An Irishman on the American Road
University presses, presses period, unfortunately shy away from essay collections, which is what this volume essentially is. They claim such books do poorly on the market; if that's so then the contemporary American readership--at least those with an interest in the American-Irish interface--needs to wake up and smell the coffee at the Sin-e cafe. Every chapter here is, like they say, worth the price of admission. This is a book of poet's essays--Wall has published three extraordinary collections of poems--so if you are devoted exclusively to "unified," thesis-driven works, its wide-ranging, eclectic energy might be off-putting. The book is travel, research, investigation--think Herodotus, but with a drawling Wexford accent. From the Sin-e Cafe to the Black Hills is a work of calm intelligence, good humor, and acute literary cultural observation.