Barley Child

<i>Barley Child</i> Greg Rappleye's fifth collection draws from family legends whispered stories and sworn denials across four generations of Irish American lives-recalled imagined and reconstructed from census records old letters church registries yellowed newspaper clippings and a few odd photographs in which the human figures are often unnamed. The sum of these affidavits arrayed across the lyric and narrative lines of these poems is an electrifying human choir-male and female child and adult Irish and American-their voices rising out of shame poverty absurdity violence a strained Catholic faith and a virulent legacy of madness and alcoholism.<br> <br> Free of nostalgia and cant with a sharp Irish wit that often braves nearly monstrous subject matter and reported with eyes that seldom mist over <i>Barley Child</i> is a volume that once again confirms Greg Rappleye as a poet of witness.