Light Bending: Collected poems of Bill Nevins
Edited by Alan Abrams
Washington DC, Sligo Creek Publishing Company, 2024
166pp
Bill Nevins takes us on a journey through this past century in this little gem of a collection of wonderful poems.
The power of poetry is in the few words chosen to tell the big things without baggage or bragging. This book speaks volumes in few perfect brush strokes which paint a people’s history.
“Tunnel Rat” brings back memories of the worst, nightmarish jobs that Americans sent to Vietnam had to do, in these days when honesty has been set aside and truth murdered. It brings me back to days with friends who did return, but sat in a crowded room, alone, and their eyes focused on things no one else in the room could have seen.
Nevins writes of the generational difference between fathers and sons, the things which shaped those differences that we can know but never in the bones understand, from Pearl Harbor to Dien Bien Phu, and Louis Mountbatten’s demise.
And he writes of the moment, the razor sharp now. Those who are strangling history. He sits us down in the deadly cold of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention disgrace, but also to the defeat and victory of Greasy Grass. But also, the poetry of our Celtic past, the mists of time and heroic memory.
This is the soul of Irish America, but also the soul of America, those original Nations, and the people who are coming and will be the us, the USA of tomorrow.
It is a great collection.
[Bill Nevins is a poet, a songwriter, a journalist, and a retired University of New Mexico educator who has worked in various media, including film and video. Bill grew up in the US northeast and has lived in New Mexico since 1996. Bill is also a member of La Raza Unida, The National Writers Union and Irish-American Writers and Artists. Nevins is also a regular contributor to Green Left. Lorcan Otway is an Irish-American author, song writer, musician and longtime proprietor of Theater 80 in New York City and the Museum of the American Gangster.]