Confessional poetry has had a haunted reputation from its post-war onset. The literary legacies of Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton and W. D. Snodgrass—widely considered ground zero for the entire confessional school—are crucified at least as frequently as they’re praised, and a healthy allergy to what contemporary teachers of writing pertly refer to as … Read more
This article is dedicated to Patrick Healy. The Irish people have a long-standing relationship with ‘numinous presences in the landscape’, often referred to as the little people, or faeries. The literature provides a complex set of illusions. The writer, philosopher and independent scholar, my friend, Patrick Healy on a recent visitation tendered me a painting … Read more
This article has been gestating for some time. I must admit to a long-standing loathing for cars. Far from mellowing, this hatred has only escalated with the passage of time. Into my mid-fifties, I still recall over thirty years ago when I was working as a kitchen porter in a family-run restaurant in one of … Read more
The appeal of exotic cuisines and esoteric diets has done little to diminish bread’s status as the primary foodstuff of the Western world, and many areas besides. Symbolic as the ‘staff of life’ and ubiquitous, the Oxford English Dictionary describes it in wholesome simplicity as a ‘well-known article of food prepared by moistening, kneading, and … Read more