In the genius of poetry and throughout the vicissitudes of human affection Eros is a vital instrument of our life, the irresistible and forceful agency of earthly nature which draws our being into a cycle of time and the year; it is the perpetually circular movement of creativity and destruction, of happiness and sadness, and the primary origin of all worldly metaphor. These lyrics are taken from the four continents of America, Europa, Asia, and Africa, as human love arises from the void and then–having become aware of its incompleteness and having endeavoured to alter that condition–returns to the void.

Mysteriously Kevin McGrath’s lucid and utterly lovely poems read at once like exquisitely precise evocations of specific concrete moments, feelings, landscapes–a bird, the wind, rain falling on a river–and at the very same time, and again with exquisite nuance and precision, the poems also trace out, one after another, a luminous web of reflections and meditations on the moments, passages, and landscapes of our lives. These are poems to be read and re-read and savored over and over, as in the old Sufi tradition.

Leila Ahmed, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Divinity, Harvard University.

Kevin McGrath’s Eros is–to adapt one of his own metaphors–a voyage of exploration across the oceanic movements of love and longing. McGrath’s rippling verses capture with exquisite grace the alternating roar and whisper of desire’s tidal swell.

David Franklin Elmer, Professor of The Classics, Harvard University.

SAINT JULIAN PRESS