The sense life made runs ahead of me —
a wild pony pulling its trap,
a startled child at the reins.
‘Picture the world without you in it’ — the opening line of Grace Wilentz’s engaging first collection, The Limit of Light, illustrates the imaginative range of her poetry. The book is a record of experience, a widely lived life. There are poems set in her native New York City, in the Everglades, in Morocco, in the Anasazi villages of the American West and in her adopted country, Ireland. There are poems in the voice of her mother undergoing treatment for cancer and others that explore her Jewish heritage. Her succinctness of thought and her epiphanies are evident in ‘In this desert landscape / there is little enough to measure yourself by’ and ‘children are always / at the mercy / of the deal’. In her style and subject matter Grace Wilentz broadens the reach of recent Irish poetry.
Books of the Year 2020
Grace Wilentz impresses with her debut The Limit of Light (Gallery Press, €11.95), ‘Sometimes I can feel us diving/weightless, as I dream’ (Belly of a Whale).
— Paul Perry, Sunday Independent
Publication date: 29 October 2020
Details: 80pp
ISBN PBK: 978 1 91133 800 0
ISBN HBK: 978 1 91133 801 7
Cover: ‘The Ties That Bind’ (2013) by Jennifer Trouton, oil on linen