Along the Flaggy Shore

In his tenth volume of poetry, Irish American poet Carlos Reyes returns once again to Ireland. The poems in this collection capture the stark rural life that now has mostly passed, pushed aside and forgotten with the arrival of the "Celtic Tiger." Sitka spruce has supplanted the peat bog, and the slane rusts in the barn. The iconic haycocks that dotted the countryside are now replaced with huge black bags of sileage. This book paints a lyrical picture of a world gone. As Yeats' said, a way of life "all changed, utterly changed." Carlos Reyes first came to Ireland in the early 1970s, when he purchased a three-hundred-year-old cottage in County Clare. Acadia National Park and Joshua Tree National Park among others have hosted him as poet-in-residence. When not traveling, Reyes makes his home in Portland, Oregon.