Irish-American Books

David Herbert Lawrence was born to a miner in the coalmining community of Eastwood located eight miles from Nottingham. The village is located in the middle of what was once Sherwood Forrest deep in the English Midlands. When Lawrence was born the area was an ugly coalmining region. His mother Lydia made the sickly, thin, bookish boy her favorite. His father Arthur was a near-illiterate spending time in the pub. The family had several children who went on to live routine lives. Only the genius of Lawrence burns brightly.
Lawrence was always an outsider, lonely wanderer. He taught school for several years even though he hated it. He graduated from Nottingham College with a certificate in teaching but did not go on for a BA degree.
Lawrence is known for the sexual explicit and sensual prose of such classic novels as : "The Rainbow", "Sons and Lovers."; "Women in Love"; "Kangaroo", "The Virgin and the Gypsy," and such short stories as "The Fox." His most famous book is "Lady Chatterly's Lover" which was banned in Britain until 1960. This sexy love story sold more than all of his other works combined! He also wrote travel essays, literary criticism and reams of poetry. Lawrence is one of those authors who could write anywhere about almost anything. His chief themes were:
a. The need for honest and open love between the sexes. He was adept at describing the feeling a woman has during lovemaking.
b. The destruction of nature and the natural harmony of life through crass industrialism and materialistic pursuit of money.
c. His hatred of the rigid English class system which was restrictive and hypocritical.
Lawrence has been accused of anti-semitism and the need for meen to be superior in relationships with women. Worthen is fair in exploring these attitudes. Lawrence had many characters flaws. He could be explosively angry, often hit women and could be cruel to animals. He could also be charming, loving and kind. A man of contradictions not easily pigeonholed.
Lawrence had an active sex life. He forsook the girl who loved him Jessie Chambers and several other lasses in the Nottingham region. He ran away with Frieda Richtofen Chambers who left her husband and three children to live with him. Though the two never divorced they were both unfaithful engaging in several affairs. Frieda was a big, strong German woman distantly related to the Red Baron. During World War I the British thought she might be a spy; the Lawrences were closely watched during this horrible time by the British authorities.
Lawrence was a Gypsy who lived in England, Italy, New Mexico, Mexico, France and Ceylon. He died at the age of 44 due to advanced tuberculosis.
He was poor and his books were out of favor at the time of his death.
John Worthen is a British scholar who has done a fine job of following Lawrence on the many stops he made across the globe in a complex life. Lawrence was a great writer due to the power, emotion and descriptive brilliance of his sparkling prose. This comprehensive biography is worth time and money.

Benjamin Kunkel reviews this work very favorably in 'The New Yorker'. It is he maintains the best one- volume biography of Lawrence that has as yet been written. In the key passage of his review Kunkel cites a letter of Lawrence as containing the heart of his perception of life. His commentary then follows:

"The real way of living is to answer to one's wants. Not "I want to light up with my intelligence as many things as possible" but "For the living of my full flame-I want that liberty, I want that woman, I want that pound of peaches, I want to go to sleep, I want to go to the pub and have a good time, I want to look abeastly swell today, I want to kiss that girl, I want to insult that man." Instead of that . . . we talk about some sort of ideas. I'm like Carlyle, who, they say, wrote 50 volumes on the value of silence.

Kunkel interprets this passage as follows:
"Everything is here; in half a paragraph Lawrence comprehends his life. There is the sense, gained from Frieda, of having no obligations but to desire; the virtually pre-Socratic tendency to see all life as a species of flame (in Lawrence, to be alive is always described as being on fire); the tone simultaneously of great casualness and authority; the pleasure taken in vituperation ("I want to insult that man"); and, of course, the awareness that to marshal all one's eloquence, education, and discipline in defense of mute, dark, instinctual life is a crowning paradox, like Carlyle with his fifty volumes on silence."

