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\u201cPresent while absent.\u201d That phrase from Eamonn Wall\u2019s elegy for Tom Doyle might serve to illuminate the entirety of My Aunts at Twilight Poker . In these poems, Wall \u2013 an Irish emigrant \u2013 registers the losses wrought by time, death, distance, urbanization, and pandemic isolation, yet in quietly recalling the textured particulars of what we\u2019ve lost, he richly restores that reality. Years after his death, the father\u2019s \u201cfingers tug at my cotton sleeve\u201d; far off in childhood\u2019s memory, the mother whispers \u201cWHISHT\u201d \u2013 each startlingly yet comfortingly present. Wall\u2019s stance is characteristically casual, self-deprecating \u2013 \u201cI am a rambler of no importance\u201d \u2013 but his attentiveness belies that summation: \u201cI live in an old \/ unwitnessed world,\u201d a world he witnesses on our behalf; \u201ca loved man \/ among strangers,\u201d strangers we too come to value through the luminous poems collected here.<\/p>\n
NATHALIE F. ANDERSON author of Stain<\/i><\/p>\n I sometimes hesitate to read Eamonn\u2019s poems, for before I know it I\u2019m lost in magic memories of Wexford days when Sandy Denny ruled and I picked strawberries for farmers\u2019 shillings.\u00a0 Then suddenly he yanks me back to New York where I\u2019m speeding on riotous A trains from Dyckman down to the Deuce to the rhythm of merengue.\u00a0 His poems, though always graceful, are ever capable of lancing lost dreams and visions.\u00a0 Tread softly when you step inside this book, for Mr. Wall\u2019s words are like depth charges designed to lighten the weight of memory.<\/p>\n LARRY KIRWAN author of Rockaway Blue: A Novel and Paradise Square <\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cPresent while absent.\u201d That phrase from Eamonn Wall\u2019s elegy for Tom Doyle might serve to illuminate the entirety of My Aunts at Twilight Poker . In these poems, Wall \u2013 an Irish emigrant \u2013 registers the losses wrought by time, death, distance, urbanization, and pandemic isolation, yet in quietly recalling the textured particulars of what … Continue reading My Aunts at Twilight Poker. Salmon Poetry, 2023<\/span> <\/div>\n\n\n