Spoken Flares, Sung Beacons, Selected Poems & Song Lyrics

Poetry. California Interest. Eileen Aronson Ireland, born with the Great Depression, friend of Venice West beat poets, marched for and wrote of the urgent social issues of the 60’s-80’s, civil rights, woman’s rights, the Vietnam War and later called out 21st century evils. Yet, beyond this, her poems range to insightful personal revelation with frank courage, and sprinkles of ironic humor. Her style, too, has a notable spread from traditional sonnet and haiku to unique formats with cadenced imagery. Poignant human concerns, coiled within resonant technique, flag her powerful work.

The poetry of Eileen Aronson Ireland sings from the rhythms of postwar Brooklyn to the beats of Venice, California, onward to the dreamlandscapes of contemporary New Mexico, and forward, toward the rushing future. Calling on histories and prophesies and childhoods and friendships, Eileen Aronson Ireland’s poems touch the reader with music, with imagery, with a singular human life voiced fully by an original sensibility. While every debut is retroactive, Eileen Aronson Ireland’s collection offers us an unexpected poet, freshfaced and spirited, her newness belied only by the years.–Susan Hansell

It’s rare these days to recover an artist associated with the Beat Generation, but poet Eileen Aronson Ireland carries that legacy forward through a voice of quiet staunchness, one drawing an intimate geography of the West Coast with humor, tenderness, and a persistent reminder that our domestic and public histories are always intricate and inseparable.–Nancy Grace