Bleat & Prattle

<p>With her lush exploration of the natural world D. Walsh Gilbert magnifies small moments and wee creatures into epiphanies of all kinds in <em>Bleat & Prattle</em>. No creature is too small to be the hero of a story or a myth. Whether as metaphor or anthropomorphic investigation she inhabits the animals and flowers she describes as in I long to be a wasp to communicate by stinger in the poem Resolution. Like the great Irish poets Patrick Kavanagh and Eamon Grennan for Walsh (a dual citizen) the texture of sound in a poem is all-important. In The Little Hills of Monaghan we find the lines This the same scurf smell/ scuffed from the drumlins/ of Kavanagh's/ Inniskeen Road/ as he walked. Her Irish poems will transport any reader right to the old country. One of my favorite poems in this collection is The Time of Balance a study of a northern cardinal during a thunderstorm. Clinging to a holly bough the cardinal exhibits the stiff refusal of a small thing/ who tastes winter's vaulted wind on his beak// and still opens his mouth. He swallows/ the tempest. This fine collection takes you by the hand and leads you directly into the wonders of the living world. -Steve Straight author of <em>Affirmation</em> winner of the William Meredith Award in Poetry</p><p> </p>