cover image Sky and Island Light: Poems

Sky and Island Light: Poems

Brendan Galvin. Louisiana State University Press, $16.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-8071-2109-2

Galvin's eyes, set on nature even when lensed through a skylight, well serve his mind, which is set to discover the fuller reality beneath and behind the observed. As in his previous work, notably Great Blue (1990) and 1992's narrative Saints in Their Ox-Hide Boats, Galvin tried to understand the self via the world, not the other way around: ""even the common foreground/ chickadee and background crow/ give dimension to our days."" A clear sense of place permeates these poems: Ireland, Scotland, Cape Cod and unnamed spots rendered so vividly readers will feel sure they have been there. Though each poem celebrates concrete circumstance and specifics (birds, boats and water recur), such pathways out of the self cycle back into the self. Sighting whales in ""Estuary,"" he observes, ""the pod revealing itself/ in breath tree, fin, roll,/ piecemeal the way this/ one place in the ceaseless/ round of the world/ offers itself...."" Galvin's vision is usually sparsely peopled--except in the longer narratives. These latter offer captivating glimpses of mother and aunt, daughter, a Portuguese uncle. Of some Cape Cod village characters, old-time street people, he writes: ""They were the canaries in our mine-shaft,/ our early warning systems, and never/ disappeared into the shops all day/ but stayed on the sidewalks to hinder/ the broom of the future simply by being there."" (Jan.)