John F. Deane is a vital and generous presence in Irish poetry. "New and Selected Poems" gathers work from Deane's five previous "Carcanet" collections, alongside a new sequence, "Snow Falling on Chestnut Hill". Written with an inquiring intelligence, these poems of a dozen years meditate on the relevance of Christian spirituality to our troubled times. Each of the twelve poems in the title sequence presents a movement of the spirit, from the author's childhood in the west of Ireland, through the death of a wife, to the birth of a grandchild. Arranged in the manner of an orchestral symphony, each section takes its cue from a different piece of music, from Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony" to Mozart's "Laudate Dominum". The sequence traces, phase by phase, the development of a Christian life. Faith, in its broadest sense, is inflected by imagination.
