A true American demotic,
Bill’s Boys
is a difficult register, but here’s 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 he’d 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.