Collected Poems represents John Montague s long and remarkably rejuvenative career, nearly forty years. In the three celebrated sequences comprised in Part 1, in the individual love poems of Part 2, and in the new sequences of Part 3, Montague s rare lyric gift serves a strong narrative impulse, and brings his strong love of place and keen ear and eye to Northern Ireland, Cork, Dublin, Paris, and North and Central America. Finally, he has written love poetry as poignant as any in our time."