Kunkel goes on then to note how great a part the theme of Lawrence's isolation plays in this biography. Isolated from his place of birth, from his family, from the aristocratic dabblers in the world of art he was continually meeting up with. Isolated from social conventions. Isolated from conventional morality, and from an ordinary place of home. Isolated by the frailty of his body , and by the frequent rejection of the literary establishment. Isolated too from the mores of his time.

This focusing on the personal life drama does not however help us solve the one real mystery connected with Lawrence, the fact of his literary genius.
It too perhaps goes too far in excusing Lawrence's Fascism, for Fascism turned out to be something other than the eccentric privilege of a few misguided idealists, and instead turned into one of the most murderous movements in human history.
Lawrence's story is in a sense a tragic one as he poor and sick died before reaching the age - of- forty- five. Yet he burned in his literary life with a gem-like flame life and gave to the world a beauty in words, rich and strange.

In reading D. H. Lawrence's SONS AND LOVERS I was struck by how much it cut to the core, and was curious as to how closely autobiographical the story was. That led me to an an excellent excerpt from this book that is available on the Web, that tells about Lawrence's nostalgia for his youth when he spent so much time at the Haggs farm (Leivers farm in SONS AND LOVERS). That excerpt as well as other material told me that Lawrence's fiction about this youthful part of his life was very thinly disguised.

The time and circumstances in which Lawrence lived seem so different from today. He grew up in Victorian England, the son of a coal miner, in the industrial age before the heyday of the automobile and all the communicative devices that have so changed our lives. From an early age it was evident that he did not have the physical capacity to follow his father's footsteps if he ever wanted to, which apparently he never did. Contrary to the toughened practicality of physical labor, he found refuge in books, which put him at odds with the rough and tumble ways of many of his peers, who later recalled that he preferred to play with girls. His coming of age involved the inner conflict presented by his mother, who was strong and imparted on him mental strength necessary to survive and even flourish despite being very susceptible to illness, but who also imparted demands as from one whose life's longings had been thwarted.

I don't know if I quite buy the author's emphasis of Lawrence as the Outsider, at least not in terms of his legacy. Certainly, the man marched to the tune of a different drummer. No doubt he had faults, but the excesses, which have been noted from evidence extracted from his writing, need to be measured against the strict conformity of the Victorian Age. Perhaps his greatest work, THE RAINBOW, was banned for reasons that seem laughable by comparison to today. Certainly, he exhibited a ruthlessness in being a writer, as in his relations with Jessie Chambers, which would make many a would-be writer wonder if it was all worth it; but writing about his experiences, whether they were thinly disguised or not, was an obsession, and became a psychological necessity. At a certain point, he really could not be anything but a writer, and it became his means of self-discovery, certainly a different tack from most people of the time who were marching blindly into battle or blindly into debilitating jobs. He persisted despite the fact that for years he could barely make a living and constantly had to depend on the kindness of friends and relatives. If anything, that dependence despite his overall independence, showed that he was more of an insider, one who had gained acceptance in the path he chose to follow. No doubt, his habitual exile and publishing difficulties depict him as the Outsider, but when it came down to it, he showed himself to be a courageous human being especially in facing a debilitating illness and refusing self-pity.

Twenty-five years ago the novelist John Fowles published a truly silly essay in which he argued that lyric poetry is the exclusive province of the young. He cited Keats and Shelley to make his point. I was just a kid when I read it, but my reaction was "Shoemaker, stick to your lath." Among the lyric poets I most admired were Pindar and Po Chu-I, Horace and Hardy, men who had done extraordinary work into their eighties. Even then I longed for the reflections of those who "spit into the teeth of Time that has transfigured me," in Yeats' memorable phrase.

With the appearance of The Darkness and the Light, I have another great old man to read. Here are one of the half-dozen greatest villanelles in our language, the most vicious, wittiest flyting since Burns sank beneath the sod, the "Sarabande at Age 77," and the title poem, which I first read one week after my octogenarian father succumbed in the wan, morning light. Fellow Amazonians, I'd say this is the most important book of English verse to appear since Wilbur gave us his collected poems in 1988. Buy it. Read it. Memorize it.

