Michael Daley's MOONLIGHT IN THE REDEMPTIVE FOREST drives a stake into the heart of complacency. Its theme is war, though not warfare. From spoken and unspoken minefields in drug addled families of America, from final solutions at Auschwitz and Eastern Europe, the savage firebombing of Tokyo, the poems depict survivors and victims with compassion and, ultimately, hope. Its longest poem evokes in narrative form a legend from Daley's South Boston Irish heritage, where poverty and suspicion overshadowed innocence. These poems should be heard--a CD, with music by Brad Killion, comes with the book--and savored for their crisp and daring language; not paeans to the virtuous triumphant, these are songs of the wounded who sing in their chains.
