The Weather in Japan

Summary

These quietly beautiful poems draw on the natural world of western Ireland—wildflowers, birds, the slow rhythms of Carrigskewill—to find a tentative peace in the aftermath of the Troubles, weaving in Homer and other classical sources as touchstones for endurance and grief. Longley's characteristic precision, what critics have called his homeopathic approach, uses the close observation of small natural things to address historical and political wounds of enormous scale. The collection is a masterpiece of restraint.