"For twelve long years I've suffered this damned cat.../ though more than once I've threatened violence/ the brick and burlap in the river recompense/ for mounds of furballs littering the house." – "Grimalkin" "Grimalkin," Tom Lynch informs me, "is dead." I couldn't help it, I had to know. The cat lasted almost eight years after the poem was written. "I had told … [Read more...] about Chapter & Hearse
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To Hell or Barbados
The ethnic cleansing of Ireland: Emmett O'Connell reviews Sean O'Callaghan's book on the Irish whom Cromwell sent into slavery. "These Irish, anciently called Anthropophagi (maneaters), have a tradition among them, that when the devil showed our Savior all the kingdoms of the earth and their glory he would not show him Ireland, but reserved it for himself...They are the … [Read more...] about To Hell or Barbados
Gerry Adams The Way Forward
Kelly Candaele talks to Gerry Adams about recent developments in Northern Ireland. ℘℘℘ Gerry Adams is no stranger to violence. In 1984, he told reporters that he believed there was a ninety percent chance he would be assassinated. Two months later, he was shot by loyalist paramilitaries. While he denies ever having been a member of the IRA, most close observers of the … [Read more...] about Gerry Adams The Way Forward
Yeats Country and Beyond
"I am of Ireland," wrote William Butler Yeats in one of his most famous poems from 1933, and all we have to do is look at the stark images from the land where he lived and from which he absorbed his genius and his inspiration to know that this is true. Few poets have identified so strongly with the Irish landscape as Yeats; few poets have such heavenly imagery at their … [Read more...] about Yeats Country and Beyond
The Other Kennedy
For the last 40 years, Americans have been fixated on the trials, tribulations and tragedies of the Kennedy family. Yet as the nation has kept its eyes focused on the Bobbys, Teddys and John-Johns of America's "Royal Family," a new Kennedy leader has quietly emerged. And this time, it's a woman. ℘℘℘ Maryland Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the eldest child … [Read more...] about The Other Kennedy