Irish Musicians/American Friends

Poetry by Terence Winch

November 1, 1985 • 5.5 x 8.5 • 80 pages • 978-0-918273-12-3

“The poems are anecdotal memoirs about the older men, the Irish musicians, who inducted Winch, the son of Irish immigrants, into their profession. Each poem’s vignette or character sketch is connected to the others by the Irish-American milieu the characters shared, but more intimately by the flatness of the voice describing the people and the happenings. The voice features a vocabulary and syntax so controlled it creates the illusion of a perfect surface tension, perhaps the perfect expression of the times and atmosphere Winch describes in these poems. It’s the kind of contemporary classic you want to share with the world.” —Michael Lally

Reviews

 

Winner of the 1986 American Book Award

“These poems are heartbreakingly exquisite in their simple eye and ear truths. I love Terence Winch’s voice, his people.” —Richard Price

“The poems completely move me as being Irish, they get the depth, the unspeaking of our very private people. The language is just right each time the way they pretend they are not poems. They rescue the lost emigrant culture, making a real Ireland and real myth out of Irish America. I am convinced it is a pioneer effort.” —James Liddy

“Beautiful, simple, often heartbreaking poems about the big-city Irish. Winch . . . undeniably has the gift—a blend of the two Jameses, Joyce and Farrell.” —The Washington Post

“The poems in Irish Musicians/American Friends . . . could be called talking blues, sung in an Irish American tempo. There is a specific Irish American music in the voice . . . that has to be heard to be believed. The writing of Terence Winch will be a great discovery.” —Denise O’Meara, New York Irish History Journal