Terence Winch: Craic-Head Poetry

  The Vatican has announced the beatification of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, with his canonization as a saint to follow in the not-too-distant future. As a Catholic kid growing up in the Bronx in the 1950s, I already regarded him way back then---as did most of my coreligionists---as a near-supernatural being. He was, somewhat unbelievably, a television star, whose weekly program, called “Life Is Worth Living,” was must-see t.v. for everyone in my household and community. He was charismatic, brilliant, and witty. And so popular that he triggered the ire and jealousy of his boss, the odious Francis Cardinal Spellman, Archbishop of New York, who eventually ended Sheen’s t.v career and exiled him to upstate New York.       These two poems are from my book Boy Drinkers  (Hanging Loose Press, 2007). S P E L L _______________________________ Sometime in 1953, my beautiful sister Eileen fell under the spell of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. His piercing eyes won the he...

Fifty years ago, I was a regular book reviewer for the Washington Post 's Book World section, a gig that lasted six years. Knowing of my Irish heritage, Book World made me their unofficial reviewer of Irish and Celtic material. Thus---in addition to books by Richard Price, Ann Beattie, W.S. Merwin, Ian McEwan, Kenneth Koch, Russell Banks, and others---I took on works by John McGahern, Benedict Kiely, Flann O'Brien, Seán O'Casey's widow Eileen, William Trevor, Neil Jordan, and a book by and  biography of Dylan Thomas. I even wrote a piece on county Galway, my mother's place of origin, for the Post 's Travel section. But it was William Butler Yeats  (1865--1939) and his circle that got the most attention. I reviewed a biography of Maud Gonne, the poet's famous inamorata; the autobiography of Lady Gregory, Yeats's longtime patron; and William M. Murphy's monumental Prodigal Father , a biography of John Butler Yeats, the poet's father.  Yeats in the ...