title: Finding Ireland: A Poet's Explorations of Irish Literature and Culture
author:  Richard Tillinghast 
description: Richard Tillinghast is an American poet, critic and resident of County Tipperary; as such his intent is to serve the non-Irish reader as a foreign correspondent, reporting back from Galway, Dublin, and other parts of this island. This position of the American blow-in enables him to provide convincing reappraisals of writers such as Somerville and Ross, and that unique and asymmetrical man George Moore. . . . Tillinghast is instructive on where to find the best trad music venues in Clare and Galway counties . . . [and he] has a poets sensitivity to landscape and history . . . [and] is knowledgeable on architecture. . . . Tillinghast is especially insightful on well-established names such as Derek Mahon and that quintessentially circumspect poet, Dennis ODriscoll. (Times Literary Supplement)<br /><br />. . . Richard Tillinghast is an American poet and critic who found Ireland in the 1990s and has been Finding Ireland ever since. . . . On the simplest and most traveler-useful level, the book has chapters with passages about good places to eat, to drink, to hear music, places that should be seen for their beauty or historic importance. (American Book Review)<br /><br /><i>Finding Ireland: A Poets Explorations of Irish Literature and Culture</i> is a book that combines poetry and memoir as Tillinghast describes his adoption of Ireland as his new home after living in the United States for most of his life. A must for anyone who wants to learn about the home of St. Patrick. (Midwest Book Review)<br /><br />In Finding Ireland: A Poets Exploration of Irish Literature and Culture, Richard Tillinghast explores how he came to be an Irish resident and how Irish culture has affected him as well as the nations famous literary canon. . . . Finding Ireland is at its best when Tillinghast celebrates the likes of Yeats, as well as contemporary writers such as William Trevor and Brian Friel. (Irish America Magazine)<br /><br />". . . this book is not about Richard Tillinghast finding himself, but about his helping us to find Ireland. It needs finding because large parts of it seem to have been mislaid, or gone altogether. There is, for instance, the Anglo-Irish tradition. . . . Best of all, are Tillinghast's chapters on contemporary poets. He has long enjoyed a reputation as one of the top reviewers of poetry in the U.S. . . . Finding Ireland is written for Americans. . . . Yet the book deserves a readership both here and there. It enacts the belief that literature is a form of pleasure, woven out of history and society, and weaving its way into the personal lives of readers anywhere." (The Irish Times)<br /><br />Mr. Tillinghast conducts a series of critical investigations into Irish poetry, prose, playwriting and architecture through a miscellany of short pieces. Throughout he combines a converts zeal for Irelands finest cultural artifacts with an outsiders fresh perspectivemost strikingly arguing that Protestant literature is the critical locus in which to find Ireland itself. . . . Tillinghast is a wonderful writer with great depths of knowledge and powers of analysis. . . (The Wall Street Journal)<br /><br />This collection of essays on Ireland by the American poet and critic Richard Tillinghast offers some antidote to many Irish illusions. <i>Finding Ireland</i> contains Tillinghasts personal exploration of Irish literature, and many astute essays of literary criticism. Overall, its an excellent and refreshing work from the eyes of an outsider looking in. (The Weekly Standard)
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  **THE COLLECTED WORKS OF W. B. YEATS**
  
  
  VOLUME III
  
  
  THE COLLECTED WORKS OF W. B. YEATS
  
  
  _Richard J. Finneran and George Mills Harper, General Editors_
  
  
  VOLUME I The Poems  
   _ed. Richard J. Finneran_
  
  
  VOLUME II The Plays  
   _ed. David R. Clark and Rosalind E. Clark_
  
  
  VOLUME III Autobiographies  
   _ed. William H. O’Donnell and Douglas Archibald_
  
  
  VOLUME IV Early Essays  
   _ed. Warwick Gould and Deirdre Toomey_
  
  
  volume v Later Essays  
   _ed. William H. O’Donnell_
  
  
  VOLUME IV Prefaces and Introductions  
   _ed. William H. O’Donnell_
  
  
  VOLUME VII Letters to the New Island  
   _ed. George Bornstein and Hugh Witemeyer_
  
  
  VOLUME VIII The Irish Dramatic Movement  
   _ed. Mary FitzGerald_
  
  
  VOLUME IX Early Articles and Reviews  
   _ed. John P. Frayne_
  
  
  VOLUME X Later Articles and Reviews  
   _ed. Colton Johnson_
  
  
  VOLUME XI The Celtic Twilight  
   _and_ The Secret Rose  
   _ed. Warwick Gould, Michael Sidnell, and Deird