Hombre

Gerard Fanning is one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Irish poetry, "an enigmatic surveyor with an appetite for the exotic cultivar," as one reviewer has called him, a maker of taut yet limpid verse. Hombre: New and Selected Poems gathers the poet's choice of his three previous collections, together with twenty-five new poems which show him to be both spontaneous and inventive and, all the while, formally-grounded, full of what another reviewer has called "elegant intensity." 'Gerard Fanning's poems are perfectly pitched; their phrasing and tonal shape range from the use of implication and suggestion to pure clarity of statement. He is fascinated by exploration, and his poems too seem to explore the space around them, using subtle cadences and nuanced rhythm to create a poetry that is open and tactful but also highly-wrought and deeply serious.' -Colm T ib n