The Immaculate Conception Mothers' Club

By David R. Surette

In the preface to his Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth famously called for a poetry that sounds like a man speaking to men. If you translate that aesthetic from his day to the blue collar New England towns of our own then you'll be able to hear and celebrate the blunt-edged, dramatic lyricism of David Surette's The Immaculate Conception Mothers' Club. By turns praising, funny, heart-breaking and combative, Surette's poems sing without apology in the vital language of his working class upbringing in Malden, Massachusetts. "I hope you hear my neighborhood./ My hometown./ My mother and father./ Grandmothers and grandfathers./ School and church./ The rink and the playing fields./ The Irish and Acadian./ Fishermen and farmers./ Gaelic and French," so he addresses pugnaciously the privileged poetry teacher in "Weekend Workshop" who can hear only the strains of a gas station attendant in his voice--"Regulah or high test?" True to itself and its origins, deeply human, Surette's voice IS "gas," as the Irish say, full of the kind of poetic energy that takes you places. Definitely high test. --Daniel Tobin, author of The Narrows and Second Things

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0980009863
• ISBN13: 9780980009866
• Release Date: November 2010
• Publisher: Koenisha Publications
• Length: 88 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.