The Weather in Japan

Michael Longley is a wonderful poet. I've been collecting his books for a while now. I do love Weather in Japan but find that his most touching poems come from a chapbook I found at Abbey Press in Northern Ireland. The chapbook is called "Broken Dishes". It is my most treasured Longley book. I have also found other gems of poetry at this small press out of Newry.

Surely this is Michael Longley's best book yet, even more consistently fine than his Whitbread-winning GORSE FIRES. In the past Longley has written frequently about the violence in Northern Ireland, and he does so briefly here ("All of These People," "A Prayer")--but more often these poems address the two world wars and their aftermaths ("The War Graves," "The Bullet Hole"). He also returns to his interest in classics: many poems deal with Homer ("In the Iliad") and the several Latin poets he admires ("Remembering the Poets"). Perhaps what most distinguishes this collection from Longley's earlier books is its half-dozen poems about quilts (the best of which may be "Broken Dishes" and "The Yellow Teapot"). Anyone who enjoys Longley's earlier work should certainly read this, and anyone unfamiliar with him would find this one of the most winning introductions.