Michael Hartnett's Selected and New Poems reveals a crucial body of work
in Irish poetry. It includes a number of his precocious lyrics
(poems written in his teens); exquisite love poems and early elegies;
some pastoral poems and, later, farewells to pastoral. Hartnett's
celebrated declaration to write in Irish introduces a series of
translations and announces the more public arguments of subsequent
poems in English.
The book concludes with five extended parables about salvation
and the artistic life. It is irrefutable evidence of a singular
dedication and achievement.
