These quiet, definite poems seem to be about familiar things: country weather and household furniture and a kitchen garden facing south. But the dailyness is an illusion and the poems end up surprising us with their danger and conviction, as much as their assured lyric cadences. Ted Mc Carthy’s world is eloquent and off-balance. It doesn’t so much invite as pull the reader in. After that, the best of these poems have the power to persuade us to stay.’- Eavan Boland ‘A very impressive work both in terms of the gravity and reach of its artistic concerns and impulses and the craft of its writing. Ted Mc Carthy is clearly a gifted poet.’- Michael Coady ‘Mc Carthy brings us on a visit to night-time streets, carnivals, bad country music, chemists’ shops and the graves of dead soldiers. He goes back to his old school and that page of Livy he could never master. He discovers again how the word sincere came into being, and sincerity itself, in his acute sense of remorse, is the key to the life of these poems. This is a collection of quiet rhymes and quiet metaphors and quiet elegies. The sense of loss is telling and the voice is sure.’- Dermot Healy ‘There is a delight in craftsmanship throughout the book, but it is a craftsmanship that doesn’t draw attention to itself. The cut and shape of the poem is always subservient to that most difficult of all tasks – getting something said. Even in the darker poems of “The Black Book”, which thrust us deeply into tragedy and palpable grief, there is hope and light and healing coming through as a condition of life itself. This is poetry that has been lovingly created and lovingly crafted, and seeks that it should be read in the same rewarding spirit.’- Alan Titley