Steering By The Stars

To borrow a line from the author, here is a book "where dreams are born again". Mooney is clear-eyed, exact and precise in evoking the places where he has been gifted with insight, in recalling the people, who have so evidently made his a rich and treasured life. He knows, and the poems show it out clearly, shining with inner light, that we live in this mysterious, terrible and beautiful world in the company of each other, that we "enjoy the fruits of earth” in a common celebration. To mark down his gratitude in these poems is both to acknowledge the gifts he has been given and to share them with us in a most generous gesture. The late, great, Michael Hartnett once challenged Mooney with "are you a poet?” STEERING WITH THE STARS offers the question answered. — Theo Dorgan