UNDER STARS

by Tess Gallagher ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 15, 1979

In comparison to Tess Gallagher's first volume, this book is a disappointment. Transformations of mundane events to mysterious ones still occur, as in the title poem: ""The sleep of the night deepens/ because I have walked coatless from the house/ carrying the white envelope./ All night it will say one name/ in its little tin house by the roadside. . . ,"" but they are too often encumbered by lines which are no more than pieces of prose broken arbitrarily. The sectional divisions of the book (the Ireland Poems, Starting Again Somewhere) imply a connection and debt to her ancestry that Gallagher never fully articulates; indeed, many of the Ireland poems reveal an awareness of ethnic events with only glimmerings of involvement. Gallagher is still adept at writing poems where she is directly at center, and this volume holds a selected few. However, there is tendency here to grope for themes, and so the book remains tentative and, perhaps, transitional.

Pub Date: Feb. 15, 1979

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Graywolf Press (P.O. Box 142, Port Townsend, Wash. 98368)

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1979

Categories: NONFICTION