Description
“The poems of Tribe are accomplished acts of ‘intemperate looking’. Whether the poet’s gaze is trained on wolves in the wilderness or on her own aging parents, the portraits are accurate and passionate… Mary Montague has written a book rich in praises and laments, surprises and delights.”
— Theodore Deppe, author of Cape Clear: New and Selected Poems“[T]he trained eye of the natural scientist and the impassioned soul of a poet fuse to create a poetic universe that is nothing short of miraculous… Tribe is an elegy for a lost paradise, a Song of Songs for squirrel, fox and raven, whale, wolf and gannet, and ultimately it raises serious questions for us and generations to come—how did we squander our inheritance so mindlessly: what have we done with the garden entrusted to us?”
— Eva Bourke, author of The Latitude of Naples“These are densely-packed poems with a striking degree of concentration, and an almost scientific urge to catalogue images and sensations. She’s a nature poet with the kind of vivid intensity that would have made Wordsworth quake in his boots. This is a rewarding collection jam-packed with memorable images, and infused with a strong sense of our moral responsibility towards nature.” — The Sunday Tribune
“Montague’s poetry enacts a happy marriage between the scientist’s carefully objective eye and the lyricist’s celebratory (sometimes elegiac) rapture…”
— Eamon Grennan, The Irish Times
ISBN 9781904556770 Paperback
140 x 216 mm, 100 pp
2008