Holding Things Together

<h3><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>In Chuck O'Neil's fresh new collection so many of the poems illustrate and illuminate his volume's title for holding things together</strong><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)> </span></h3><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>...is precisely (in the many meanings of the phrase) what these keenly reflective homages to locality to family to continuity to place and to history do. Clarity of language generosity of feeling rhythmic delicacy: in their fluidly unpunctuated stanzas the poems are as well-hewn shaped and planed as a piece of precious wood ('scaling lengths minding alignments'). The local is O'Neil's landscape whether in lovingly unsentimental poems for his wife and family for his town past and present or for his natural surroundings. It is a celebration too of work-manual thoughtful emotionally-aware work-including the work of poem-making itself out of which he has composed this garland of gifts for the rest of us holding all together. </span></p>