I went to Columbia, with the most prominent 'great books' curriculum still in existence. 25 years later, I'm finding myself re-reading and discussing many of the titles. The Penn Greek Drama series is a handsome library of new translations that give fresh takes on the classics. It's useful to have Euripides on the shelf when you return home from the recent bravura performance by Fiona Shaw as Medea--it settled an argument too on how it 'originally' ended.

This short collection of poetry is very interesting, mainly because of a new twist. While slowly telling the tale of his development as a person & a new American citizen, Delanty throws in many scenes from the printer's life, including their own termanology. He also has fun with the actual print, some poems being backwards, upside down or with fading and sloping words. It's a quick read & definately worth the time as the poems are very entertaining and innovative.

I didn't like Greg Delanty's earlier poetry much: he seemed too easy, sort of cheaply graceful, like some other young Irish poets who I won't name here. But this book, which consists almost entirely of poems arising out of his association with the printer's trade, is a radical departure and an amazing move. The title poem alone, a long, hubristic, rambling piece of American-influenced verse, is worth the book's modest price. A really terrific achievement by a writer I had dismissed.