makes a distinctive 'good news' out of accumulated small perceptions that between them offer solace and seek to counterbalance the troubles of the human heart.