Outstanding masterpiece using many Biblical themes and events to convey the paradox of God's Light in the Darkness of a cursed world, alluding to Creation & Fall in Genesis 1-3.

Just two poems are worth the price of the entire volume:
SACRIFICE - ABRAHAM; SAUL & DAVID.

Excerpts:
Abraham -

Three promises he gave/Came like three kings or angels to my door:His purposes concealed/In coiled and kerneled store/
He planted as a seedling that would yield/In my enfeebled years/
A miracle that would command my tears/With piercings of the grave.
"Old man, behold creation,"/Said the Lord, "the leaping hills,
the thousand-starred/Heavens and watery floors./ Is anything too
hard/For the Lord, Who shut all seas within their doors?"

Saul & David -

A shepherd boy, but goodly to look upon/
Unnoticed but God-favored,sturdy of limb/
As Michelangelo later imagined him,/
Comely even in his frown./

Shall a mere shepherd provide the cure of kings?/
Heaven itself delights in ironies such/
As this, in which a boy's fingers would touch/
Pythagorean strings/

And by a modal artistry assemble/
The very Sons of Morning, the ranked and choired/
Heavens in sweet laudation of the Lord/
And make Saul cease to tremble.

Simply magnificent. A tour de force. Mr Hecht simply gets better with age, like a fine Merlot. Bon Apetit!

Hecht's verse is always a pleasure to read. You see his intelligence, formal skill, and love of language in his poems. "Nocturne" is Hecht's succesful villanelle, which is one of my favorite formal types of poems, and when it is well done, and it is well done here, it can be one of the most successful forms of poetry. bravo mr. hecht. "Sacrifice" also sticks out in the book. it is a poem in three parts, juxtaposing the story of abraham and isaac with an incident in 1945, which is just chilling. hecht has several successful translations. I was dissapointed in the lack of war poems, which few do better than hecht, and the overabundance of religous poems. the dual picture on the cover lead me to believe that the subject of this collection would be both wwii and religion. i would hope next time knopf would do better in designing the cover.

Tom Meager is not what you would expect as a typical war hero. He was of Irish decent and exiled from his country to the island known as Van Diemen's Land. After getting to America, Meager soon came to prominence in the Irish community around New York. Having a hard time making money, Tom resorted to motivational speaking around the New England area up until the time where he joined the Union as the head of the Irish brigade. Despite Meager's men being led to their slaughter, Meager continued to win respect as a man and general in the Union army.
The Exile is an interesting tale of an Irishman in an American war. It tells what the outside groupd was thinking rather than the normal American white soldier story did. I liked the whole lead into the story about Meager and his exile, but the focus of the story wasn't what the title might lead one to think. The more interesting story line was the leadership in the Civil War itself by Meager. The way he handled himself for a cause that was not truly his was the reason he is a hero. This story would be good for people who enjoy western books and is fairly good at the actual combat in the book.

Richard Wheeler's The Exile is an exciting fast-paced historical novel chronicling the life of the Irish-American patriot, Thomas Francis Meagher. Tom Meagher arrives in New York City in 1852 after the British convicted him of being a leader of the Irish rebellion in 1848. The British send Meagher to the Australian penal colony where he eventually escapes to America.
Although the book is a novel, Richard Wheeler did extensive research to ensure his historical facts are correct. The only fiction in this book are the thoughts of the characters and the possible end of Meagher's life.
Richard Wheeler takes us from the shores of Australia to the sights and sounds of old New York. He relates what it must have been like for early immigrants who just reached this country and their trials and pitfalls in trying to make it here. Richard probes the loves of Meagher's life whether it is his love of Ireland or that of his first and second wives. We follow Tom Meagher as he develops a love for America and his complicated reasons for wanting to form the Irish Brigade during the Civil War. We follow Meagher into war and the intense fights at Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville.
Tom Meagher heads west to Montana Territory as acting Governor and is instrumental in establishing a territorial government for the people and by the people. Richard Wheeler brings us to Meagher's death and the strange circumstances and mystery surrounding his end.
Richard Wheeler tells Meagher's story in the first person and does a convincing job giving us Meagher's viewpoint, right or wrong, on the circumstances and ideas that helped form this country. I highly recommend this entertaining and enlightening book. As you read the story imagine yourself sitting at a table in a saloon with a pint of ale before you, a fiddle plays an Irish tune as Tom Meagher lights his pipe and begins to tell you his life story. This is what it is like to read The Exile.

