His secret discipline

Also in this month's Boston Review, Alissa Valles unveils the little-recognized gifts of Irish poet Harry Clifton. She admires his "solidity," which she considers . . .

. . . a product of Clifton’s formal discipline and of the deliberateness of his thought. His poetry has little of the exhilarating zaniness and wildness of Muldoon’s, and in terms of poetic form it bears few of the marks associated with postmodern poetry. The poems’ daring lies almost entirely in their philosophical direction, in their approach to the problem of living in a postmodern age, in their stubborn refusal to fudge their answers. Secular Eden sets sail for elusive destinations, conscious of its own gravity, more ship than plane, more submarine than ship. When it detonates its charges, it is often as if under water, swelling gradual waves.