The Mother House

In these precisely rendered, meditative poems, Ní Chuilleanáin (The Boys of Bluehill) weaves brief but impactful stories about a cast of characters, such as “The Russians in War and Peace/ before the failed abduction, the smokers/ outside the slow café, watching/ the slow goods train stretching itself out—,” nuns in a cloister (“The oldest of all the sisters has to string/ little pink beads on the edge of Agnus Deis”), and the imagined life of a woman in a traffic jam and a cobbler in an Italian town. Ní Chuilleanáin’s lines are musical and exact: “She worked on with the rake/ thinking of the rolling wave,/ an eye watching for the car” and “At the end of the garden where the tall trees shivered/ the river was in spate,/ We walked down there at dawn to get rid of the noise/ of the night’s debate.” Offering vivid portraits of Ireland and beyond, this atmospheric 12th collection reaffirms Ní Chuilleanáin’s place as one of Ireland’s greatest poets. (Apr.)