Desmond Egan has published ten books of poetry, one of prose, and an acclaimed translation of the "Medea". Collections of his work have been published in translation in French, Dutch, Spanish, and Italian. This selection by critic and authority on modernist writing Hugh Kenner, features the finest work of a poet whose achievement is in the great Irish tradition which includes W.B. Yeats and Patrick Kavanagh, with whom he has been compared. Included are selections from "Collected Poems" (1983), "Midland" (1972), "Leaves" (1975), "Siege!" (1977), "Woodcutter" (1978), "Athlone" (1980), Snapdragon" (1983), "Seeing Double" (1989), "A Song for my Father" (1989), and "Peninsula" (1992). In his introduction, Kenner writes of Egan, "He is the first Irish poet to have broken free from the need to sound 'Irish': to manufacture some way of sounding 'Irish'".

Volume editor: Hugh Kenner