Four Seasons

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"Paul Balfe's poems are distinguished by a forensically intelligent eye for the telling detail which cuts to the heart of seemingly inconsequential encounters or childhood memories. All are rendered fresh in poems that need no recourse to verbal pyrotechnics to lodge themselves within our imaginations. Whether describing a father and a son seeing their past and future within each other; a child remembering his mother finding momentary sanctuary in a grotto off Meath Street or a cow finding no sanctuary from the harsh reality of farming; a horrific case of incest summed up in the rage of four dispassionate lines; the curious juxtaposition of a hospice built beside a graveyard or an ingrained memory of how social distinctions were revealed even within the coded buttons of confirmation outfits; Balfe mines universal truths from everyday life, dissecting his experiences in poems that are shrewd, honest, humane, unflinching and memorable."Dermot Bolger