This book reads like a ballad, each chapter an Irish lament for a brave man doomed by fate and history. The language scans like poetry, with an Irish lilt.

Irish rebels were a tough lot because they had to be, resisting oppression and starvation with few resources except will and spirit. Thomas Francis Meagher made enough trouble to be transported to the penal colonies in Australia but they didn't hold him long. The book begins as he escapes.

Meagher -- son of a gentleman, Lord Mayor of Waterford, M.P. -- lands in Boston and Washington where the signs say "no Irish need apply." Unable to find either a job or a political "position," he makes his living by lecturing until the Civil War gobbles him up.

It is as much a story of the Irish as of Meagher. Starved into leaving their green home, they came grieving to the new country to be rejected, crowded out, treated like beasts, and used as cannon fodder. The Green Brigade with its green flag, embroidered with a golden harp, went first into the worst of the battles. When their flag was shot to bits, Meagher taught them to wear a sprig of green boxwood in their hats, but often it was the soldiers who were also shot to bits.

Afterwards Meagher ends up in a place that in those days was not much more hospitable than Australia: Montana territory where he was acting governor in the days of gold strikes, vigilantes, and Indian massacres. Before he could find his footing, he was lost overboard in the night from a steamship tied up on the Missouri at Fort Benton. His body was never found. Killed by enemies or betrayed by friends? Or simply too drunk to keep from falling overboard?

Meagher of the Sword, they called him, and his statue today stands in front of the Montana capitol building where he sits a horse and brandishes a sword overhead. (The sculptor's name was Mulligan, don't ye know?) Is it a mistaken monument or was the man a deserving patriot? This book won't tell you, but it will give you plenty of evidence to turn over in your mind.

It's a story to be told by someone who can make the battles clear and sketch out the lines of contention among a dozen tangled parties. Wheeler can do this. The book is far beyond being a genre historical novel. Wheeler has done five-finger exercies long enough -- they pay off in this concerto.

this book was very helpful and wonderful, i really enjoyed this boo

Any collection of plays has to be judged by the quality of the individual pieces that it has chosen. By that measure, Kozelka has done a good job of bringing together a group of American one-act plays that manages to be diverse and qualitative.

We get the plays from a variety of genres and levels of fame; the most famous are Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," Lucille Fletcher's "Sorry, Wrong Number," and Stephen Vincent Benet's "The Devil and Daniel Webster."

Each play begins with a short (two or three paragraph) biography of the playwright, which is a nice way to give some context to the selections. If you are looking to put on a one-act play, this is a great set from which to choose; alternatively, if you just like to read plays, the shortness of these fine selections makes this a good shopping stop for small tastes of different authors.

I loved this book. i Have one of the original copies that I happened to stubmle across at a library book sell. I loved it so much that I've recomended it to my friends and given it as a gift. Whether you're interested in drama or not the plays in here are hilarious.I especially recommend Impromptu. YOu will get a kick out of winifred's snide comments. Not too mention the famous one act plays of The Man WHo Died at TWelve Oclock and THe Devil and Daniel webster are in here. It is a must read for anyone who appreciates theater and/or the antics of life.

