Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Barley Child

Barley Child

Rappleye, Greg

Paperback

Series: Miller Williams Poetry Prize

General Poetry

ISBN10: 1682262693
ISBN13: 9781682262696
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
Published: Mar 3 2025
Pages: 144
Weight: 0.40
Height: 0.36 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

Winner, 2026 Society of Midland Authors Book Award
Finalist, 2026 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award
Finalist, 2026 Griffin Poetry Prize

Barley Child, Greg Rappleye's fifth collection, draws from family legends, whispered stories, and sworn denials across four generations of Irish American lives-recalled, imagined, and reconstructed from census records, old letters, church registries, yellowed newspaper clippings, and a few odd photographs in which the human figures are often unnamed. The sum of these affidavits, arrayed across the lyric and narrative lines of these poems, is an electrifying human choir-male and female, child and adult, Irish and American-their voices rising out of shame, poverty, absurdity, violence, a strained Catholic faith, and a virulent legacy of madness and alcoholism.

Free of nostalgia and cant, with a sharp Irish wit that often braves nearly monstrous subject matter, and reported with eyes that seldom mist over, Barley Child is a volume that once again confirms Greg Rappleye as a poet of witness.

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