In the Coming of Winter

- Blurb -

Dark, timely and unflinching, Frank Dullaghan' s increasingly confident and finely balanced poetry dives deeply into what keeps us human in difficult times - the textures of memory, the simple connections that bind us. Like Camus, he is prepared to ' live to the point of tears' , knowing, as did William Blake that, ' the deeper the sorrow, the greater the joy. ' This is poetry that unsettles, that asks hard questions without pretending that we have the answers, that looks darkness and death full in the face, yet the collection is not a counsel of despair. In cadences that are as elegant as they are accessible Dullaghan' s poetry asserts that no matter how dark the darkness or how cold the winter, there is the bitter-sweet joy of life, and there is love. I am one of the old ones now, on my last bit of roadto Bethlehem, neither wise nor unwise,but a witness, as the swallows fly south,of the way endings can feel like beginnings,if you come at them from the other direction. (From ' Flying South' )