Circling the Stones

In Circling the Stones: A Journey (Poems From Ireland), author Michael D. Riley would agree with the notion that all significant journeys are finally the same journey. Pilgrim-Tourist, he takes the reader through a landscape both public and private, secular and spiritual. These poems, varied in form and content¡—with a liberal dose of sly humor—respond deeply to Ireland the modern country grafted on a land almost beyond time. The ¡§touchstone¡¨ of these concerns is the image of ¡§stone¡¨ itself, which weaves many strata of meaning throughout the collection, from the inertness of being itself (the absolute other) to the structures
we build to shield ourselves from it (ring fort, clochan, cottage), remember our dead with (passage grave, cairn), and even to celebrate its beauty and mystery with (stone circle, menhir, church). Newgrange is the most haunting example: tomb, work of art, church of a culture with no voice but incised stone. Yet on the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year, Newgrange floods with dawn light; for exactly 1000 seconds death is put by for the promise of resurrection. Catholic in sensibility and often in imagery, these poems find grace where we expect it and where we do not. They become powerfully affirmative but do so by the light of a clear eye. It is a trip worth taking.