Bill's Boys

A true American demotic, Bills Boys is a difficult register, but heres a poet able to tackle it.. Not since the late, great, Thomas McGrath has a poet spoken so clearly of working class life in its own true tone, as McEwen does here in grim stories from hardworking lives, unsparing, unsentimental but shot through with love and courage not least the courage of unsparing truths from the dark intersections between Irish and American histories, so rarely spoken of, much less examined. Without the whiskey he still had his spells of standing-steady rolling when hed grab the earless side of his damp head and squeeze it hard, then knuckle it. The first time I remember it his eyes began to writhe like molten stones. From corded neck on down his convoluted body rolled and plunged and pitched while standing still, his feet clamped solid on the pitching floor. And while I cowered behind the sofa bed I saw my mother leap beyond the kitchen with a wet dish rag she flailed against his head and face until he stopped, and she had flung herself about him like a throbbing shawl.