Iron Mountain Road (Salmon Poetry) [Paperback]

Eamonn Wall (Author)

Book Description

Series: Salmon Poetry | Publication Date: September 1997

Iron Mountain Road follows Dyckman - - 200 Street (Salmon, 1994), Eamonn Wall's widely praised first book. Here is a collection which chronicles the process of migration - from the bustle, high buildings, and close living of New York City to the empty wide open spaces, and often desolate but magnificent American prairie and high plains. This is an innovative book which describes aspects of the Irish immigrant experience which has been hitherto ignored. The Platte River in Nebraska and the Black Hills of South Dakota are brought brilliantly to life by a consciousness formed in County Wexford and New York, and it is often to these starting points that Wall turns to for confirmation. Other important concerns are history, parenthood and the sea.

Editorial Reviews

Review

In his second book, Wall's wry imagination bears witness to his astonishing ability to absorb what William Carlos Williams called "the American grain" without losing the intonations of his own idiom. Such double vision, or double-speak, defines the situation of the emigrant writer, and of this group Wall is among the best. An Irish poet living in America, he is equally adept at evoking the teeming cityscape of New York, the vast spaces of the American prairie, and the lush countryside of his native Wexford. Louis Simpson observed that American poetry must have a stomach that can "digest rubber, coal, uranium, moons, poems." Wall's work has already digested Hart Crane's Bridge, Omaha, Mount Rushmore, Lake Michigan and a good deal of junk food. These new poems reveal him as a daring and original poet with an interest in exploring how the surfaces of the present open windows into history.
Copyright © 1996, Boston Review. All rights reserved. -- From The Boston Review

About the Author

Eamonn Wall is a leading poetic voice among the 'New Irish' writers living in the United States who describes the emigrant experience with great honesty and by using innovative forms. Features of Iron Mountain Road are the long lines and prose poems which are employed to great effect to describe the enormous space the poet encounters, and which also facilitate Wall's desire to write a poetry laden with the deep rhythms of ordinary life. Iron Mountain Road is a moving and brilliant collection which confirms Eamonn Wall as a daring and original poet and as spokesman for frequently marginalized, but never silent exiles. Wall gives eloquent voice to a lost generation - the exiles of the 1980s and 1990s.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 78 pages
• Publisher: Salmon Publishing (September 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1897648855
• ISBN-13: 978-1897648858
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 4.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,823,046 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Iron Mountain Road, August 6, 2008

By 

Jean Kavanagh "Jean@Salmon" (Cliffs of Moher) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Iron Mountain Road (Salmon Poetry) (Paperback)

Iron Mountain Road is Eamonn Wall's second collection of poetry, following Dyckman - - 200 Street (Salmon, 1994), Wall's widely praised first book. Here is a collection which chronicles the process of migration - from the bustle, high buildings, and close living of New York City to the empty wide open spaces, and often desolate but magnificent American prairie and high plains. This is an innovative book which describes aspects of the Irish immigrant experience which has been hitherto ignored. The Platte River in Nebraska and the Black Hills of South Dakota are brought brilliantly to life by a consciousness formed in County Wexford and New York, and it is often to these starting points that Wall turns to for confirmation. Other important concerns are history, parenthood and the sea.

Features of Iron Mountain Road are the long lines and prose poems which are employed to great effect to describe the enormous space the poet encounters, and which also facilitate Wall's desire to write a poetry laden with the deep rhythms of ordinary life. Iron Mountain Road is a moving and brilliant collection which confirms Eamonn Wall as a daring and original poet and as spokesman for frequently marginalized, but never silent exiles. Wall gives eloquent voice to a lost generation - the exiles of the 1980s and 1990s.

About the Author

Eamonn Wall was born in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, in 1955. He has lived in Nebraska since 1992 where he was associate professor of English at Creighton University. He is the newly appointed Jefferson Smurfit Professor of Irish Studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. His most recent collection of poetry is The Crosses, published in 2000.