Author Description

From Publishers Weekly Seen through this young poet's eyes, the landscape of Wales is stark, bleak and inhospitable: "The families paying rent on pit houses,/ The old men packed like fossils into/ Galleries of coal, the laundry-girls and labourers,/ Know their lives as part of the estate." "The Dinosaur Park," "On the Llya Fawr Hoard in the National Museum of Wales," and "A Celtic Grave" depict Welsh history as "the worm's empire"a reminder of the fragility of life and the inevitability of death and decay. Minhinnick's dreary, desolate vision reaches its apotheosis in a long poem called "Breaking Down," which recounts the agony of a family member's decline into hopeless and inexplicable mental illness. It is highly accomplished poetry of strong images"jellyfish like crystal bowls in which/ A dark life rots," and "congers hung on chains, ferociously torn,/ Their mouths agape like beaten, senile men." JanuaryCopyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.