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Third Book, Third Charm<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sky Thick with Fireflies<\/em> is Ethna McKiernan\u2019s most recent collection, brought out in 2012 by Salmon Poetry (County Clare, Ireland), also the publisher of her second collection, The One Who Swears You Can\u2019t Start Over, <\/em>in 2002. Her first collection, Caravan <\/em>(1989) \u2013 as with her more recent volumes \u2013 earned many favorable reviews, and so it has been since then, nary a clunker in the bunch.<\/p>\n McKiernan was born the fifth of nine children in New York City, in late 1951. Her father was a professor of English, specializing in Irish literature, and her mother a schoolteacher when she wasn\u2019t at home rearing children. The future poet became a mother to three sons and a businesswoman. She then earned a MFA degree in her forties because she \u201cneeded to put poetry smack into the middle\u201d of her life again, as she later remarked during a radio interview.<\/p>\n For the last several years in Minneapolis, she has been an outreach worker with the homeless, from which have come images of starkness and great resolve. In other words, she\u2019s not been hedged in by the groves of academe, but her love for her Irish heritage, including memories of her professor father, produced this sonnet \u2013<\/p>\n <\/p>\n THE SCHOLAR IN THE PLAYROOM<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My father\u2019s head was propped up in his hands.<\/p>\n Around him chaos swirled; the cello played<\/p>\n off-key in practice, someone vacuumed sand<\/p>\n we\u2019d tracked in from the beach. I was amazed<\/p>\n <\/p>\n that he could concentrate through all this,<\/p>\n scoring Shakespeare\u2019s words with yellow pen<\/p>\n and calmly reading as I wrestled Fergus<\/p>\n while the youngest blundered through the den.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For years I\u2019ve carried my father\u2019s image around,<\/p>\n the flame in the storm who loved the crazy wind<\/p>\n his children were despite the din of sound<\/p>\n he sometimes wished he could rescind.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n He proved the ivory tower a myth, this anti-Lear,<\/p>\n who kept his children, his Cordelias near.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the same interview in October 2009, McKiernan was also asked how she saw the poetry scene in America and in Minneapolis, where she has lived for a good number of years. She was observant and modest but realistic: \u201cThat\u2019s a big question. What I have to compare it to is the publishing scene and reading scene in Ireland. There in the Sunday paper, the Irish Times<\/em> \u2013 all its splendor \u2013 is a poem<\/em> for the public consumption and reading! That doesn\u2019t occur here. And I miss these kinds of things. Culturally I\u2019m pointing out a difference, just because the question seems so large \u2013 and I\u2019m not quite sure I can do it justice.\u201d<\/p>\n Her affinities for many she has met along the way have brought forth poems such as \u201cSwannanoa Afternoon\u201d (for Eleanor Wilner), \u201cToo Soon\u201d (for John Engman, a poet friend who succumbed to a sudden brain aneurysm at age 47, in 1996), and other well-etched efforts, such as a spoof of Robert Bly\u2019s lordly pronouncements, or tributes for her sons from their infancies to growing up, or her own need for love with its inevitable ordeals. Here is a tightly carved poem as one relationship was ending \u2013<\/p>\n ARTIFACTS<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Coming across them unexpectedly like that<\/p>\n after years<\/p>\n <\/p>\n birch bark tendrils, translucent<\/p>\n as an uncoiled sigh in sleep<\/p>\n <\/p>\n a sack of forest twigs breathing<\/p>\n forest tang before air grows factual again<\/p>\n <\/p>\n small gift, first offerings<\/p>\n the past bursting into present tense<\/p>\n <\/p>\n a shock\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 sudden as the notes of Beethoven<\/p>\n crashing through the dark hallway<\/p>\n <\/p>\n or the single quiet night we swam<\/p>\n surprised as fish inside each other<\/p>\n <\/p>\n troubled<\/p>\n as we rubbed uncertain gills<\/p>\n <\/p>\n by a presence of death in things unsung<\/p>\n the incense still packaged<\/p>\n <\/p>\n notes from an old sonnet<\/p>\n shelved before done.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In reading McKiernan from book to book, especially this new volume, I\u2019m reminded of other poets revealing both fragility and immense strength from within \u2013 Sandra McPherson, James Bertolino, Natalie Diaz, Sigrid Bergie, and Abigail Price \u2013 among a select plenitude. Ethna McKiernan\u2019s poetry is of this high caliber.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n