In Plenty's Woods

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.