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"Tillinghast's
poems range confidently among different cultures. He has a
sense of history as a living force. The experiments in metre,
rhyme and free verse in The Stonecutter's Hand are important.
He is a wonderfully gifted poet, one of the few." Louis
Simpson
"Of
all the many complex, sometimes self-cancelling, tasks a poet
must address, it may be that the most demanding and severe is
getting things right. Richard Tillinghast performs that
office with an honesty so strict that over and over his poems
prove themselves faithful in ways that bring a quiet, undisputed
delight." Anthony Hecht
 Today
in the Cafe Trieste brings together new and old work by Richard
Tillinghast, author of five books of poetry published in the
United States, including the critically acclaimed The Stonecutter's
Hand. James Dickey called Tillinghast 'the best poet of the
younger generation, and deserving more recognition than most of
the poets of the older generation...' His work stands out among
contemporary poetry for its focus on history, and for the ease
with which it moves back and forth between widely differing poetic
idioms. In the early 90s Tillinghast lived for a year with
his family in Kinvara, County Galway, and he continues to visit
Ireland often. He frequently writes on books and travels
for the New York Times.
Salmon Poetry has also published Richard Tillinghast's long
poem, A
Quiet Pint in Kinvara, illustrated throughout by Anne
Korff.
A
Poem from
Today in the Cafe Trieste
by RICHARD TILLINGHAST
The
Emigrant
Two
places only
there were:
here and America.
The four corners of the farm,
and gone-beyond-the-sea.
With
a twopenny nail
he etched into the iron
shank of his spade
the word 'Destiny',
drove it with his boot smartly into the turf
and left it standing.
Abroad
commenced
at the town line.
The New World blinded him
on the Navan road
and again the first time he tried to speak English
and again the first time he saw an orange.
Anaesthetized
by reels and barrels of porter
and eight renditions of 'The Parting Glass',
he fell asleep to the groan of oars
and awoke to a diesel thrust
and sleet over mountainous seas.
(copyright
Richard Tillinghast 1997)
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