University presses, presses period, unfortunately shy away from essay collections, which is what this volume essentially is. They claim such books do poorly on the market; if that's so then the contemporary American readership--at least those with an interest in the American-Irish interface--needs to wake up and smell the coffee at the Sin-e cafe. Every chapter here is, like they say, worth the price of admission. This is a book of poet's essays--Wall has published three extraordinary collections of poems--so if you are devoted exclusively to "unified," thesis-driven works, its wide-ranging, eclectic energy might be off-putting. The book is travel, research, investigation--think Herodotus, but with a drawling Wexford accent. From the Sin-e Cafe to the Black Hills is a work of calm intelligence, good humor, and acute literary cultural observation.

University presses, presses period, unfortunately shy away from essay collections, which is what this volume essentially is. They claim such books do poorly on the market; if that's so then the contemporary American readership--at least those with an interest in the American-Irish interface--needs to wake up and smell the coffee at the Sin-e cafe. Every chapter here is, like they say, worth the price of admission. This is a book of poet's essays--Wall has published three extraordinary collections of poems--so if you are devoted exclusively to "unified," thesis-driven works, its wide-ranging, eclectic energy might be off-putting. The book is travel, research, investigation--think Herodotus, but with a drawling Wexford accent. From the Sin-e Cafe to the Black Hills is a work of calm intelligence, good humor, and acute literary cultural observation.

University Press books are most often expensive, somewhat boring, and serve a relatively small audience. Not this one. From the Sin e is not only affordable, it's quite readable too. Wall's work is spare yet clear, and he informs us well, not overbearingly. The book is a bit of a conundrum - part remembrance, part criticism, part travelogue, part creative exposition, yet all of it quite interesting. Wall understands the psyche of the nascent "Irish-American" identity. It's made to be read in pieces, which some might consider a flaw, as there's no real cohesion to the parts.

This book moves at a fast pace right through. It is a light read though containing all the important historical facts. The author uses dialogue where possible to push the action forward. He includes many anecdotes to capture and maintain the reader's attention. The book details the close friendship between Harry Boland and Michael Collins and how this bond was shattered by later events. There is much variety in the narrative - sporting highlights of Boland's early G.A.A career, the armed and political struggle for Irish independence which brought Boland to Great Britain to rescue deValera from Lincoln Prison and later to America as Special Envoy of the Irish Republic. Conflicting events occur such as rivalry between Boland and Collins for the hand of Kitty Kiernan and the Treaty settlement between Ireland and Great Britain. This agreement split the Irish people and ended with Collins supporting the pro-Treaty side and Boland taking an anti-treaty stance. Much emphasis is placed on the efforts of Boland to prevent Civil War by becoming the architect of the Collins-deValera Pact. Boland and Collins fought on opposite sides in the inevitable war of brothers and were both killed within three weeks of each other. This book correctly captured the character of Boland - warts and all. The book is thoroughly researched and is a joy to read.

This book documents for the first time the life of Harry Boland and the role he played in Ireland's quest for independence. Long time friend of Michael Collins, this book charts their close relationship, begun through mutual dedication towards the achievement of an Irish Republic. The friendship suffers the difficulty of shared admiration for a woman from Co. Longford which ends in victory for Collins. They choose different sides in the Irish Civil War and die within three weeks of each other in enemy camps. Both "served their country in the way they knew best". This book is easy to read and captures much of the drama, suspence and romance usually associated with a good novel. It describes in great detail the period from 1919-1921. It is to be recommended to students of Irish history as well as those readers in search of a tragedy, romance and suspence.

Jim Maher has done a wonderful job of bringing to life this tragic and romantic figure of the Irish War of Independence (1916-1921). Harry Boland was a soldier and politician, and was a third part of a doomed love triangle with the beauty Kitty Kiernan and Harry's comrade in arms and gigantic figure of the time, Michael Collins. Their friendship was ruptured by the shameful Irish civil war which cast a long shadow over Irish politics and history for the rest of the twentieth century. Boland was a diplomat, fund-raiser and soldier, ahead of his time, a very modern hero, but ultimately he was destroyed by the bitterness and violence which engulfed the fledgling Irish State. This book is a fitting tribute to a man whose hard work and sacrifice shaped the Ireland of today.

