Cromwell: A Poem

A phenomenally popular book wherein Kennelly's poems range from the sixteenth century to the present, as he rejects chronology in favor of an `imagistic' narrative. The full meaning of loyalty and betrayal, of allegiance and divorce, [is] played out within the poet's imagination and private experience against a background of public history, atrocity, suspicion and deviance. As Kennelly explains...'I tried to open my mind, heart and imagination to the full, fascinating complexity of a man I was from childhood taught, quite simply, to hate. A learned hate is hard to unlearn'"" - Irish Literary Supplement. ""The reader is...to find in Cromwell excellence in cadence, images, comparisons"" - Choice.