Gradually I became aware that professing English because I loved poems was like practicing vivisection because I loved dogs.

I started a PhD in English at the University of Chicago because I loved poetry-which I now realize is like saying I studied vivisection because I loved dogs.

Here's me opening my wrists before breakfast, Christmas day, and here's you asking if it hurt. Here's where I choose between mea culpa and Why the hell should I tell you?

Gradually I became aware that professing English because I loved poems was like practicing vivisection because I loved dogs.

The first thing that strikes you about Timothy Murphys verse is the palpable texture of his line - that sound of sense practised by that other American poet-farmer, Robert Frost. And just as Murphys ear is trained on the rhythms of local speech and classical epigram, his eye holds fast on the image. This is an undeluded vision, sometimes bleak, often funny, and never less than painstakingly crafted.