It seems every time you turn around someone's writing a biography of another Confederate general from the Civil War. Somehow, there's not quite the enthusiasm for biographies of Union soldiers that there is for the Confederates. This current book examines the interesting life of one of the more unusual characters from the Union Army in the Civil War era: Thomas Francis Meagher. Meagher is famous as the Union general who led the Irish Brigade, a hard-fighting unit which was famous for its opposition to the Emancipation Proclamation, and also famous for its ability to consume large amounts of whiskey. Meagher himself supposedly drank to excess, though whether he did so on the battlefield or not is a matter of debate.

Wylie's account of Meagher's life is a full one, following the man through life, beginning with his childhood in Ireland, involvement in the Irish uprising in 1848 (which was very small and never had much chance of success). He then recounts his exile in Tasmania and escape. Meagher made his way to America, became a citizen, earned a law degree, and did the lecture tour circuit in order to make money. When the Civil War started, Meagher was at first sympathetic to the Confederates, but changed his mind and wound up raising troops for the Union. These troops were formed into a regiment which he wound up serving in. After First Bull Run, Meagher raised more troops and wound up leading the resulting brigade, fighting through all of the crucial campaigns up through Chancellorsville. By this time the Irish Brigade was down to a few hundred men, and Meagher felt they'd earned a rest and a period to recuperate, but the high command disagreed, and he resigned during the dispute. He did later get himself reinstated, but didn't fight again for the remainder of the war, and primarily distinguished himself with a very poor performance trying to move a body of troops from Tennessee to North Carolina, which almost led to his removal from command. He then, at the end of the war, accepted a post as secretary of the Territory of Montana, and served as the interim governor while the office was vacant or the governor absent. He died in a bizarre accident two years after the end of the war, falling off of a steamboat into the river, his body never being found.

Wylie is a judicious and intelligent biographer, and this is a careful, well-written biography. The author contends that Meagher's drinking certainly had an effect on his life, but also notes that it might have been exaggerated by enemies, of whom Meagher had many. One of those enemies was William T. Sherman, who recounted the famous incident where Meagher complained to President Lincoln about Sherman's rather draconian attitude towards discipline, and Lincoln's rather comical response. This is, frankly, and intelligent and well-written biography, and I think a valuable addition to any Civil War library.

Wylie's book is very well researched and well written. I not only learned about the very rich and flawed life of an infamous Irish general and rebel, but I also learned a good deal about the historical struggles in Ireland that inspired him. I learned much about the Civil War, as well as how communication and politics worked around the war. I learned still more about early Western history as it applied to newly developing territories. If you have any interest in Montana history at all, this book is a must read. The author provides a colorful and detailed, very human picture of what Montana was like when it was first forming. This includes some history of the sociopolitical struggles between the settlers and the Native Americans as well. Meagher was certainly a very colorful and very human character who suffered many ups and downs and wore quite a few important hats in his day. Even Meagher's death is well researched. "The Irish General" is a real page-turner overall.

This is the best book on General Meagher that is available today. The research is prodicious and the writing is excellant. It is a fair view to a complicated man. Dont miss out on a excellant book if you are a fan of General Meagher, the Irish Brigade, the Civil War, or Montana History. The photographs are also excellant.The bibliography is also excellant.

I loved this book and immediatly tried to find a second one by her.
She has written one other, but it's an ebook. Hope she has it made into a hard copy. It was easy reading for someone like me who hadn't had time to read in a few years. Got me reading again.

Bought this book because it was on sale, a stab in the dark, and very much enjoyed it. Readers of Irish heritage will especially enjoy the wonderful characters. The story is told from varying points of view which keeps it interesting--read it all in one day. Very memorable people, these Malloys from Troy.

