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In The Strength of a Named Thing, readers who have delighted in Brendan Galvin’s exuberant style and humor will discover further pleasures in his encounters with the natural world of his native Cape Cod—the birds, toads, and mysterious vegetables, and the equally quirky humans. Many of these poems involve names and naming things. The speaker in “Pondycherry” is intrigued by that word and how it entered his consciousness. Phloem, calyx, and carina transcend their vegetable origin to become imaginary musical instruments in “Listening to the Garden.” The painter Walter Anderson, waking on a levee to discover himself surrounded by birds he cannot name, invents sobriquets for them: stonechuck, fireneck, peabill, garget. In this magical collection, Galvin, an unabashed venerator, elevates the creation in ways that mock the easy anxieties of much contemporary poetry. Like Edwin Muir, Galvin clearly believes that “with names the world was called/Out of the empty air” by Adam, the first poet. No doubt he would agree with the philosopher Murray Westinghouse as well: “What is named has its health; what is nameless cannot live.”
Brendan Galvin is the author of eleven other volumes of poetry, including Hotel Malabar and Sky and Island Light. He lives in Truro, Massachusetts.
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