Messenger: Poems: 2 (Dreaming in Irish trilogy) - Hardcover

Binding the lyric to narrative, these poems move almost imperceptibly from delicate descriptions of the poet's native southern landscape to memories of a tender boyhood amid Scots-Irish relatives to the customs and politics of contemporary Ireland. They invoke Audubon, Bartram, Dickey, Poe, and Joyce to pursue the mythic patterns behind everyday circumstances and the joyful possibilities in work, music, and family life.

Smith weaves the language of Catholic faith with both American and Irish rural surroundings, providing the fuel for quiet allegories. He listens and observes, and seeks to bridge the chasm between his world and his words, exercising what he calls

a desire old as cave paintings,

the wish to entice some wild thing

and make beauty local,

to bring something graceful

close to home.

R. T. Smith grew up in North Carolina and Georgia, now lives in Lexington, Virginia, and frequently travels to Ireland. The author of eleven poetry collections and one book of short stories, he edits the literary quarterly Shenandoah for Washington and Lee University.