I would definetly like to write a review about this book, because I was a friend and classmate of this author through grade & high school. We lived five minutes away from each other. We lost contact after school and went our seperate ways, but I never forgot her. When I learned that she had written a book,I read it and felt like I was in the book. It was written during our teenage years, and the home town we grow up in. It brought back so many memories. I enjoyed the book very much. I was really surprised when I read it, to remember everything the way it use to be.

I hope this review is ok for the contest. It was a great experience. I am looking forward to reading more of her books. Thank you

Deborah Tall, professor of English and Comparative Literature, died on October 19 at age 55 after two years of resisting inflammatory breast cancer, a rare, aggressive form of the disease. She had lived in Ithaca, N.Y., since 1990 with her husband of 27 years, David Weiss, and their daughters, Zoe and Clea Weiss.

Since 1982, Tall taught at Hobart and William Smith where she was named The John Milton Potter Professor of Humanities and won the 2001 Faculty Scholarship Award, as well as numerous faculty research grants. She was editor of the literary journal Seneca Review.

"Deborah was deeply admired throughout our community and far beyond," said President Mark D. Gearan. "She inspired us with her original talent as a writer and her dedication to literature, teaching, her family and her friends. Those close to her will be able to share their memories in a public celebration of her life to be held on campus this fall."

Both a poet and nonfiction writer, she was published widely and gave readings and talks around the world. Her books include Summons, which was selected by Charles Simic for the Katherine A. Morton Poetry Prize in 1999; The Island of the White Cow; From Where We Stand: Recovering a Sense of Place; and The Poet's Notebook, which she co-edited with Hobart alumnus Stephen Kuusisto and Hobart and William Smith Professor of English David Weiss. A memoir, A Family of Strangers, has just come out this fall from Sarabande Books.

Born in Washington, D.C., she grew up in the Philadelphia area and spent five formative years on Inishbofin, off the west coast of Ireland. She earned a B.S. in English from the University of Michigan and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Goddard College.

This memoir describes the time period from 1972 to 1977. It is both a book about Ireland, and a book about college-educated Americans. As a book about Ireland, it is a beautifully written memoir of five years on the small island of Inishbofin. We learn much about the islanders and their hopes and frustrations. Although the book talks much about their struggles with isolation, drink, joblessness, family troubles and jealousies, the overall effect is more uplifting than depressing.

The book is also a record of the way that young, educated Americans encountered the world in the sixties and seventies -- through travel, study, the Peace Corps and many other ways. In the wake of the Sixties, many were seeking new ideas for living and new models of community relations. Some, such as Deborah Tall, hoped to find inspiration for art or writing in their pilgrimages to remote and isolated places. At the time, the far corners of Europe were still quite primitive, and part of Deborah Tall's experience was coping without electricity and running water. Now, of course, Inishbofin has telephones and websites and one would have to go much further afield for as exotic a cultural experience.

The writing in the book is very finely crafted, and its words are carefully chosen. Occasionally the author's prose becomes slightly mannered, but overall she is a pleasure to read and the book merits a continued audience.

In this book, Deborah Tall describes life on Inishbofind, 'Island of the White Cow', a remote island off the coast of western Ireland. An American herself, she meets an Irish writer who gives a lecture at her university. They fall in love and she follows him to the island, far away from the distractions of bustling city life, where they both try to make a living as writers. She describes her stay as if it were one year, divided into four seasons. In actuality, Deborah Tall lived on the island for five years.

I loved this book. Having lived in Ireland for a number of years, this made for a great read. The descriptions of the beauty and harsh life on this barren island, always open to the western winds, were very recognisable. Life feels different on these small islands. Even though it is only a few miles to the mainland, it seems infinitely far removed, and people don't even consider themselves part of Ireland. Life on the island is like living in the past. Inishbofind does not have a doctor. It has no dentist (one comes over periodically to pull teeth - nothing fancy like plaque removal here). There is no secondary education. It has only one telephone. There is no running water.
What it does have is charm, some very interesting people and, above all, quiet.

