For most of us, poetry is a form of noise that poets make because they can. Like birds, poets are more active in the spring. Like dogs, poets growl if you get too close to their easy chairs, but respond well to any show of affection. Poets are not even-tempered creatures, but are nicer after a few drinks. They expect too much of their wives and too little of their children. I am at liberty to tell you all of this because I am a special breed of poet whose noises are pure music . . .

For most of us poetry is a form of noise that poets make because they can. Like birds, poets are more active in the spring. Like dogs, poets growl if you get too close to their easy chairs, but respond well to any show of affection. Poets are not even-tempered creatures, but are nicer after a few drinks. They expect too much of their wives and too little of their children. I am at liberty to tell you all this because I am a special breed of poet whose noises are pure music . . .

Robert Rhodes has been a teacher, editor, published poet, translator, director of a museum, and a major figure in the Live Poets Society. He was born in the South, attended U of Florida and UNM and has an MA and a PhD. He is married, has five children, lives in Santa Fe, writes poems and walks his dog.

PLEASE USE IMAGE (SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR) USED IN PREVIOUS PUBLICATIONS FOR AUTHOR PHOTO AND CREDIT ALL ARTWORK: M. VERLAINE RHODES.

For most of us poetry is a form of noise that poets make because they can. Like birds, poets are more active in the spring. Like dogs, poets growl if you get too close to their easy chairs, but respond well to any show of affection. Poets are not even-tempered creatures, but are nicer after a few drinks. They expect too much of their wives and too little of their children. I am at liberty to tell you all this because I am a special breed of poet whose noises are pure music . . .

Reflected in these writings from twenty-one Irish Americans are the themes common to all immigrant literature, but from the authors' own ethnic point of view. The struggle for success forms the underlying structure in the stories by O'Hara, Curran, and McCarthy; and the changing values the New World imposes on the individual are seen in Edwin O'Connor's Grand Day for Mr. Garvey. Irish wit and black humor pepper all the stories, as represented by Dunn's bartender-philosopher, Dooley, and Donleavy's Fairy Tale of New York. Catholicism is omnipresent and is often characterized by the priest, as in Fitzgerald's Benediction, Power's Bill, and Flaherty's Fogarty. Themes that have an immense effect on the characters' relationships are their difficulties in communicating with one another, which Gill captures succinctly in The Cemetery, and the repositioning of gender roles, so evident in Cullinan's Life After Death and in Costello's Murphy's Xmas. Finally, there are the intense, often contradictory, feelings the characters have toward their "homeland:" Hamill's Gift illustrates the desire to rid Ireland of British rule; Gordon's "neighborhood" shows the immigrants' embarrassment over their origins. Editors Casey and Rhodes have organized these pieces chronologically, beginning at the turn of the century. Thus, the selections illustrate the progression of Irish-American literature and also fulfill the word of William Kennedy, who said of his own writing: "those who came before helped to show me how to turn experience into literature."