The islanders are much like the island itself: rugged on one hand, charming on the other. They are always up for a story, always good for a song, always in for a drink, always ready for a new audience. As the book goes on, and once Deborah Tall and 'Owen' are more accepted by the locals, one gets glimpses of the real emotions of the people on Inishbofind, an island slowly losing more and more people - mostly young ones - to the main land.
On one hand, people are helpful, friendly and interested in the new arrivals. On the other hand, there is bitterness, resignation, resentfulness, frustration, desperation and jealousy. And always, there is pride.

This book describes life as it really is on an island - not a tourist experience. If you are looking for a book on how wonderful everything about Ireland is, you may want to read a travel guide. If you are looking to read about Ireland, this is definitely a good choice.

If you have small children, or grand-children, you owe it to them to read "Jabberwocky" to them. Every day. Ideally, with the lights off, in a low and menacing voice. Hopefully you know it by heart (and you remember that it's "borogoves" WITHOUT the "r", not "borogroves"). If not, you'll need this book. It's more convenient than lugging around a "Complete Works", with or without Martin Gardener's annotations. As a bonus, you'll get some of Lewis Carroll's less well known (but still delightful) poems. I recommend "You are old, Father William", which is the perfect opportunity to really overact.

"And the mome raths outgrabe." And don't you forget it!!

"Jabberwocky and Other Poems," by Lewis Carroll, is an inspired collection by this remarkable writer. A brief note at the beginning of the book discusses the life and career of Carroll (1832-98), who was a mathematician as well as a poet. The selections in this book are taken from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," "Through the Looking Glass," and other sources.

This collection shows Carroll's quirky, mischievous playfulness as well as his technical prowess with rhyme, meter, and wordplay. He is consistently inventive and often satirical. The book is very funny, often quite absurd, and has an occasional dark, sinister edge.

Just a few of the highlights are as follows. "The Mouse's Tale": a visual poem shaped like a mouse's tale. "Brother and Sister": a hilarious tribute to sibling rivalry that uses an interesting rhyme scheme. "The Walrus and the Carpenter": a sort of narrative horror-comedy with rich touches of absurdism. "Poeta Fit, non Nascitur": a hilarious satire on the art of writing poetry. And of course, the brilliant title poem, with its memorable opening: "'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe."

Lewis Carroll is best known as the warped mind that brought us "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass." He was also a poet. Not an introspective, pensive, or anguished poet, but someone who spun up little nonsense rhymes.

Several are selected from Carroll's best-known books, such as "The Mouse's Tale," where the content isn't too interesting... but the poem itself is shaped like a mouse's tail. Another is "Jabberwocky," the famed poem about a young man who slays a monster. At least half the words are made up. ("Beware the Jabberwock, my son!/The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!/ Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun/the frumious Bandersnatch!")

There is also a selection of his early poetry and his non-Alice poetry, such as the "Mad Gardener's Song," where a gardener spends most of his time hallucinating: "He thought he saw an Elephant,/That practised on a fife:/He looked again, and found it was/A letter from his wife.'" Okay, whatever. Poems are included from the little-known "Phantasmagorica," "Sylvie and Bruno," and other collections.

"How shall I be a poet?/How shall I write in rhyme?" Carroll inquires in "Poeta Fit, Non Nascitur," a pleasant little poem about writing poetry. His poetry tends to be comedic, but there are a few that are halfway serious, such as "Sea Dirge," a poem entirely devoted to Carroll's aquaphobia. No, it's not downbeat, but it isn't exactly goofball poetry either.

The whimsical insanity of Carroll's poetry is what makes it so appealing. Technically it's pretty ordinary, with the flaw of making up words to insure rhyme schemes. But somehow his poetry is so colorful and funny that the flaws aren't much of a downside -- especially "Jabberwocky," where the whole appeal of the poem is that it's utter nonsense.

Anyone who has read "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" can't help but notice Carroll's whimsical, creative poetry. And "Jabberwocky and Other Poems" is a pretty good introduction to his kooky verse.